March PineStraw 2026

March 2026

PINEHURST TOYOTA

Volume 22, No. 3

David Woronoff, Publisher david@thepilot.com

Andie Stuart Rose, Creative Director andiesouthernpines@gmail.com Jim Moriarty, Editor jjmpinestraw@gmail.com

Keith Borshak, Senior Designer keith@thepilot.com

Miranda Glyder, Senior Designer miranda@pinestrawmag.com

Alyssa Kennedy, Digital Art Director alyssamagazines@gmail.com

Emilee Phillips, Digital Content emilee@pinestrawmag.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Jim Dodson, Stephen E. Smith

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Savory Lunch Sandwiches

Eat In or Take Away

John Gessner, Laura L. Gingerich, Diane McKay, Tim Sayer

CONTRIBUTORS

Jenna Biter, Anne Blythe, Tom Bryant, Susan Campbell, Bill Case, Tony Cross, Brianna Rolfe Cunningham, Mart Dickerson, Bill Fields, Mary Novitsky, Lee Pace, Todd Pusser, Joyce Reehling, Deborah Salomon, Scott Sheffield, Rose Shewey, Kimberly Daniels Taws, Daniel Wallace, Ashley Walshe, Amberly Glitz Weber

ADVERTISING SALES

Samantha Cunningham, Advertising Director 910.693.2505

Christy Phillips, Sales Manager 910.693.2498

Kathy Desmond, 910.693.2515

Terry Hartsell, 910.693.2513

Erika Leap, 910.693.2514

Ginny Trigg, 910.693.2481

ADVERTISING GRAPHIC DESIGN

Mechelle Butler, Scott Yancey PS

Henry Hogan, Finance Director 910.693.2497

Darlene Stark, Circulation Director 910.693.2488

Tonnie Nester, Distribution Specialist

SUBSCRIPTIONS 910.693.2488

OWNERS

Jack Andrews, Frank Daniels III, David Woronoff In memoriam Frank Daniels Jr.

145 W. Pennsylvania Avenue, Southern Pines, NC 28387 www.pinestrawmag.com

Photograph by Matthew Gibson

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My March Awakening

Finding the Kingdom of God in my own backyard

By Jim DoDsoN

Every year as March returns and my garden springs to life, I think of the remarkable woman who changed my life.

Her name was Celetta Randolph Jones, “Randy” for short, a beloved figure in the city of Atlanta’s business, arts and philanthropic circles. Five years my senior and leagues ahead of me in terms of spiritual growth, Randy was introduced to me by my editor, Andrew Sparks, during my first week on the Atlanta JournalConstitution Sunday Magazine staff.

At that time in the spring of 1977, Randy was running The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation and had stopped by the magazine to introduce herself and plumb my interest in historic preservation.

“Something tells me you two are bound to become best friends,” Andy wryly observed, a prophetic remark if there ever was one.

In short order, Randy became my best friend and confidant, the one person I felt comfortable with discussing matters of life and death, heart and soul. Our love affair was a case of what the ancients called agape, transcending romance and superficial attraction. Besides, Randy was secretly dating an Episcopal priest, which I kidded her about relentlessly. She loved to give the needle back about the young women I went out with in those seven years of our deepening friendship.

Though she never married, “Aunt Randy” was the godmother of half a dozen of her nieces and nephews and, eventually, my own daughter, Maggie.

During my first few years in the so-called “city too busy to hate,” I frequently wrote about the darker side of the booming New South — race violence, corrupt politicians, unrepentant Klansmen, the missing and murdered, and young people who flocked to the city seeking fame and fortune only to lose their

way and sometimes their lives. A life-changing moment came one Saturday night when I was waiting for a squad from the city morgue to pick me up for a story I was working on about Atlanta’s famed medical examiner. As I stood in my darkened backyard waiting for my dog, McGee, to do her business, I witnessed my next-door neighbor, an Emory University med student, being gunned down in an alleged drug hit. He died as we waited for the ambulance to arrive.

Not surprisingly it was Randy who helped me make sense of this. The morning after my neighbor’s murder, I’d opened my Bible to the Book of Matthew for the first time in years and was struck by a reference that Jesus repeatedly makes about the “Kingdom of Heaven.” That evening at dinner, I grumbled, “So where the hell on Earth is the so-called Kingdom of Heaven?”

Randy simply smiled. “It’s already here, my love. Inside us. You just have to see it.”

I was a wee bit annoyed by her calm assurance.

Randy was a classy and calm Presbyterian with an unshakable faith in God’s grace. I was a backslid Episcopalian who hadn’t darkened a church doorway since the murder of my girlfriend during our college days.

Purely because of Randy, however, I attended services the next Sunday at historic All Saints’ Episcopal in downtown Atlanta — a place where the doors were always open to the homeless. I soon took a job writing about the suffering of the Third World for the Presiding Bishop’s Fund for World Relief, and even made a vow that, going forward, I would only write about subjects and people who had a positive impact on life. Randy Jones was my inspiration.

I lived up to that vow, and even briefly entertained taking myself off to the Episcopal Seminary until a crusty old bishop from Alabama suggested that I could “probably serve the Lord much better by writing than preaching.”

My pal Randy gave her famous, sultry laugh when I mentioned

his somewhat frank comment — and she agreed with him.

During my final years in Atlanta, Randy and I met at least once a week for lunch or dinner to talk about the events of the day and the mysteries of this world. She also spent several Christmases with my family in North Carolina, attended both of my marriages, visited my young brood in Maine and joined us for a joyous spring vacation at our favorite Georgia beach.

In many ways, she became the Dodson family godmother and probably the closest I’ll ever come to knowing a living saint — though she would respond with her sultry laugh at such a silly notion.

Over the decades, as Southern springtime returned, wherever I happened to be in the world, Randy would track me down by phone. She’d finish our talk with a couple meaningful questions: So, Jim, are we any closer to the Kingdom of Heaven? And . . . How is your beautiful garden growing?

She and I had visited public gardens together many times. Randy hailed from Thomasville, a small South Georgia town known as “City of Roses,” and knew that once I’d swapped bigcity life for small-town living, I’d become a committed man of the earth like my rural kin before me. There was no going back, she knew, on gardening or faith.

As my spiritual life grew and deepened across the years, I’d come to believe the Kingdom of Heaven might indeed be nearby. It’s no coincidence that Jesus mentions it 32 times in the Book of

Matthew. His partner, Luke, simply calls it the “Kingdom of God” and makes clear — as Randy did — that it “lies within” everyone.

My favorite reference comes from the Gospel of Thomas, when Jesus’ followers pester him to explain where the “Kingdom” exists:

Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.

Wherever it exists, I have my late friend, Randy Jones, to thank for putting me on a winding path to the Kingdom within.

And I’m not alone.

Randy Jones passed away peacefully in October 2022. Her funeral service at Atlanta’s First Presbyterian Church was packed with people whose lives Randy had touched, from business leaders to artists, from church members to childhood friends, including a half a dozen godchildren and yours truly. The sanctuary overflowed with stories of her generosity and quiet wisdom, each person recalling how Randy’s kindness had shaped their own journeys. The service was a testament to the wide effect she had not only in Atlanta but in the hearts of everyone fortunate enough to know her. PS

Jim Dodson’s 17th book, The Road That Made America: A Modern Pilgrim Travels the Great Wagon Road, is available at The Country Bookshop.

