The Creators of N.C.

The Family You Find

The world of Sarah Addison Allen

By Wiley Cash

Photographs by Mallory Cash

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In Sarah Addison Allen’s new novel, Other Birds, an 18-year-old woman named Zoey Hennessey returns to her long-dead mother’s condominium on fictional Mallow Island off the coast of South Carolina to reconnect with her mother’s spirit by tapping into the spirit of the place. Upon her arrival, Zoey finds a historic building that houses a collection of mysterious misfits, all of them bearing their own personal stories driven by pain and longing. Although Zoey is heartbroken to learn that virtually nothing of her mother remains in the condo, she is pleased to make a home among the Dellawisp’s eccentric tenants.

Not only is the Dellawisp haunted by the lives of the people who currently live there, it’s also haunted by the lives of the people who lived there once upon a time, for the living are not alone in the old, rambling complex. Spirits hover on the margins of people’s lives just like the tiny turquoise birds that have overtaken the Dellawisp’s courtyard. While navigating the past and present of these myriad lives, Zoey reclaims her own life, and she learns that family is something you can create when you need it most.

On a Saturday morning in mid-June, I meet Allen in the lobby of Asheville’s historic Grove Park Inn. While tourists and bellhops bustle all around us — the din of voices and laughter carrying along the great lobby’s stone floors — Sarah and I make our way to the verandah that overlooks the golf course. In the distance, the city of Asheville sits like a pink jewel among the swells of misty blue mountains. If the setting sounds magical it’s because it is. It’s also because my head is still buzzing with the possibility of magic after finishing Other Birds. All of Sarah’s previous novels contain magical elements, beginning with her 2007 debut novel, Garden Spells, which tells the story of the Waverley family, whose garden bears prophetic fruit and edible flowers with special powers. The novel was an instant New York Times bestseller. Since then, Sarah has published five novels that have gone on to sell millions of copies.

While Other Birds is certainly as magical as Sarah’s previous novels, it seems much more personal. When I ask her if this is true, she doesn’t hesitate. “Without a doubt,” she says. Just as several characters in Other Birds must confront tragedy and grief, Sarah has had to do the same in her own life.

“I started the book, and then my mom had a catastrophic brain injury,” she says. “For four years I watched her die. It was horrible. And then 10 days before my mom passed away, my sister died. I’d put this book on hold while caring for my mom and going through that grieving process.”

When Sarah returned to work on her novel, she found that not only had her sense of the novel changed, her sense of herself had changed as well. “I came at it from the point of view of learning a lot about life that I didn’t really want to learn,” she says. “I learned a lot about grief, and I learned a lot about what to let go of and how we hang on.”

Sarah explains to me that if this book feels different it’s because she’s different. While Other Birds is just as hopeful as her previous books, it confronts the reality of grief with a stark realism shrouded in elements of magic once ghosts begin to join the chorus of characters.

“My grief came out in those ghost stories,” Sarah says. “Even though the characters don’t know the ghosts of their mothers are there, they’re still there. I like that sort of wishful thinking in terms of losing my mom. Maybe I haven’t really let her go, or maybe she hasn’t really let me go. In some way she’s still here.”

Sarah grows quiet, and I imagine memories of her mother playing through her mind, and I wonder how those memories found their way to the page. “My mom was my best friend,” she finally says. “The characters in the book deal with the losses of the people who are supposed to care for them. But in the end they learn how to let go and move on and find family among themselves.”

Grief is not something new to Sarah’s life. Ten years ago she was diagnosed with stage four cancer, but after losing her mother and sister, her own medical journey was put into perspective. “It’s the difference between the fear of leaving and the fear of being left,” she says.

Sarah’s readers certainly marked her absence during the seven years between the publication of her last novel, First Frost, and her new novel. Once the publication date of Other Birds was announced, online book chatter erupted in celebration. In her own quiet way, Sarah celebrated her return to the page as well. She tells me that getting back to work on Other Birds after losing her mother and sister was a return to something that felt normal. “Getting back into the swing of things felt good,” she says.

Meeting with Sarah in one of Asheville’s most iconic locations feels right because she’s a writer whose identity is inextricably tied to western North Carolina. “My heart is here in Asheville,” she says. “The farther I get away from Asheville, it feels like a rubber band being stretched taut. I need to snap back. I need to come home.

“My sense of belonging is something I want to give to my characters,” she says. “They’re all in search of a place to belong. A lot of times that’s a physical place, but a lot of times it’s an emotional place, and sometimes it’s the people you surround yourself with.”

I understand the point she’s making, both because Asheville feels like home to me, but also because my own writing relies heavily on my characters having a sense of belonging to a particular place. But I also understand Sarah’s ties to Asheville because we are alumni of the University of North Carolina Asheville, where we both majored in literature just a few years apart from one another, studying under the same professors and encountering many of the same books that left lasting impressions on us both, books like North Carolina native Fred Chappell’s novel I Am One of You Forever.

