VOLUME 3 ISSUE 44
Inside
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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2018
NSJ’s Best of 2018 sports picks, B1
NORTH
STATE
JOURNaL ELEVATE THE CONVERSATION
2018 saw more flooding and more rebuilding An angry crowd in Pender County met Gov. Roy Cooper on Dec. 13 when he came to tour damage from the hurricane two months ago By Donna King North State Journal WASHINGTON — In September of 2018, Hurricane Florence made history as it came ashore in Wilmington, cutting off the port city for weeks and leading to frustration,
food lines and fear. But the damage from the historic storm went beyond the well-known city of Wilmington, hitting small towns across the eastern part of the state. Now, more than two months later, Gov. Roy Cooper visited one of those towns on Dec. 13 and was met by an angry crowd who said that the state and FEMA seemed to have forgotten about them once the television crews were gone after the storm. “It’s good the governor is here in the Whitestocking community in Pender County,” Pender County NAACP President Dante Murphy
told WWAY-TV. “But at the end of the day, a whole lot of romance without finance. I just don’t get it.” Cooper reportedly tried to reassure the crowd that help was still on the way, but for some who’ve been homeless since the storm, promises aren’t opening the doors. Danielle Rees of Washington, said floodwaters rose about 15 inches into her home when Florence drenched the tidewater city on the Pamlico River and overwhelmed a local creek and marshland. The first floor was a sopping mess of gritty, swampy water in three bedrooms, a bathroom and a laundry room. “It’s part of living close to the river, and Washington is really low land,” said Rees, a graphic designer who grew up in the city. But she anticipates her See FLOODING, page A2
CAROL SPAGNUOLA | THE ASHEVILLE CITIZEN-TIMES VIA AP
In this Friday, Nov. 2, 2018 photo, a gingerbread model of Biltmore House is set up for display at the Biltmore House, in Asheville, N.C. In this April 18, 2009, file photo, Barbara Bush laughs alongside former President George H.W. Bush, right, as they attend a baseball game in Houston.
DAVID J. PHILLIP | AP PHOTO | FILE
Last Salute: Nation bids goodbye to President George H.W. Bush in 2018 High praise, cannons and humor honor the late 41st President of the United States By Calvin Woodward, Laurie Kellman, and Ashraf Khalil The Associated Press WASHINGTON, D.C. — Toward the end of 2018, the nation bid goodbye to former President George H.W. Bush with high praise, cannon salutes and gentle humor, celebrating the life of the Texan who embraced a lifetime of service in Washington and was the last president to fight for the U.S. in wartime. Three former presidents looked on at Washington National Cathedral as a fourth — George W. Bush — eulogized his dad as “the bright-
est of a thousand points of light.” After three days of remembrance in the capital city, the Air Force plane with Bush’s casket left for a final service in Houston and burial at his family plot on the presidential library grounds at Texas A&M University in College Station. His final resting place is alongside Barbara Bush, his wife of 73 years, and Robin Bush, the daughter who died of leukemia at age 3. In Texas, a motorcade carried Bush’s remains to the family church, St. Martin’s Episcopal, along a closed interstate, where hundreds of people in stopped cars on the other side of the road took pictures and shot cell phone video. One driver of a tanker truck climbed atop the hulking vehicle for a better view, and at least 15 firefighters scaled a pair of stopped firetrucks to salute. Upon its arrival at the church,
Bush’s casket was met by a military band and Houston Democratic Mayor Sylvester Turner. The national funeral service at the cathedral was a tribute to a president, a patriarch and a faded political era that prized military service and public responsibility. It was laced with indirect comparisons to President Donald Trump but was not consumed by them, as speakers focused on Bush’s public life and character — with plenty of cracks about his goofy side, too. “He was a man of such great humility,” said Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming. Those who travel “the high road of humility in Washington, D.C.,” he added pointedly, “are not bothered by heavy traffic.” Trump sat with his wife, a See BUSH, page A2
What does it take to build a gingerbread Biltmore replica? These amazing creations are on display for the 26th Annual National Gingerbread House Competition at The Omni Grove Park Inn through January 4, 2019 By Bruce Steele Asheville Citizen-Times via the Associated Press ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Here’s what you’ll need to make a gingerbread model of Biltmore House: gingerbread, of course. Royal icing. Homemade vanilla wafers. Silver luster. Modeling chocolate. Gold dust. And a little vodka. The biggest challenge? Not surprisingly, the roof, says Deerpark pastry chef Julie Scheibel, who led her 10-person team on the sixweek project to create the gingerbread house now on display in the Biltmore House kitchen. “The roof took about a week, solid, with at least one person working on it eight hours a day,” Scheibel said. It’s a laborious process that begins with baking hand-crafted vanilla wafers. The cooled cookies are then sliced in half with a serrated knife before being adhered, one by one, to the roof with a sugary mortar mixture. Oh, and each tasty tile is hand-dusted with silver luster, a fine-grained culinary powder used to add pizzazz to baked goods. Or gingerbread houses. Unlike the creations at the Grove Park Inn, which have to be edible through and through, the Biltmore gingerbread is so large
it needs a wooden skeleton. So a reusable framework was created some years ago by the estate’s engineering team, precisely scaling down the dimensions of the actual building. The skeleton is affixed to a wooden platform. Once the inner frame is cleaned up and ready to go, the construction order isn’t that different from building a real house: walls first, then roof (starting at the bottom and moving upward), lights, decorations. The walls are all actual gingerbread, minus the leavening, baked a little longer than you would your cookies. “I just try to make sure it’s super sturdy,” Scheibel says, “since it’s going to be here for about two months.” Most of the roof was constructed by Scheibel and pastry cook Deron Noel. “He did the majority of the work this year,” Scheibel says. “The two of us did the roof together. He installed the little LED lights that you see. And he did most of the decorations.” Some of Noel’s work on the house involved sitting at a computer, printing photos of Biltmore House to determine how to shape and where to place the doors and windows, and looking up other confectionary creations for ideas See BILTMORE, page A2
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