40 CULDEE ROAD – OLD TOWN

’Blackjack Cottage’’ has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

A stunning example of Old Town in the roaring 20’s with a magnificent living room and multiple bricked patios. Perfectly suited for today’s lifestyle.

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310 INVERRARY ROAD – FAIRWOODS ON 7

Overlooking multiple holes on iconic Pinehurst No. 2 including the 8th hole, 16th hole, 17th hole, 18th hole and the member clubhouse. Arthur Hardin–designed with nothing spared in quality or design.

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214 FREEMAN WY – ACREAGE

A rare two-home, 8-acre estate near Pinehurst, ideal for multigenerational living and large events, featuring a guest cottage, pavilion, glass greenhouse, and native gardens.

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240 DONALD ROSS DRIVE – PINEHURST

Pinehurst CC membership available for transfer. Custom built, new appliances, natural light throughout, salt water inground pool, large private lot.

$855,000 – SOLD

20 FIELDS ROAD – OLD TOWN

One of the last “project’’ lots in OLD TOWN close to the famed Pinehurst No 2 Golf Course and the center of the Historic Village of Pinehurst. Priced for buyer to renovate, expand or have a unique opportunity to build new construction in OLD TOWN. Corner LOT. PINEHURST MEMBERSHIP available for transfer.

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50 MCCASKILL ROAD W. – OLD TOWN

“Blinkbonnie” was built by financier Simon B. Chapin, showcases early-1900s Old Town charm on over an acre, with elegant living spaces, a grand dining room, and a sunny Carolina room.

$2,295,000

175 INVERRARY ROAD – FAIRWOODS ON 7

Perfectly situated on the 12th hole of Pinehurst No 7 with 180-degree views of multiple golf holes, gardens and walk-ways. Inside the home has been totally renovated.

$1,395,000 – SOLD

223 NATIONAL DRIVE – PINEHURST NO 9

Beautiful one-level home on Pinehurst No. 9 with updated systems, a stunning Carolina room, chef’s kitchen, and transferable Signature PCC membership available at a reduced rate with no wait time.

$905,000 – SOLD

110 SHORT ROAD – OLD TOWN

OLD TOWN! Charming Historic Cottage circa 1927 in the Village of Pinehurst. Move-in ready with many updates including roof and windows. Freshly painted throughout the main home and guest cottage.

$800,000 – SOLD

1175 ST ANDREWS, UNIT 206

– ERIN HILLS

Coveted Erin Hills condo with a pond and Pinehurst No. 5 golf views, offering updated 3-bed, 2-bath living — perfect for year-round or weekend getaways, with PCC membership available for transfer at reduced rate.

$460,000

Photograph by Matthew Gibson

For 15 years, we’ve been honored to guide this community through sweat and soul.

Being

No matter your experience level, beginner to advanced and every place in between, you are welcome. Your practice starts here.

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Book It

The month’s series of author events begins on Thursday, March 12, with Mark Oppenheimer discussing his new biography, Judy Blume: A Life, at 6 p.m., at The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. On Wednesday, March 18, Anita “Spring” Council will talk about her book Southern Roots: Recipes and Stories from Mama Dip’s Daughter, also at 6 p.m. and also at the Country Bookshop. Information can be found at ticketmesandhills. com or at www.weymouthcenter.org.

Dig This

It’s Not Harvey

Kids ages 9 and under can scoop up all the Easter eggs they can fit in a basket at the village of Pinehurst’s Easter egg hunt at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 28, at Cannon Park, 90 Woods Road, Pinehurst. Leave room for food, beverages and a visit from the Easter Bunny himself. No púcas allowed. For additional info go to www.vopnc.org

The Sandhills Community College Horticultural Gardens launches its celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by hosting Peter Hatch, author, gardener, former director of the gardens and grounds at Monticello and an alum of the SCC landscape and gardening program. Learn all about “Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Gardens at Monticello” at BPAC’s Owens Auditorium on Thursday, March 19, at 1 p.m. You can register at www.sandhills.edu/gardenevents or go to www.ticketmesandhills.com

Tristan und Isolde

An Irish princess and a love-drunk tenor — what more could you ask for? The Met Opera supplies both in Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde on the big screen at the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines on Saturday, March 21 at noon. For information go to www.sunrisetheater.com.

Blockbusters of the Old Sod

The Sunrise Theater will run a triptych of award-winning movies in an Irish film festival beginning with Riverdance on Tuesday, March 10, followed by The Commitments on Wednesday, March 11, and My Left Foot on Thursday, March 12. All films begin at 2 p.m. at 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. For more information got to www.sunrisetheater.com.

Don’t Be Bashful

Enter a magical, fairytale world at a performance of the ballet Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, featuring the music of Bogdan Pavlovsky and the dancers of the National Opera and Ballet of Ukraine, on Wednesday, March 18, at 7 p.m., at BPAC’s Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Tickets begin at $46.01. Yes, we know they don’t make pennies anymore. Go figure. For info and tickets go to www.ticketmesandhills.com.

It’s Not Easy Being Green

Except one day a year. In Pinehurst that day is Saturday, March 14, when the village turns every shade of green imaginable for its St. Patrick’s Day Parade, beginning at 10 a.m. The address is 1 Village Green Road W., but all you have to do is follow the crowd. If you need more info go to www.vopnc.org.

Cider House Rules

March 22, at 3 p.m., at the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. For info go to www.sunrisetheater.com.

After the St. Paddy’s Day parade you can motor on down to the James Creek Cider House and Orchards for the North Carolina Cider Association’s March 14 spring fling, the Bloomtime Ciderfest, beginning at 1 p.m. The festival features live music from Whiskey Pines and Chip Perry, food trucks, tours of the orchard, and samples of ciders and meads from 15 producers including Barn Door Ciderworks, Botanist and Barrel, Bull City Ciderworks, Honey Girl Meadery, Noble Cider, Red Clay Ciderworks, Starrlight Mead, Urban Cider Company and, of course, your host James Creek. The address is 172 U.S. 1, Cameron. General admission is $40 with a $60 VIP package. For info go to www.jamescreekciderhouse.com/bloomtime-ciderfest.

March at Weymouth Center

«

Saturday, March 21: 10:00am

Also, this month at Weymouth Center: Spring into Reading

Wed., Mar. 4: 11:00 am

Tue., Mar. 17: 2:00 pm

Tue., Mar. 19: 2:00 pm

Sat., Mar. 21: Noon to 2:00 pm

Sun., Mar. 22: 2:00 pm

Wed. March 25: 4:00 - 5:00pm

Sat., Mar. 28: 9:00 am

Women of Weymouth Meeting:

Suzanne Adair, Edenton Tea Party

James Boyd Book Club The Mad Wife by Meagan Church

Meet the Author: John Yewell

Open House and Volunteer Fair

Come Sunday Jazz: Joshua Espinoza

Storytime with Rylee Hays

Breathe & Bloom: Women’s Wellness Day

Seven Questions with Sheena Easton

Q: When you look at your career now, what surprises you most?