Sarah sees that novel as one of the first books that introduced her to magical realism while showing her that western North Carolina could be a setting for her own work. She says that reading Chappell’s novel at UNC Asheville was like “cracking open a geode and seeing the sparkle inside.” She still remembers how Chappell’s use of folklore and ballads in the novel resonated with her as a native of western North Carolina. “That was my territory,” she says. “That was something that hit close to home.”

I was so affected by Chappell’s novel that I borrowed the name of the main character from I Am One of You Forever for my debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home. Chappell named his young protagonist Jess Kirkman; I named mine Jess Hall.

When Sarah’s debut Garden Spells was published in 2007 I was entering my final year of graduate school in Louisiana, and the fact that an alumnus of UNC Asheville had hit the publishing big time was both emboldening and daunting for someone like me, who desperately wanted to join her. But in talking with Sarah I learn that her 13-year path to publishing Garden Spells after graduating college was long and hard. According to her, during those years she had written dozens of full-length manuscripts and been rejected by scores of literary agents.

“I was writing as close to full time as I could get,” she says. “I was doing part-time and seasonal jobs. By the time I wrote Garden Spells I was just about ready to give up. I’d gone back to school, and I hated it, and I thought, ‘Let me give it one more go.’ And I wrote Garden Spells, and suddenly, there it was. I sent off 12 or 15 queries to agents, and only one of them wanted to see the novel. That’s the agent I have today.”

Both Sarah’s new novel, Other Birds, and her path to publication prove one thing: If you look, there is a family waiting for you.

“Your tribe is out there,” she says. “Your people are out there. Just keep looking.”  PS

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

Focus on Food

Chocolate Ice Pops?

Black Forest cake anything!

Story and Photograph by Rose Shewey

Oh, how much I wanted to taste my mom’s homemade Black Forest layer cake when I was a child. “Why not?” I would ask indignantly, my arms crossed over my fuzzy polyester sweater. (It was the 1980s after all.)

“Because,” my mom would respond with a heavy sigh and the patience of a Catalan pack mule, “it has alcohol in it and you wouldn’t like it.”

The temptation was real. The silky, hand whipped cream; the spongy, rich chocolate layers; and the luscious, lip-staining sour cherries spiked with fragrant cherry brandy, “Kirschwasser.” Any time Black Forest cake made an appearance on the buffet, I would ask for a slice, but my mom’s response was typically a resounding “no,” and I’d be rushed off to the kid’s table with a piece of marble cake.

To be clear, most European parents aren’t terribly worried about their children ingesting a little bit of alcohol — to the contrary, the stereotype holds true. My mom simply assumed that my palate wasn’t refined enough to appreciate such grown-up treats. So, why let a precious slice of cake go to waste on immature taste buds?

To this day, I adore Black Forest cake. Aside from the fact that this dessert is the epitome of divine yet sinfully decadent pleasures, I am hopelessly nostalgic. “Schwarzälder Kirschtorte” was, and is, a festive staple in my German homeland during times of celebration.

As baroque in nature as Black Forest cake may be, at its core it is a simple, yet epic, combination of flavors. You don’t have to make the prototypical layer cake to enjoy it — you can make Black Forest cake anything. The essential components of chocolate, cream and boozy cherries are incredibly versatile. My go-to quick fix over the years has been creamy Black Forest chocolate ice pops. With only five ingredients, this frozen treat tops any other ice cream-type dessert and adds a touch of glamour to the otherwise rather ordinary lineup of frozen pops.

By the way, my mom was wrong. When I finally laid my tiny, greedy hands on my first slice of Black Forest cake, it was love at first bite, and I scarfed it all down. Well, I ate all the parts that didn’t taste like cherry brandy. So what if I just licked the cream off the top? My mom was still wrong.

Black Forest Chocolate Ice Pops          

(Makes 6)

You’ll need six ice pop molds and sticks for this recipe.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups yogurt, coconut cream or heavy cream

2 1/2 tablespoon raw honey (or more, to taste)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/4 cup cacao powder

3/4 cup cherries, fresh or frozen, pitted

2 teaspoon Kirschwasser (optional)

In a bowl, combine yogurt (or cream), honey and vanilla extract and whisk until smooth. Divide into two equal parts; set aside one part and stir cacao powder into the other part. In a food processor, blend cherries to your desired texture; anywhere from coarse to puréed will work (or skip this step and continue with whole or halved cherries). Add Kirschwasser if desired. Add a couple of tablespoons of yogurt mixture to each mold, then add a couple of tablespoons chocolate mix and about one tablespoon of cherries; continue layering until the molds are full. Add sticks, then freeze.  PS

German native Rose Shewey is a food stylist and food photographer. To see more of her work visit her website, suessholz.com.

Bookshelf

August Books

FICTION

The Book Eaters, by Sunyi Dean

Out on the Yorkshire moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book’s content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries. Devon, like all other book eater women, is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories. But real life doesn’t always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger — not for books, but for human minds.

Delphi, by Clare Pollard
An unnamed classics professor looks for guidance in the prophecies of the ancient world when she finds herself confronting chilling questions about control and surrender as COVID-19 descends. Navigating the tightening grip of lockdown, a marriage in crisis, and a 10-year-old son who seems increasingly unreachable, the narrator focuses on different types of prophecy to make sense of her increasingly surreal world. The result is an audacious, ominous novel that embodies the profound tensions of our era.