Sheena: I’m always amazed I’m still working and that the fans are still there. I stepped back from the constant album–tour cycle to raise my kids, and I’m so grateful I didn’t have to sacrifice family to keep doing what I love.

Q: You’ve sung “Morning Train (Nine to Five)” for decades. What’s your relationship with that song today?

Sheena: Like any artist, I went through phases. At first it’s exciting. Then you only want to sing the new stuff. Now I look at the audience and see couples grab each other’s hands because it’s “their” song, and that makes me fall in love with it all over again.

Q: “For Your Eyes Only” is such an iconic Bond theme. What has being part of that world meant to you?

Scan the QR code for tickets and additional information!

555 East Connecticut Avenue, Southern Pines, NC

Sheena: It was huge for me. It came right after “Morning Train” and took my music to even more places because Bond fans will embrace the theme even if they don’t know the singer. As a kid I was always excited for the new Bond song, so being asked so early in my career felt surreal and still feels like a badge of honor.

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Q: Songs like “Strut” and “Sugar Walls” definitely pushed the envelope. How do you see that chapter now?

Sheena: People say I “changed my image,” but really I just grew up. I started as a college kid. By the mid-’80s I was a woman with more life experience and broader musical tastes. Some folks don’t like to see you change, but you have to pull them along and say, “I’m more grown up now — this is who I am.”

Q: There was controversy around “Sugar Walls” and that famous Tipper Gore list. How did you feel about that?

Sheena: We were on the list of songs kids “shouldn’t” hear and, honestly, I said that’s fine — if you don’t want your children listening, don’t let them. Parents should police what their little ones hear, but adults should decide for themselves. You can’t tell the whole world what art they’re allowed to like.

Q: You’ve worked with legends like Prince. What was he like in the studio with you?

Sheena: Everyone pictures this intense genius — and he was a genius — but in the studio he was relaxed. We laughed a lot, sang Joni Mitchell around the piano, and by the time we hit “record,” it felt like we’d known each other forever. He had a great sense of humor and loved to prank you.

Q: If you could talk to the little girl Sheena who just wanted to sing, what would surprise her most about you now?

Sheena: She’d probably be shocked that I’m “this old.” As a kid I fully believed it would happen; children are dreamers and haven’t been taught to be afraid of failure yet. It was my older self who became less sure it would last this long.

— By Stan Pillman

Sheena Easton performs live at BPAC’s Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Rd., Pinehurst, on Friday, March 20 at 7 p.m. For tickets and information go to www. ticketmesandhills.com.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

— Ferris Bueller

DENTISTRY

Life doesn’t slow down—and neither does modern dentistry.

At Allison and Associates, continuing education isn’t optional; technology isn’t a luxury; and standing still is not an option. Dentistry today demands precision, digital workflows, advanced materials, and a clinician committed to lifelong learning. That’s why our practice continually invests in advanced digital smile design and in-house fabrication; digital impression, milling, and 3D printing technology; evidence-based implant, periodontal, and restorative protocols; and elite-level continuing education—year after year.

Some practices rely on yesterday’s methods. At Allison and Associates, we believe our patients deserve dentistry that reflects what’s possible today.

Classic values. Modern execution.

(February 19 –March 20)

No, you’re not going crazy. Yes, you know what you know. And, no, you don’t need to explain your so-called prophetic dreams to anyone (they’re not ready to hear them). Here’s what you should do: Cut ties with the friend who makes you feel like a doormat. Get clear on your boundaries — and honor them. And when the new moon graces your sign on March 18, inspiration for a fresh skin care routine could be the glow-up that you never saw coming. Or, maybe you did.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Aries (March 21 – April 19)

Try taking a cold shower.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Two words: leafy greens.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

You’ll know when you know.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Make a date with the sunrise.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

The signs won’t be subtle.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

Pay attention to your jaw and shoulders.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Put your playlist on shuffle and move your feet.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Pick up where you left off.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Prepare to surprise yourself.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Work with the chaos.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Explore a different vantage point. PS

Zora Stellanova lives in the N.C. mountains with her wolfdogs, Venus and Lilith. Although she prefers divining with loose-leaf puerh, she recommends a mugwort and passionflower blend for those seeking wisdom and clarity from dreams.

Imagine A Community Designed Around You

Imagine yourself here. New residences, new amenities, new reasons to love where you live.

Our new independent living residences blend the style you appreciate with the comfort you deserve. The Village Pavilion brings state-of-the-art wellness under one roof, from pickleball courts to personal training. And our newly renovated Terrace health center means comprehensive care is always close by, delivered with the personal attention that makes all the difference.

The updated Welcome House greets every resident and visitor with warmth while keeping our community secure and connected.

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Learn more about our community , where you have the freedom to focus on your wellness and relationships while living life to its fullest . Contact us today. Call (910) 692-0300 , email info@penickvillage1964.org , or scan the QR code to learn more.

Storytelling at Its Best

A sweetly crafted tale of golf and life

By Stephen e . Smith

The best writers, those gifted beyond the ordinary, harbor obsessions, and when producing their finest work, they transform those obsessions into prose that they share communally with readers. That’s the case with Bill Fields’ A Quick Nine Before Dark. His obsession is golf — and anyone who’s been caught up in the intricacies of the game will want to read Fields’ memoir, front to back.

Fields is a local boy. Born in Pinehurst in 1959, he attended public schools in Moore County and graduated from the University of North Carolina. For 20 years, he was a senior editor for Golf World and is the recipient of the PGA Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism.

A Quick Nine Before Dark is for golfers of all skill levels. Even if you’ve never whacked a golf ball and you surf past reruns of Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf like it’s a Progressive commercial, you’ll likely find yourself swept up by Fields’ beautifully crafted prose, and the personal twists and turns of his life as a golf writer. He comes across as a gentle, earnest and thoughtful human being who has nevertheless tackled life head-on. You’ll find no scandals, no shocking moral shortcomings, no dark musing, no vilifications of former friends — just straight-ahead storytelling at its best.

Writers have tics and twitches of style that identify them as surely as their DNA, but Fields’ flaws are few, if any, and there’s nothing about his writing more rewarding than his efficient use of descriptive prose. When he feels the need to shine, he does precisely that, as with this excerpted Golf World description of Davis Love III as he captured a major title: “The conclusion to the ninety-seventh PGA Championship was soggy and sweet, like strawberries and sponge cake. As quickly as the late afternoon rain had come on Sunday to Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, New York, it stopped, and the sun peeked through an angry sky. Two rainbows arched over the course at just the right moment, as if scripted by Frank Capra himself, and for Davis Love III, there wasn’t a burden in sight.”

Fields blends the elation of honest achievement with the whimsy of happenstance. In three carefully crafted sentences,

he transports the reader to a significant moment in professional golf, evoking the sweetness of strawberries and sponge cake, and framing the moment of triumph with an allusion to a great filmmaker. Then he concludes with a pithy understatement: “. . . there wasn’t a burden in sight.” Could there be a more endearing description of earned exhilaration?