The Last White Man, by Mohsin Hamid
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’ skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends and family will greet them. Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: an opportunity to see ourselves, face-to-face, anew.

Carrie Soto Is Back, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Carrie Soto retired from professional tennis at the age of 31 with an impressive record, including the most grand slam titles of all time. Now, six years later, a younger set of players is on the court, and one of them, Nicki Chan, is about to break her record — but not if Carrie can help it. At 37 years old, she makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked “the Battle-Axe” anyway.

Stories from the Tenants Downstairs, by Sidik Fofana
Set in a Harlem housing project, a tight-knit cast of characters grapples with their personal obstacles, ambitions and triumphs while anticipating a looming rent hike that could jeopardize their futures and change life as they know it. The shared stakes in the face of gentrification bind the stories together, delivering an immersive, novel-like reading experience.
Love on the Brain, by Ali Hazelwood
Like an avenging, purple-haired Jedi bringing balance to the universe, Bee Königswasser lives by a simple code: What would Marie Curie do? If NASA offered her the lead on a neuro-engineering project — a literal dream come true after years scraping by on the crumbs of academia — Marie would accept without hesitation. But the mother of modern physics never had to co-lead with Levi Ward. Now, her equipment is missing, the staff is ignoring her, and Bee finds her floundering career in somewhat of a pickle.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

The Queen of Kindergarten,  by Derrick Barnes

The queen of kindergarten has new braids, a sparkly tiara and a chariot (well, a pickup truck) to take her to school on the first day. She is caring and kind and brightens every room she enters. The first day will be a breeze! This wonderful little book should be required reading for every new kindergartner. (Ages 4-6.)

Who’s in the Picture?,  by Susie Brooks

Art museums don’t have to be stodgy — you can simply look for dogs or horses or your favorite foods in the paintings! Take a closer look at over 20 famous paintings by Frida Kahlo, Henri Rousseau, Winslow Homer and many more in this playful search-and-find book. A fabulous way for kids (and adults) to experience art for fun. (Ages 4 and up.)

The Perfect Rock, by Sarah Noble

Cute and clever and oh, so charming, the three otter siblings each set out to find the perfect rock — a rock to carry in the pouch underneath an arm, to be the tool that they will keep for life. But when all three siblings choose the same rock, they learn a solid lesson about what is truly important. (Ages 3-6.)

Pop Out Around the World: Read, Build and Play from New York to Beijing

Bring the world to your kid’s playroom with this fun, interactive book featuring six world cities with pop-out buildable pieces representing each. Create a hot dog cart in New York; Big Ben in London; The Great Wall in Beijing; the Opera House in Sydney; and much more. Perfect for home-school families and armchair travelers alike. (Ages 4-7.)

Invisible, by Christina Diaz Gonzalez

Community service gains a whole new meaning for five middle school students in this must-have dual language graphic novel. Edgar award-winning author Christina Diaz Gonzalez even adds a signature mystery twist to the story that is sure to resonate with anyone who ever felt lost in the wild world of middle school. (Ages 9-13.)  PS

Compiled by Angie Tally and Kimberly Daniels Taws.

Birdwatch

Nighthawks

But not the Edward Hopper kind

By Susan Campbell

The common nighthawk is neither “common” nor a “hawk.” Found in the Sandhills and Piedmont of North Carolina, these large birds feed exclusively on insects and actually do so at night. They use their large mouths to catch prey. Beetles and other insects are instantaneously intercepted and ingested by way of the birds’ oversized mouths. Nighthawks are unique in that they literally fly into large insects. Because their weak feet are designed purely for perching, they do not grab at them as true hawks do.

These medium-sized birds are active mainly at dawn and dusk when beetles and other big insects are also most active. Due to their terrific night vision, nighthawks hunt effectively in darkness, though they may even feed during the day, especially when they have young to provide for. In early summer, cicadas, grasshoppers, larger wasps and true bugs are abundant and, given their aerodynamic prowess, nighthawks are very successful predators at any hour.

As one of many survival tactics, common nighthawks spend the day perched horizontally on a pine branch. Invisibility is the goal during daylight hours. Although their vision is not compromised, they have a better advantage when light intensity is low. The mottled black, gray and white feathering is very hard to see regardless of the time of day, but their characteristic low “peee-nt” call and erratic moth-like flight is distinctive.

Common nighthawks’ nests are well camouflaged. Females simply scrape a spot to create a nesting area. Their speckled eggs blend in well with the mineral soil and miscellaneous debris typical of native arid terrain. Females are known to perform a feeble “broken wing” display if they are disturbed. This act is the only defense they have to draw potential predators away from the eggs or young.

More likely, common nighthawks’ presence will be given away by males “booming” in the early morning over high quality open habitat. In the Sandhills those would include the Moore County Airport and the drop zones on Fort Bragg. The unique noise they produce comes from air passing over the wing feathers of breeding males — not vocalizations — as they move through the air.

Amazingly, nighthawks are one of a handful of bird species that will also nest on flat rooftops. As large fields become scarce, common nighthawks are more prone to using large artificial spaces. These birds can easily support a family on the associated abundant flying insects found in open foraging habitat such as agricultural fields or some athletic venues, so it’s not unusual to see or hear nighthawks at summer baseball games or early fall football games throughout the region. They are capitalizing on the abundant prey associated with the evening floodlights at stadiums and other outdoor sites.

The species is found in many open areas in the eastern United States in summer, and so it is no surprise that common nighthawks begin to move south in late summer in large flocks. They migrate long distances to winter destinations in Central America and northern South America. Large numbers can be seen feeding in the evening in August and early September, so there’s plenty of time left to spot a nighthawk before cooler weather sets in.  PS

Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photographs at susan@ncaves.com.

The Omnivorous Reader

Hanging Judge

A Carolina courtroom whodunit

By Anne Blythe

If you spend much time in courthouses in North Carolina, you begin to see the complex fabric of their communities.

It might be one thread, one story, one case at a time but, eventually, the many threads are stitched together into a complex tapestry. Katherine Burnette, a district court judge from Oxford who rose to the bench as a former federal and state prosecutor, pulls back the curtain on small-town North Carolina and its dramas in her debut novel, Judge’s Waltz.

It may be fiction, but the storyline created by the attorney-turned-writer — while seemingly over the top at the start — is rooted in insider knowledge from someone who has been in and out of North Carolina courthouses for much of her career.

“Barely audible above the hum of the ancient air conditioner came the creak, creak, creak of the thick rope affixed to the brass chandelier,” writes Burnette in the opening of her mystery. “Swaying ten feet above the intricately carved, pre-Civil War bench, the Honorable Patrick Ryan O’Shea had adjourned to a higher court.”

We quickly find out that O’Shea was not universally revered, nor was he a jurist with great legal acumen. His knack was kissing up to a certain professor in his third year of law school and following suit with a wide swath of politicians who helped him get coveted judicial seats.

“Not noted for his weighty opinions from the bench, O’Shea had come to be noted for the weighty politicians who stood behind him and his bid for a higher court,” Burnette writes. “Apparently, these politicians had garnered their strength and their favors to foist O’Shea upon the unsuspecting Fourth Circuit court.”

O’Shea never got there. His last dance, so to speak, was hanging in a federal courtroom in the Eastern District of North Carolina in nothing more than his black robe. “The only thing that O’Shea could do — was doing — was a slow discordant waltz at the end of a long rope,” Burnette says in her prologue.

The pages of the novel are sprinkled with humor and wit as we meet Buck Davis, the folksy lawyer from Oxford who is tapped by the chief judge in the Eastern District to sort through O’Shea’s cases as Katie O’Connor, an FBI agent Davis remembers fondly from high school, leads the investigation into the judge’s death.

Burnette deftly describes the country roads between Granville County and Raleigh, where the judge’s chambers were. She takes readers into drugstores, restaurants, courthouses and other places that will seem familiar to anyone who has experienced the slower hum of Granville County or the bustling halls of power in the capital city.

You can almost smell the drugstore coffee brewing and taste the Southern food being dished up as the suspense builds over how and why Judge O’Shea found himself suspended from that ceiling. “Today’s courtroom deals were made in the few minutes it took to eat a sausage biscuit,” Burnette writes.

The cast of characters includes Jeb, Buck’s brother, who battles demons from opioid addiction; Walter A. Johnson, the Granville County detective who went to high school with Jeb; and Mary Frances Margaret O’Shea, the widow of the lifeless judge, who does not seem to grieve her loss at all.

Even the relatively minor characters who come and go throughout the mystery are memorable, like the waitress, Wanda, who saunters up to Buck and Katie in the Oak Room with a pencil behind her ear and her weight balanced “on one polyester-clad hip.” The Oxford restaurant is where Buck and Katie often end up as they develop not only their case but also a budding romance.

Wanda gives the couple a dose of reality about the menu choices. There is no wine list, Wanda informs Katie. The choice is strictly by color, red or white. And don’t ask for an exotic imported beer, either. Buck settles for a Miller High Life.

Burnette writes, “Wanda scribbled something on her pad and strolled away. ‘One red, one champagne,’ she hollered to the bartender, confusing Katie.

“‘I didn’t know they served champagne,’ Katie told Buck. ‘No,’ Buck explains. ‘She means the Miller. You know champagne of beers.’”

The mystery of what happened to Judge O’Shea twists and turns as Burnette teases her readers with different scenarios.

Was it suicide?

Was it murder?

At whose hand?

And why?

Katie, Johnson and Buck — with a big assist from Jeb — help pull together the many threads as Burnette takes her readers on a journey to the surprise ending of a novel not only worth picking up but difficult to put down.

The verdict is in. It’s a whodunit and a page-turner that belongs on a summer reading list.   PS

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

Southwords

Ticket to Ride

Transported by a book

By Patricia M. Walker

I like to troll thrift stores for books. It’s always an adventure, and at 50 cents apiece, you can hardly go wrong. If you do, you can simply re-donate. No harm. No foul.