When the occasional somber moment intrudes, it’s handled with grace and thoughtful solemnity, as when Fields learned that his former wife, Marianne, had died. He was hundreds of miles away, talking with his mother by phone, when he heard the news: “It’s Marianne, Bill. She died. . . . Nothing in divorce-recovery books, the radio talk show advice, or the support of friends in the wake of a failed marriage had prepared me for those words.” The deaths of his mother and father are likewise handled unsentimentally but with a necessary touch of emotion. “Life is ragged,” he writes. “Voids linger. Loose ends are everywhere.”

Fields’ obsession with sports began when he was a child, gravitating toward any game that involved a ball. When he failed to become a basketball star, he turned to golf after receiving a Spalding starter kit for Christmas in 1969. His focus on the game waxed and waned until he was a student at UNC, where he wrote for the Daily Tar Heel. After graduation, he knocked around the golf world, promoting the game, until he accepted a position with the Athens Banner-Herald, which would evolve into an associate editorship at Golf World. What followed was a series of positions that eventually led back to Golf World, the magazine that started in the same town where he was born.

Fields covered tournaments in the United States and overseas, which brought him into contact with the greatest golfers of our time. How many golfers can boast that they’ve played the game with Sam Snead and Tiger Woods?

But A Quick Nine Before Dark is more than another golf book — it’s also about becoming a writer and what it takes to remain ascendant in a field where technology advances at breakneck speed. From the moment Fields, an elementary school kid, put pencil to paper and wrote “I like to write,” his life had been about arranging the right words in the best possible order.

Fields’ work may require him to live in Connecticut, but he is as much a Southern writer as Faulkner and as romantic about his

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hometown as Thomas Wolfe was about Asheville. Readers, especially longtime Moore County residents, will recognize familiar placenames — Johnny’s (later Bruce’s Tavern), Knollwood, WEEB, the post office painting “Southern Pines Idyll,” The Pilot, Foxfire Golf Club, Mid Pines, etc.

At 13, Fields worked as a busboy at Russell’s Fish House, which recently closed. Describing the restaurant in its heyday, he treats us to magical paragraphs that touch all the senses: “. . . Russell’s was the most clamorous place in creation — more deafening than any argument my sisters ever had, more earpiercing than the hocking sounds made by my fifth-grade teacher, more thunderous than a Seaboard freight train when it trundled through town . . . Wooden chairs scraping angrily on cement floors. Customers’ animated conversations and guffaws reverberating off cinderblock walls . . . Flatware and platters clanging into busboys’ bins as they and the wait staff dashed about like running backs seeking holes in a defense.”

And like any good Southerner, Fields brings us home, mystified, as most of us are, by the relationship of the past to the present: “Stretches of U.S. 1 and U.S. 15-501 are now blighted by a sprawl of commercial establishments, stores and restaurants. Attempting a left turn without an illuminated green arrow can be risky business. Traffic planners debate solutions. Meanwhile, at certain times of day, dozens of cars idle, waiting to pass the busiest intersections. Approaches to the Pinehurst Traffic Circle resemble parking lots.”

Fields’ writing is unfailingly lucid, exact, and engaging. What’s not obvious is that he’s worked over his prose until that “worked on” feeling is gone. His many readers will be the beneficiaries of that labor. PS

Stephen E. Smith is a retired professor and the author of seven books of poetry and prose. His latest book is The Year We Danced: A Memoir is the recipient of a 2025 Feathered Quill Book Award.

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FICTION

Now I Surrender, by Álvaro Enrigue

March Books

NONFICTION

Judy Blume: A Life, by Mark Oppenheimer

In the contested borderlands between Mexico and the United States, a woman flees into the desert after a devastating raid on her dead husband’s ranch. A lieutenant colonel in service to the fledgling Republica, sent in pursuit of cattle rustlers, discovers he’s on the trail of a more dramatic abduction. Decades later, with political ambitions on the line, the American and Mexican militaries try to maneuver Geronimo, the most legendary of Apache warriors, into surrender. In our own day, a family travels through the region in search of a truer version of the past. Part epic, part alt-Western, Now I Surrender weaves past and present, myth and history, into a searing elegy for a way of life that was an incarnation of true liberty.

The Creek, the Crone, and the Crow, by Leah Weiss Summer, 1980. Kate Shaw has lived in Baines Creek for 10 years, teaching in a one-room schoolhouse on the brink of closure. A skeptic by heart, she rejects superstition and the belief in Appalachian folklore, much to the chagrin of Birdie Rocas, a lively and reclusive witch with a trove of secrets. Yet when Birdie dies and leaves Kate her Book of Truths and a trunk of illuminated manuscripts and journals, Kate is thrown into a mystery, overwhelmed by a collection that spans centuries back to Scotland. Enter Lydia Brown, a psychic with a curious birthmark whose visions stopped the day her parents died. Griefstricken, without her gift, and in need of spiritual guidance, she travels to Appalachia in search of Birdie. From there, the two women’s stories intertwine, as they investigate the questions surrounding Birdie’s death and legacy, through secret rooms, underground tunnels and back-country graveyards.

To know the name Judy Blume is to know and love literature. Her influential novels turned classics — including Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing; Deenie; and Summer Sisters — touched the lives of tens of millions of readers. For more than 55 years her work has done something revolutionary: It rewired the world’s expectations of what literature for young people can be — frank, candid, earthy, and unafraid to show the messier sides of humanity. Oppenheimer pens a beautiful, multidimensional portrait of the acclaimed author through extensive interviews with Blume herself, invaluable access to her papers and correspondence, and thoughtful analysis of Blume’s beloved novels. Oppenheimer peels back the curtain to reveal the woman behind the literary empire in all her complex, multifaceted glory.

The Best Dog in the World: Essays on Love, edited by Alice Hoffman

Fourteen beloved authors celebrate the life-changing bond with their canine companions in this heartwarming essay collection. Anyone who has ever been fortunate enough to share their life with a dog knows the experience is both profound and transformative. Here, in this charming collection of essays, celebrated authors share unforgettable tales of the dogs who left their pawprints on their hearts. With contributions from Isabel Allende, Chris Bohjalian, Bonnie Garmus, Roxane Gay, Emily Henry, Ann Leary, Tova Mirvis, Jodi Picoult, Elizabeth Strout, Amy Tan, Adriana Trigiani, Nick Trout, Paul Yoon and Laura Zigman, The Best Dog in the World captures the full range of the canine-human connection, from the joy of welcoming a new puppy to the heartache of saying goodbye to a beloved friend.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

Goldfinches, by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver, winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, is one of America’s most beloved poets. Introducing her unforgettable words to children for the very first time, her poem “Goldfinches” joyfully observes the power of the natural world as only Oliver can. Illuminated by the exquisite mixed-media artwork of Caldecott Honoree Melissa Sweet, Goldfinches fills the reader with wonder for the beauty around them and gratitude for the ability to bear witness to it. (Ages 4-8.)