Occasionally you reach for a book that looks interesting and find the joke’s on you, because when you open it, you discover it’s one you donated months ago. Standing there looking at your own name and the little stamp you mark your books with, you feel strangely proprietary and a little ashamed all at the same time. Worse, it’s just possible that the book is looking back at you with an accusatory stare, as if to say, “How could you give me away? Don’t you love me anymore?”

More interesting, however, are the times you find other people’s names and marks. Or an inscription that says: “To Glenn, May this first Christmas as part of our family bring you joy, George and Grace, Christmas, 1993”; or “M. A. Crichton from Mrs. Pyle, Christmas, 1938.”

Then, too, there are the stamps along the deckled edges or on the title pages that say Estes Valley Library — Withdrawn; Vermillion Public Library, Vermillion, South Dakota; Dowse Memorial Library, Sherborn, Massachusetts; Rivoli Township Library, New Windsor, Illinois; Fort Loramie Jr./Sr. High School Media Center; West Slope Community Library, Portland, Oregon; or most exotic of all, U.S. ARMY RVN SPEC SVC LIBRARIES APO 96243. That’s when you know the book has a life of its own, a story to tell. You hold it in your hands, leaf through the pages, trying to imagine exactly how it got here. What circuitous path did it follow to wind up on this shelf, perhaps thousands of miles from where it started?

Sometimes, there are even clues, relics of another reader’s life, hidden among the pages — a receipt from a bookstore in the Denver airport, a flier for “Buddhism and Meditation” from the Rameshori Buddhist Center in Atlanta, or a small ivory card printed in pale blue with a drawing of a young Chinese student at his desk and the words “If found please return to,” but with nothing filled in.

Best of all are the bookmarks — Decitre Librairie Papeterie in Lyon, France; Arcadia Books in Spring Green, Wisconsin; Golden Braid Books in Salt Lake City; Frenchmen Art and Books in New Orleans; Lunenburg Bound Books and Paper in Nova Scotia; Eighth Day Books in Wichita; the iconic City Lights Books in San Francisco; and much closer to home, Blue Ridge Books in Waynesville, North Carolina.

Of course, the stores they represent are indies and not thrift stores, but you love them all the same. You can just visualize the people who work there, how the books are arranged, the comfy sofas and chairs, the jingle of the bell as the regulars come in the door. You wonder if they’re still in business, and if so, whether some day you could — would — pack your bag and go there.

How you would walk in and say hello to the woman or man behind the counter; tell them you’ve come all these miles because of the bookmark you hold in your hand, a bookmark you found in Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos or The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain, or The Buffalo Hunters by Mari Sandoz or Blondes, Brunettes and Bullets by Nils T. Granlund; or a thousand possible others.

And you are absolutely certain they will smile and be thrilled that you have come so far to visit their store. Then they will offer you a scone, show you around, pull volumes off shelves for you to admire. And you will buy something, new or used, not only because it’s the polite thing to do, but because you really do want that Penelope Lively or Kent Haruf or Philippe Claudel that’s sitting right there on the shelf. Besides, there’s always room in your luggage.  PS

Patricia M. Walker is a retired teacher/purchasing manager/financial services administrator who was born and raised in Chattanooga,
Tennessee. She wrote her first novel when she was 9.

Simple Life

Summer Twilight

The brief, magical time between day and night

By Jim Dodson

 

Not long ago as a beautiful summer evening settled around us, my wife and I were sitting with our friends, Joe and Liz, on the new deck facing over our backyard shade garden, enjoying cool drinks and the season’s first sliced peaches.

The fireflies had just come out. And birds were piping serene farewell notes to the long, hot day.

“I love summer twilight,” Joe was moved to say. “Everything in nature pauses and takes a breath.” He went on to remember how, growing up in a big family of nine children, “my mother would shoo us all outdoors after supper to play in the twilight until it was dark. It was a magical time between day and night. A glimpse of heaven.”

“We played Kick the Can and Red Light, Green Light,” Liz remembered. “The fading light made it so much fun.”

“And flashlight tag,” chimed Wendy, my wife, sipping her white wine and joining the memories. “We didn’t have to come in until the first stars appeared and my mother called us to come in for a bath and bed.”

In a world that increasingly seems so different from the quieter, simpler one we grew up in, we all agreed, something about twilight seems about as timeless as moments get in this harried and overscheduled life we all live.

In truth, our ancient ancestors held much the same view of the changing light that occurs when the sun sinks just below the horizon, or rises to it just before dawn, softly stage-lighting the world with a diffusion of light and dust, heralding either the prospect of rest or awakening.

Like most rare things, the beauty seems to be in its brevity.

Back when I was a small boy in a large world, summer twilight was especially meaningful to me. During my father’s newspaper career, we lived in a succession of small towns across the sleepy, deep South where we rarely stayed in one place long enough for me to make friends or playmates. Because it was a time before mass air conditioning, I lived out of doors with adventure books and toy soldiers for companions, building forts and conducting Punic wars in the cool dirt I shared with our dog beneath the porch. The heat and brightness of midday made my eyes water and my head hurt.