The Future Book, by Mac Barnett

Every other book was written in the past. But this book? This book was written in the future. Do you want to know what the future is like? Turn the pages to get a glimpse at the world of tomorrow and its unexpected words, strange social customs, and mind-blowing colors! From the awardwinning duo Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris comes a funny, visionary picture book that kids will want to read again and again. (Ages 4-8.)

Wings of Fire, The Hybrid Prince, by Tui Sutherland Umber was never supposed to be a hero. As the youngest sibling of his MudWing hatching, Umber doesn’t have the responsibilities of his bigwings, Reed, nor the heroic destiny prophesied for his brother, Clay. He’s always been content with his role as the cheerful, goofy little brother. But when his sister, Sora, causes a tragedy at Jade Mountain Academy, Umber finds himself on the run and thrown into a whole new role — protector. Umber and Sora fly south in search of a place where they can live far away from other dragons . . . until a kind, hybrid dragon named Mulberry saves him from a kraken attack, and Umber realizes they don't have to survive alone after all. There’s an entire community living on a forgotten island, full of dragons hiding from their own dark pasts. As the two MudWings settle into the Court of Refuge, they start to realize that nothing in this place is quite what it seems, and the protection it offers comes with a price. In Wings of Fire, Book 16 Umber learns he must find a way to unlock the past of this mysterious island to ensure he and Sora have a future. (Ages 8-adult.) PS

Compiled by Kimberly Daniels Taws, manager of The Country Bookshop.

Wearin’ o’ the Green

A little luck goes a long way

By Bill FieldS

I’m going to wear something green on St. Patrick’s Day.

I’ve never been fully committed to doing so, but upon reviewing my ethnic origins for the first time in a while, I’ve decided that this March 17 I ought to get dressed with more purpose.

An updated DNA report shows there is more Irish in my background that I had thought, with single-digit percentages of my roots linked to each of three areas in Ireland: Connacht, Munster and Donegal. Some 18 percent of my heritage comes from the ancestral region of “Central Scotland and Northern Ireland.” Ancestry doesn’t break down that number; I hope the latter locale is well-represented.

Last summer, for the second time in a decade, I spent an enjoyable week working at The Open Championship in Portrush, Northern Ireland, where the commute from hotel to NBC Sports television compound consisted of a 15-minute walk through town or along the beach. The twice-daily stroll, including stops at friendly establishments for coffee in the morning and Guinness in the evening, was a pleasant antidote to many long drives in snarled traffic to major golf events over the years, trips sometimes punctuated by a parking lot attendant on a power trip.

It felt like luck was on my side in Portrush, including the day that a bat flew around the TV tower while we were on the air, causing analyst Kevin Kisner to duck and cover as it darted right over his head. Having had to receive a series of rabies shots after a close encounter with a bat while I was taking out the trash at dusk on a summer day in 1997, I was grateful our visitor stayed clear of my workspace. Someone purchased a large, long-handled net that we had at the ready the rest of the week, but to the relief of everyone in the tower, the bat never reappeared.

Luck is an apt topic in March, regardless of how one feels about the origins of “Luck of the Irish.” Rather than considering the idiom as ironic or derisive (as was the case when used about the success of Irish miners in the American West during the late 1800s), this seems the right time to simply place it in the context of extremely good fortune.

The enduring Irish symbol of luck and prosperity, the sham-

rock, is a three-leafed clover. Come March — which not only includes St. Patrick’s Day but marks the start of spring and the arrival of golf season in many places — I think of the much rarer four-leaf variety, believed to be a truly lucky plant.

Years ago, while I was researching a story for Golf World about the legendary golfer Glenna Collett Vare, one of the things people remembered about the record six-time U.S. Women’s Amateur champion, a trailblazing athlete of the 1920s and ’30s, was her uncanny knack for finding four-leaf clovers.

One such instance occurred at the 1950 Curtis Cup at the Country Club of Buffalo when Vare captained the American team that included a young Ohioan, Peggy Kirk, later known as Peggy Kirk Bell, the matriarch of Pine Needles. Kirk trailed late in her singles match when Vare approached to ask her how she stood. Learning of Kirk’s deficit, Vare stepped away for a few minutes, then returned with a four-leaf clover and a message — “Go get her” — for Peggy. Kirk won the match, 1 up.

Given how finely groomed golf courses have become since Collett Vare’s era, it’s harder to find clover of any kind these days, not that modern players haven’t gotten some very good breaks. Less than a month prior to St. Patrick’s Day last year, in a playoff at the Mexico Open, Brian Campbell badly sliced a drive that was surely headed out-of-bounds until it struck a tree and caromed back in play, setting up his subsequent victory.

Campbell’s was as lucky a moment seen on the PGA Tour since 1992 when Fred Couples’ ball defied the odds and clung to the steep bank of Rae’s Creek on Augusta National’s 12th hole; or perhaps The Crosby in 1984 when Hale Irwin’s tee shot, headed toward the ocean left of Pebble Beach’s 18th hole, bounced off the rocks and onto the fairway, the ball appearing as if a seal had headed it to safety. Irwin birdied, then defeated Jim Nelford in a playoff.

From personal experience, I can report those rocks aren’t usually so kind. PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent. His memoir A Quick Nine Before Dark: A Life in Golf, will be released in April. Find it at The Country Bookshop and other outlets.

The Tipperary

Story and p hotograph By tony CroSS

The Tipperary first appeared in the 1916 book Recipes for Mixed Drinks, by Hugo R. Ensslin.

Likely named for either the town in Ireland or the popular World War I song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” about a young man yearning for “the sweetest girl I know,” the first print has this cocktail with equal parts Irish whiskey, sweet vermouth and Chartreuse. It was Harry MacElhone’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails in 1922 that upped the whiskey to 2 ounces, the vermouth to 1 ounce, and identified the original Chartreuse spec as green, using 1/2 ounce. You can look at The Tipperary as a spin on the classic Bijou cocktail (substituting gin for Irish whiskey) or imagine it as an Irish Manhattan with a kick of Chartreuse.

The recipe given here is from a famed Irish bar in New York City, The Dead Rabbit. The bartenders there found a better balance by lowering the Irish whiskey to 1 1/2 ounces and adding a couple of dashes of bitters. With mezcal, tequila and bourbon being all the rage over the past 15 years, Irish whiskey may not be getting its due. This is the perfect cocktail for any whiskey-curious imbiber to cut their teeth on. PS

Tony Cross is an on-again, off-again bartender who founded and runs Reverie Cocktails, a kegged cocktail distribution company that has been represented everywhere from dive bars to baseball stadiums.

Specifications

1 1/2 ounces Irish whiskey

1 ounce sweet vermouth (I recommend Dolin Rouge) 1/2 ounce Green Chartreuse

2 dashes Angostura bitters Orange peel

Execution

Combine all ingredients in chilled mixing vessel, add ice and stir until proper chilling and dilution has occurred. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Express oils from orange peel over cocktail — keep as a garnish or discard.

Faux Favorite

A plant-based attraction worth trying

Story and p hotograph By roSe Shewey

Vegans come up with some bizarre ideas. They will slice up cauliflower, fry it like a piece of meat and serve it as “steak,” insisting it tastes just like the real deal, or better. Or they use the liquid from canned chickpeas to make whipped cream and appear completely unfazed by the lingering bean flavor. Maybe jackfruit passes as pulled pork in a BBQ sandwich to some, but from where I am standing it looks a lot like the emperor is naked.

No doubt, there are some strange meal creations in the plantbased kitchen, but despite it all, I’m rather fond of it. I dabbled with veganism for a few years and loved the creativity of it. Composing balanced, satisfying and — not least of all — healthy vegan dishes requires skill, some knowledge of food chemistry and a passion for experimenting.

Every now and then, clever vegan chefs strike gold. I have happy recollections of the first black bean burgers we made, which were — to everyone’s surprise — bursting with flavor. Or that time we discovered vegan cheesecake, which is still in the rotation for us today. As a graduate from a plant-based cooking course, where I was able to try my hand on a potpourri of “veganized” dishes, I was most impressed with a fish-less tuna salad made from chickpeas.

What sets this “tuna” salad apart from regular ol’ chickpea salad is the seaweed. It lends it the salty sea flavor which, combined with the tuna-esque texture and the addition of mayo, is so close to the original that most people do not notice a difference. I know this because I have had friends and family try this no-tuna salad, and across the board, nobody could initially tell it was, in fact, tuna-less.

Now, why would someone who does not subscribe to a vegan diet make this faux tuna salad? Aside from the sustainability issues surrounding tuna (and shady harvesting practices), tuna contains higher levels of mercury, which is a health concern to some of us. Others like the idea of tuna salad but not the fishy aroma — seaweed for the win! Also, making this salad is a tasty way to handle leftover chickpeas and sneak more fiber into your diet. Above all, this tuna-less salad is just too scrumptious not to try. PS

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

Chickpea “Tuna” Salad Sandwich

(Serves 4)

3 cups cooked chickpeas

2-3 tablespoons finely diced red onion

1-2 celery stalks, finely diced

2-3 pickles, finely diced

2-3 tablespoons nori seaweed flakes (or nori sheets, chopped)

1/2 cup mayonnaise, traditional or plant-based Salt and pepper, to taste

For Serving

8 slices bread

Green apples, thinly sliced Lettuce

English cucumber, sliced Spring onions, sliced

Directions

If using chickpeas from a can, drain and add them to a medium or large bowl. With a fork or potato masher, mash the chickpeas to break them up; optionally, leave some whole for a more interesting texture. Add onion, celery, pickles and nori seaweed flakes to the bowl and stir to combine. Mix in mayonnaise, salt and pepper. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed and keep refrigerated until ready to serve. Toast bread, if desired, then scoop a generous portion of the chickpea salad onto a slice of bread, add toppings of your choice and another slice of the bread on top.

Pots and Pennywhistles

And peddling positive energy

By Sharon mCneill

You could say Michael Mahan is a soulful guy. Potter, flute and pennywhistle player, artist, writer, amateur archaeologist, father, husband … well, you get the idea.

Mahan makes all sorts of beautiful wood-fired and electric kiln pots, but his “soul pots” have something special about them. Round, with a small hold, they have a Vidalia onion shape — similar to the Native American seed pot — with decorations on a band at the mouth. A sign in the shop says, “This pot is meant to be placed so that people who visit your home can pick it up. It is designed to absorb and release positive energies of love and kindness.” Since they aren’t glazed inside, only love and kindness can go into them because oil or water might seep out.

“People like the way they feel,” he says. “And if you need some positive energy, they can give it.”

Mahan was born in Wisconsin, grew up in Miami, and came to Waxhaw, North Carolina, when he was in the 10th grade. He went to N.C. State to study engineering, but switched to writing and editing. After graduation he landed a job at the CourierTribune in Asheboro, where he wrote a story about some potters in Seagrove. That was all it took. He quit his job and went back to school full-time to study pottery.

Mahan created the “soul pot” with his ex-wife, Jane Braswell — who decorated the band at the top — when they founded Wild Rose Pottery on N.C. 705 in Whynot, south of Seagrove. After the couple divorced, Mahan built his current studio, From

the Ground Up, at 172 Crestwood Road, in Robbins. One day, poking around the property with his kids, he discovered a few old pottery shards. The artifacts were from the 1890s when the land belonged to another potter, W.J. Stewart, who is buried a few hundred yards away from the studio. Stewart made functional salt-glazed pots in a wood-fired groundhog kiln, including the jugs he used for the whiskey he distilled and sold.

Trees are an artistic theme in Mahan’s work, representing strength and connection, both to the land and its occupants.

“When I’m carving a full tree on a pot, I can get lost in it and not take a break for an hour or more,” he says. “The more branches I make, the more complicated it becomes, hunting limbs that need another branch, or perhaps there’s one that

broke off and is left hanging. I get to decide. Occasionally, I’ll make a dead tree. I love the beauty of a dead tree, still serving a purpose — as a perch for a bird, a landmark, a memory.”

Once, while selling his wares at a street festival, Mahan was attracted to a bamboo flute in a booth nearby. With a touch of Irish in his blood, the simple instrument led him to National Public Radio’s The Thistle and Shamrock show. Another potter, David Stuempfle, advanced the musical cause by teaching Mahan a couple of tunes on the flute.

Mahan’s second wife, Mary Holmes, is bona fide Irish, and she organized a trip for the couple to the old country, where they visited Clonmacnoise, a monastic site founded in the 6th century in County Offaly along the River Shannon. Leaning against an old stone wall inside one of the ruins, Mahan played the same melody that he played for Mary on their first date. Feeling a strong connec

tion to the land and the people, they built a pottery studio in Limerick and travel there for two months every summer.

Pottery is something of a family affair for the Mahans. Two of his children have taken up the art form. His youngest son, Levi, is a potter who lives in Brooklyn and shows his work in the gallery in Robbins. His daughter, Chelsea, lives in Pensacola, Florida, where she teaches pottery. Eldest son Wil, is the only one of the children not in the family business — he sells real estate in Asheboro. The word for soul in Irish is , and whether by flute or fire or the land he lives on, Mahan

Sharon McNeill has contributed to publications like Outside, The New York Times. She moved to Southern Pines from Lummi Island, Washington.

Strong to the Finish

’Cause I eats my spinach

By deBorah Salomon

Life is a highway, full of bumps and potholes. Signs, too, that mark the journey. A recurring billboard on mine shouts “Spinach.”

Weird. I know.

Spinach has grown into a nutritional superpower, in formats unrecognizable to pre-baby boomers who hated it with a passion reserved for liver.

Who could blame them? We knew it only as tough stringy leaves caked in sand, cooked to slime or, more likely, a ready-toheat slime from a can touted by Popeye.

Popeye or not, my mother had me convinced the grim reaper would retaliate against non-consumers. So I learned to eat around it, then beg a tummyache, accompanied by retching sounds.

When that failed I insisted that spinach gave me a rash.

Where? Show me, Mommy demanded.