In the rural South Carolina town where I attended first grade, a formidable Black woman named Miss Jesse restored my mother, a former Maryland beauty queen, to health following a pair of late-term miscarriages, and taught her how to properly cook collards and grits. Come midday, while my mother rested, Miss Jesse would haul me out from under the porch and make me put on sandals to accompany her to the Piggly Wiggly or to run other errands around town in her baby blue Dodge Dart.

Beneath a stunning dome of heat that lay over the town like a death ray from a martian spaceship, it was Miss Jesse who explained to me that daytime was when the world did its business and, therefore, shoes and good manners were necessary in public. Removing my sandals to feel the cool tile floors of the  Piggly Wiggly beneath my bare feet — the only air conditioned place in town save for the newspaper office — was a tactical error I made only once, as Miss Jesse had complete authority over my person.

Yet it was also she who had me stand on her feet, dancing my skinny butt around the kitchen as she and my mother cooked supper to gospel music playing from the transistor radio propped in the kitchen window. Miss Jesse also informed me that both a good rain and twilight were two of the Almighty’s holiest moments, the former refreshing the earth, the latter replenishing the soul.

I often heard her singing a gospel tune I’ve since spent many years unsuccessfully trying to find, a single line of which embedded itself in my brain: “In the shadows of the evening trees, my lord and savior stands and waits for me.”

Miss Jesse was with us for only a single summer and autumn. She passed away shortly before we moved home to North Carolina. But I have her to thank for restoring my mom’s health and giving me a love of collards, a good rain and summer twilight.

The suggestion of that old hymn she loved speaks to another perspective on twilight.

Some poets and philosophers have used it as a metaphor, indicating the fading of the life force. Others view it as the end of life, a dying of the light that symbolizes the coming of permanent night, a prelude to death.

On the other hand, as I read in a science magazine not long ago,  all living things would fade and die from too much light or darkness were it not for twilight, that in-between time of day when we see best.

For that reason, metaphorically speaking, it’s worth remembering that twilight also comes before the dawn breaks, marking the beginning of the day, the renewal of activity, a resumption of life’s purposes.

Tellingly, birds sing beautifully at both ends of the day — a robust greeting to the returning light of dawn and a solemn adieu as twilight slips into dusk.

As a lifelong fan of the twilight that exists fleetingly at both ends of the day — someone who is fast approaching his own so-called twilight of life — I take comfort in the words attributed to Saint John of the Cross who wrote, “In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human success, but rather on how much we have loved.”

I also love what actress Marlene Dietrich famously said about the summer twilight — namely that it should be prescribed by doctors. It certainly heals something in me at day’s end.

A friend I mentioned this to not long ago sent me a short poem by a gifted Black poet named Joshua Henry Jones Jr., a son of South Carolina who passed away about the time Miss Jesse was teaching me to “feet dance” in my mama’s kitchen.

It’s called “In Summer Twilight” and nicely sums up my crepuscular passion.

Just a dash of lambent carmine

Shading into sky of gold;

Just a twitter of a song-bird

Ere the wings its head enfold;


Just a rustling sigh of parting

From the moon-kissed hill to breeze;

And a cheerful gentle, nodding

Adieu waving from the trees;

Just a friendly sunbeam’s flutter

Wishing all a night’s repose,

Ere the stars swing back the curtain

Bringing twilight’s dewy close.

Now, if I could only find that sweet gospel hymn that still plays in my head.  PS

Jim Dodson can be reached at jwdauthor@gmail.com.

Hometown

Blast from the Past

Keeping it cool when the heat is on

By Bill Fields

When I spent my last night in my childhood home — grown, gray and practically groaning from the aches of helping empty its considerable contents over several days — I went to bed upstairs comforted by a familiar sound I knew soon would be only a memory.

It was a hot summer evening, and the noise came from a window air conditioner that had been in the family for nearly 45 years, since I was a teenager. In old age the unit still cooled, even when set to the lowest of its three speeds, a limit mandated by my mother that I usually obeyed even after she was no longer living in the house.

Cranking up the temperature control to 6 or 7 (on a 1 to 10 dial) ensured a chilly output. The aging wonder wasn’t quiet by any means, and when it went through its cooling cycle it was as if the appliance was having a coughing fit before easing back into its customary sound.

Back in 1974 — I recall it arrived on East New Jersey Avenue in the days not long before Richard Nixon departed the White House — and in the following decade before central air was installed, the Sears purchase was situated in the living room and was powerful enough to cool most of the first floor.

That truly was a miracle summer of 20th century innovation. We had acquired cable television not long before, which meant the Atlanta Braves were on almost every night. The local access channel showed an endless loop of National Golf Foundation instructional films. And we could watch the Wilmington, Raleigh or Greensboro stations without having to adjust a finicky antenna.

During several months a year, though, the addition of AC seemed a bigger deal than acquiring cable TV, even to a very sports-minded boy. Shade trees, cold showers or electric fans could only do so much when the temperature soared in August.