“But you told me never to . . . ” I was a clever child, inventive even.

I have a faint memory of liking spinach at the Automat, that famous chain of Manhattan cafeterias, after swirling it into their fabulous mashed potatoes. But I celebrated my 10th birthday without ever choking down a plain, stringy, sandy leaf.

Our move to Asheville introduced co-ed junior high and a new breed of spinach called Birds Eye frozen into bricks, either whole leaf or chopped, which my mother cooked to death. She served the mish-mash sans salt, swimming in cooking water. With no divine mashed potatoes. I had to swallow a few spoonfuls — not bad, especially the creamed kind at the S&W cafeteria where we ate supper Wednesday evenings, same time as my first boyfriend and his widowed mother.

My own mother never guessed from whence came this sudden preference. So she stocked the pantry with Popeye. Yuck.

I can’t remember spinach making an appearance at the Duke dining halls, but — and I may be wrong — Anna Maria’s famous bootleg pizzeria in her Durham kitchen lavished leaves on an incredible crust.

Those were the good days, the happy days.

The ’70s and ’80s brought on the glorious California veggie revolution, where color, freshness, nutrition ruled. Some smart grower developed a baby spinach with velvety leaves, short stems and mild flavor. As a food writer I was all over the movement. Spinach was so cool, even chic. It was everywhere: in omelets, smoothies, stir-fries, salads, soups. When in Florence I ordered the famous veal Florentine, smothered in spinach. When my vegetarian daughter came home from Duke, where Anna Maria had become a legend, I invented a baby spinach, sliced strawberry and mushroom salad.

Fresh spinach is now available year-round. A handful cooks down to a spoonful in seconds, so spinach-haters needn’t suffer longer than one swallow. I still add ribbons to my turkey stuffing and, for color, homemade chicken soup.

Life’s highway now approaches an off ramp, but not without a final nod to the Sailor Man. For decades I have lobbied against frozen main and side dishes: too much salt, too many preservatives, too expensive. But Stouffer’s Spinach Souffle makes a tasty meal either as pictured on the box or microwaved and mixed into angel hair pasta.

Thanks for the ride, Popeye. For a guy pushing 100 you’re lookin’ pretty good. Must be the spinach. PS

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

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Saint Andrews Drive #225, Pinehurst

A Feisty Little Bird

The active lifestyle of the brown-headed nuthatch

By SuSan CampBell

If you have ever heard what seems to be a squeaky toy emanating from the treetops in the Sandhills or the Piedmont, you may have had an encounter with a brown-headed nuthatch. This bird’s small size and active lifestyle make it a challenge to spot, but once you know what to look and listen for, you will realize it is a common year-round resident.

Brown-headeds are about 4 inches long with grey backs, white bellies and, as the name suggests, brown heads. In this species, males are indistinguishable from females. Their coloration creates perfect camouflage against the tree branches where the birds forage in search of seeds and insects. Their oversized bill allows them to pry open a variety of seeds, as well as pine cones, and dig deep in the cracks of tree bark for grubs.

By virtue of their strong feet and sharp claws, brown-headed nuthatches can crawl head-first down the trunk of trees as easily as going up. Although they do not sing, these birds have a distinctive two-syllable squeak they may roll together if especially excited.

Brown-headed nuthatches do take advantage of feeders. One of the best places to view them is the feeding station at Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve in Southern Pines, where they are probably the most common visitor on any day of the year. Brown-headeds frequent both the sunflower seed feeders and the suet from dawn until dusk. They are very accustomed to people, so viewing at close range is possible, as are fantastic photo opportunities.

This species is one of our area’s smallest breeding birds. It’s a non-migratory resident, living as a family group for most of the year. Unlike its cousin, the white-breasted nuthatch, which can be found across the state, the brown-headed is a bird of mature pine forests. Brown-headeds are endemic to the southeastern United States, from coastal Virginia through most of Florida and west to the eastern edge of Texas. Their range covers the historic reaches of the longleaf pine. However, this little bird has switched to using other species of pine such as loblolly and Virginia pine in the absence of longleafs.

Brown-headed nuthatches are capable of excavating their own nest hole in small dead trees in early spring. Because so few of the appropriate sized trees are available (due to humans tidying up the landscape), in recent years brown-headed nuthatches have taken to using nest boxes. However, unless the hole is small enough to exclude larger birds, such as bluebirds, they may be outcompeted for space. For this reason, the species is now one of concern across the Southeast, with populations in decline. In addition to reductions in breeding productivity, logging, fire suppression as well as forest fragmentation are causing significant challenges for this feisty little bird.

“Helper males” have been documented assisting parents with raising subsequent generations. Without unoccupied territory nearby, young males may consciously be choosing to stay with their parents in hopes that they may inherit their father’s breeding area over time. If this approach sounds at all familiar to bird enthusiasts in our region, it should. It’s similar to the strategy of the red-cockaded woodpecker, another well-known, albeit less abundant, inhabitant of Southeastern pine forests. PS Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos. She can be contacted by email at susan@ncaves.com.

The Gift of Time Planning new adventures

“The best thing about hunting and fishing, is that you don’t have to actually do it to enjoy it. You can go to bed every night thinking about how much fun you had twenty years ago and it comes back clear as moonlight. It is a kind of immortality, because you’re doing it all over again.”

— Robert Ruark’s Africa

By tom Bryant

I had been thinking right regularly about mortality and immortality, having been recently diagnosed with cancer. The folks at Duke University performed their miracle, and on my latest scan and workup the cancer had disappeared. When I asked the doc about limits I might have, she replied, “Nothing, you can do whatever you were doing before all this came about.” Naturally Linda, my bride, and I rejoiced, and on the way home from Duke, I was like a kid the day before Christmas.

That night as I was relaxing by the fire reading some old columns I had written years before, I determined that the plan for the immediate future was to categorize things I wanted to do in the field, and things that Linda would enjoy doing with me. I grabbed a yellow legal pad from my desk, and I was off and running.

The musings I had made years before when I was in my prime, climbing over obstacles rather than going around them, got my list started with a flurry.

Ages ago, it seems like, I used to goose hunt, Canada geese, that is. It was before the geese that migrated every year realized they really didn’t have to do that. The ones that used to come down from the frosty North and set up camp in the sunny South would lounge around enjoying all that fresh grass recently planted on golf courses and the fields full of winter wheat just ripe for the picking. But then spring and a little warmer weather would roll around, and it would be time to pack up and wing it back north.

I don’t know how it happened, but I can imagine it went something like this: A couple or three geese were lolling about munching lunch on the 14th green when one of them said, “Well, it’s about time to hit the road back to the old homestead.”

Another of the geese, maybe one with a little more mileage on him, spoke up. “Boys, I’ve been making that trip more times than you are old, and I just made up my mind that I’m gonna stay here this summer. Why do all that flying and wandering about when we have everything we need, plus some, right here? Y’all have a nice trip and I’ll see you next winter.”

Thus it started. Wild Canada geese that were as skittish as bobcats overnight became residents and all but demanded their entitlement — fresh grass for everyone.