I camped out on the carpet not far from the brand-new air conditioner for a couple of nights. Whether asleep or awake, it felt like our family had hit the jackpot because we now had the comfort of a motel room or restaurant at home when it was sweltering. After 18 holes in the heat or a steamy hour mowing the grass, nothing felt better than standing in front of the window unit for a quick, cold blast. Even my father, who liked to park himself shirtless on the back porch with a cold beer on toasty evenings pre-AC, got very used to the manufactured cooling.

A few years later, when I went off to college and a room without air conditioning — my dormitory’s location trumped its creature comforts by a long shot at the start of one semester and the end of the next if it was hot — I missed our AC dearly. My first summer in New York City, a decade later, out of stubbornness and thrift, I didn’t purchase a small window unit during a persistent heat wave and struggled to sleep despite a fan positioned as close to my bed as I could get it.

On trips home, I never had to worry about being too hot. The old reliable window unit was relocated upstairs after the house was equipped with central air. But the new system never seemed adequate for the second floor, making the original AC an important feature on my visits.

As the years went by, I kept expecting the window unit to fail each time I returned during hot weather, but it never did. Perhaps Mom’s speed restrictions had extended its life, or maybe they don’t make ’em like they used to. Like a baseball player closer to the end than the beginning who can still paint the black, it happily and capably pitched a few innings each summer in the week or so I would be in town. That last night home, I woke up with a blanket up to my chin.  PS

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

PinePitch

   

Acting and Air-Conditioning — What’s Not to Like?

The Judson Theatre Company continues its summer theater festival with two Sandhills area premieres. Catch one or both to beat the August heat. Opening Aug. 5 at 8 p.m. and running through Aug. 14 is the comedy fantasia Buyer & Cellar about a struggling actor working in the basement mall of Barbra Streisand’s home. And, from Aug. 19 – 28, get ready for Tick, tick, BOOM! a three-person musical by the author of Rent about an aspiring composer worried he made the wrong career choice. Performances begin at 8 p.m. for both shows in the black box McPherson Theater at Bradshaw Performing Arts Center, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info and tickets: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

 

Even Better than Scooby-Doo

Don’t miss the first in Weymouth’s new Saturday morning family series featuring Mitch Capel as “Gran’daddy Junebug” on Aug. 6 at10 a.m. Capel is a master storyteller, recording artist, published author and poet. He has been featured at numerous schools, libraries, museums and festivals since 1985, including the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee; The Smithsonian’s 2009 Folklife Festival on the National Mall; and the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama. Free admission but registration is required. Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org.

 

Elle and Kermit

Step back in time with two favorite throwback films in the Sunrise Theater’s Summer Film Series. Check out Legally Blonde at 7 p.m. on Thursday Aug. 4, or catch The Muppet Movie at 7 p.m. on Aug. 11. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Tickets are $10. Info: www.sunrisetheater.com.

 

Photograph By Ted Fitzgerald

Live After Five

Bounce!, a high energy wedding and party band from the Triangle area, will be playing all your favorite dance songs from the last 40 years. Local favorite Whiskey Pines will open from 5:15 p.m. to 5:50 p.m., so grab your lawn chair and don’t be late. Dance the night away till 9 p.m. at Tufts Memorial Park, 1 Village Green Road, Pinehurst. Picnic baskets are allowed and food trucks are standing by, but no outside alcohol. Not to fear, you can still purchase beer, wine and soft drinks as you slide into your blue suede shoes. Info: www.vopnc.org.

 

Where’s John Travolta When You Need Him?

Break out the headbands and shimmy into your bell-bottoms, then head to downtown Aberdeen for an evening of Snap and Hustle with “the greatest disco revival show in the world.” For one night only catch Boogie Knights at a pop-up disco from 8 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. at The Neon Rooster, 114 Knight St., Aberdeen. Info and tickets: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

 

Calling All Amateur Pitmasters

For three days dip yourself into all things barbecue at the Pinehurst Barbecue Festival, a celebration of taste and tradition. With four signature events sprinkled across the weekend like a dry rub, you can revel in bourbon pairings, grilling classes and music from tribute band Chicago Rewired. From September 2 – 4, there’s something for the whole family at the village of Pinehurst. 6 Chinquapin Road, Pinehurst. Info and tickets: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

 

Triplets by Cindy Edgar

The Artist Sees What Others Only Glimpse

Get a view through the artists’ eyes at two exhibits this month. The Artists League of the Sandhills, 129 Exchange St., Aberdeen, will host an opening reception on Friday, Aug. 5, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. for its exhibit “Small Gems of Art,” which will run through Aug. 26. Info: (910) 944-3979.

Also on Aug. 5, the Arts Council of Moore County will present the 42nd annual “Fine Arts Festival” opening and awards ceremony at the Campbell House Galleries, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines from 6 p.m. to 8  p.m. The show will remain open until Aug. 26. Info: (910) 692-2787 or www.mooreart.org.

 

Blood, Guts and Books

Finish your summer reading quest with the author of Ship of Blood: Mutiny and Slaughter Aboard the Harry A. Berwind, and the Quest for Justice on Wednesday, Aug. 24, at 5:30 p.m. A native son of Sanford, author-in-residence Charles Oldham will share his love for all things Tar Heel history from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Free admission, registration required. Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org.

 

Have a Brighter By and By

Enjoy your Sunday with one of Weymouth’s popular “Come Sunday” Jazz brunches on Aug. 28 from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.  Bring your own blanket, chairs and a picnic. There will be a cash bar with mimosas, beer, wine and non-alcoholic choices. The event features internationally renowned jazz artists each performing their own rendition of Duke Ellington’s classic, Come Sunday. Cost is $25 for members and $35 for non-members. Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org.

 

Photograph By Ted Fitzgerald

Rock On

First Friday is back from its July hiatus with Dangermuffin, a Carolina-based band that weaves lyrical themes of sea, sun and spiritual connection with Americana, island-influence, folk and jam. Enjoy food trucks, some Southern Pines Brewery brews, and listen to great music while supporting the local theater on Aug. 5 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. No dogs, outside alcohol or rolling coolers. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.sunrisetheater.com.

Bookshelf

July Books

FICTION

The Ruins, by Phoebe Wynne
If you are in need of a riveting Gothic novel set on the dazzling French coast, this is your next read. A group of abhorrent, self-absorbed British school chums gather at a French chateau with spouses and children in tow. As old secrets surface and bad behaviors erupt, the neglected children suffer until it all comes to a cataclysmic end. This is an intense, white-knuckle trip of a story you won’t soon forget.
Fellowship Point, by Alice Elliott Darkb
Celebrated children’s book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy — to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels; and even more consuming, to permanently protect the majestic peninsula in Maine known as Fellowship Point. To donate the land to a trust, Agnes must convince shareholders to dissolve a generations-old partnership. And one of those shareholders is her best friend, Polly Wister. Fellowship Point is the masterful story of a lifelong friendship between two very different women with shared histories and buried secrets, tested in the twilight of their lives, set across the arc of the 20th century.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
On a bitter cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even 25 years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts. Spanning 30 years, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect.

 

The Poet’s House, by Jean Thompson
Carla is in her 20s, working for a landscaper, lacking confidence, still unsure what direction her life will take. Viridian is a lauded and lovely aging poet whose reputation has been defined by her infamous affair with a famous male poet, Mathias, many years earlier. When Carla is hired to work at Viridian’s house, she is perplexed by this community of writers: their tendency to recite lines in conversation, the stories of their many liaisons, their endless wine-soaked nights. And still she becomes enamored with Viridian and her whole circle, and especially with the power of words, the “ache and hunger that can both be awakened and soothed by a poem,” a hunger that Carla feels sharply at this stagnating moment in her young life. Thompson’s novel is at once delightfully funny and wise, an unforgettable story about a young woman who discovers the insular world of writers.

 

Calling for a Blanket Dance, by Oscar Hokeah
Told in a series of voices, Calling for a Blanket Dance is a moving and deeply engaging debut novel about a young Native American man finding strength in his familial identity. It takes us into the life of Ever Geimausaddle through the multigenerational perspectives of his family — his father’s injury at the hands of corrupt police; his mother’s struggle to hold on to her job and care for her husband; the constant resettlement of the family; and, the legacy of centuries of injustice. Ever must take the strength given to him by his relatives to save not only himself but also the next generation of family in this honest, heartbreaking and ultimately uplifting story.

 

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

The World’s Longest Licorice Rope, by Matt Myers

The best picture books are the ones that make readers giggle, inspire curiosity and elicit a genuine hmmmmm? The World’s Longest Licorice Rope does all three. Join us Tuesday, July 26, at 4 p.m. at The Country Bookshop to celebrate the book’s birthday. There will be snacks and a surprise ending. Tickets are available at https://ticketmesandhills.com/events/myers-madness-7-26-2022. (Ages 4-8.)

 

First Words USA

From the redwood forests to the Gulf stream waters, this book was made for you and me! Celebrate America’s birthday with this fun first words book featuring all things USA.  (Ages birth-2.)

 

I Just Want to Say Goodnight, by Rachel Isadora

With monkeys, chickens, goats and ants, this one is anything but the typical going-to-bed book. You’ll fall in love with the clever and charming LaLa and may not mind reading this one again and again and again. (Ages 1-3.)

 

The Pet Potato, by Josh Lacey

Pets come in all sizes and colors and shapes. In Albert’s case, the shape is, well, a potato! This fun read-aloud is perfect for any family considering bringing a new pet into the home — even if it is a vegetable. (Ages 4-7.)

 

Wild Horses, by Melissa Marr

Chestnut, gray, bay. You’ll fall in love with horses of every color in this stunning real-picture picture book just perfect for any young horse lover. (Ages 4-8.)

 

See You Someday Soon, by Pat Zietlow Miller

So many of the ones we love are so very far away. This sweet story with retro illustrations will help keep those faraway friends and family close at heart. (Ages 3-7.)  PS

Compiled by Angie Tally and Kimberly Daniels Taws