That’s what’s happening now. What I wrote about in those aged scribblings that dotted outdoor magazines and sporting pages in newspapers was when the noble Canada goose was a worthy game bird, worth all the notoriety given.

Every January, for about eight or 10 years in the late ’70s and early ’80s, my good friend Tom Bobo and I would head to the

Eastern Shore of Maryland and the little town of Easton to goose hunt on the famous Plimhimmon plantation, located on the Tred Avon River close to Oxford, Maryland. The owner was a crusty old guy by the name of Bill Meyers. His land was about 400 acres with the river on one side and an estuary off the Chesapeake Bay on the other. It was as if it was made for goose hunting. We were in high cotton, so to speak, in those days, hunting with the likes of such notables as Bing

We were on that special adventure for two months and drove over 11,000 miles.

Crosby, Ted Williams and Phil Harris.

So how can I follow up those ancient days of classic goose hunting in these modern times? Easy, first thing to do is head to Easton and get the lay of the land today. Then the plans will follow.

I made a few notes on my pad and moved on to the next adventure.

When I was a youngster growing up in Pinebluff, I had the best of all worlds as far as outdoor living was concerned. If not camping with the Scouts from old Troop 206, I was scouting on my own, finding likely places to explore. I would hook my Red Flyer wagon to my bicycle, loaded with camping gear, and head to the woods.

That was my first experience pulling a trailer, and I never forgot it. Decades later, the year I retired from my day job, Linda and I bought a little compact Airstream Bambi travel trailer, hooked it up to a Toyota FJ Cruiser, also new that year, and started the trip of a lifetime. Where to? North to Alaska, of course. We were on that special adventure for two months and drove over 11,000 miles.

SPORTING LIFE

Since that first epic experience, we have towed and camped in the Bambi several times across the country and to Florida during the winters. In Florida we would camp at a small scale campground on Chocoloskee Island, just south of Everglades City. Linda called it our fish camp.

In the summers we tried — and were usually successful — to camp at Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina one week out of every month.

I made a few more notes on my pad, put another log on the fire and thought about what it would take to get the little “Stream” back on the road. Not that much really. A detailed check at the Airstream place in Greensboro, maybe a new set of tires, then rig her for running sometime in the late spring.

Linda had gone on to bed and I was ready to hit the hay myself, so I banked the fire to be ready for the next morning and quietly moved down the hall to bed trying not to wake her. Lying there snug under the covers, I thought back over the last year-and-a-half.

Cancer puts a hold on everything. Every day during my experience with the disease we waited for the other shoe to drop, not knowing if it was going to be terminal or just debilitating. The waiting was the hard part.

But just like Robert Ruark said in his book on Africa, I’ve had a lot of experiences in our great outdoors, and thinking about them from 20 or more years ago and reliving them all over again is a kind of immortality.

Now, amazingly, the good Lord, along with the wonderful health professionals at Duke, have made it possible to continue my adventures, hopefully for a few more years. I put together a good start sitting by the fire.

I heard the ship’s clock in the den ding six bells, 11 o’clock. Time to sleep and dream good dreams. PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.

Wm. Scott Athans, OD

Michele P. Keel, OD Keith P. Poindexter, OD

Gimme Five

The club that can do no wrong

By lee paCe

“Nothing

is so beautiful as spring.”

Unless it’s a 185-yard par 3 with the pin on the left.

With apologies to Gerard Manley Hopkins for using his line of verse as a hook for this missive on my favorite golf club, there’s nothing that gets the juices flowing more than pulling my vaunted 5-wood (or 21-degree hybrid in contemporary parlance) and setting up for a gentle draw.

The 17th hole at my home course, Old Chatham in Durham, N.C., invites this distance and ball flight perfectly from the nextto-back tees if the pin’s rear left.

The sixth green at Pinehurst No. 2 is placed at an angle suggesting a right to left ball path and, at 200-plus yards from the Ross Tee, hits the sweet spot for a 5-wood shot, a bounce and some roll on those always firm turtleback greens.

Stand on the 17th tee at the Ocean Course at Kiawah with the Atlantic off to the right and you might well face a shot in that 185-yard range — all carry over a hazard with the water bordering the green on the right. It takes some cojones to aim a hair right over the water and curl it back — but that 5-wood is johnny-on-the-spot.

All great fodder indeed for my favorite club.

Mind you, we’re not suggesting my modest resume even sniffs the same league as Jack Nicklaus wielding his 1-iron on two of his most famous shots — to the 18th green at Baltusrol in winning the 1967 U.S. Open, or hitting the pin on the 17th green at Pebble Beach in collecting the 1972 U.S. Open championship.

Or Ben Crenshaw rolling in that mammoth putt from 60 feet on the 10th at Augusta in 1984 with his Wilson 8802 putter, the club nicknamed “Little Ben” that his dad bought for $20 out of Harvey Penick’s golf shop in Austin.

Or Phil Mickelson performing magic lob shots with the 64-degree wedge that he personally grinds to take the bounce off the trailing edge and the heel so that when he lays it open, the sole sits flush to the ground.

When I first started playing golf seriously in the 1980s, I

had a Tommy Armour 5-wood with a persimmon head. That blond-colored wood with the lacquered finish set up perfectly no matter the ground — it would flush the ball off a tight lie or whip like butter through the Southern summer Bermuda grass.

Persimmon gave way to metal heads and later titanium. Fairways woods became “hybrids.” At various times, I played forged irons and later, cast clubs. I wielded Wilson irons in the early days and later played Pings and now have a bag full of Titleists.

But no matter the manufacturer or the makeup of my set of clubs, priority No. 1 has always been getting that 5-wood just right — that club that was more forgiving than the 3-wood or 3-iron and was ideally suited for approach shots into long par-4s and par-3s. Today the club of choice is a Titleist H1 19-degree with a regular flex Tensei shaft.

That 5-wood looks just right and feels just right.

It certainly did to PGA Tour player Pat McGowan some four decades ago.

McGowan played on the PGA Tour throughout the late 1970s and through the 1980s, and it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that he broached the idea of a 5-wood.

“Almost everyone carried a 1-iron, no matter who you were,” says McGowan, the director of instruction at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club in Southern Pines. “Most good amateurs with low single-digit handicaps carried a 1-iron. It was almost like a 5-wood was a sissy club. You carried a driver, a 3-wood and a 1-iron.”

He put a Ping 5-wood into play in the mid-1980s.

“It had a black head and a red, laminated insert,” McGowan says. “I hit it higher with that club than my 4-iron. I’ll never forget at New Orleans, it must have been 1986 or so, I came to a long par-4 or short par-5, I can’t remember which, but there was a bunker all the way in front of the green, and that 5-wood cleared the bunker, landed on the green and stopped on the green. I said, ‘Oh, my God.’ I couldn’t hit that shot with any other club. I hit it high and it landed soft. I took the 1-iron out.”

A few years ago, I was invited to a member-guest tournament at Forest Creek Golf Club in Pinehurst. The competition was five nine-hole matches on the club’s North and South Courses.

My host and I played well together that weekend, and we needed to win our match on Saturday afternoon to collect first place in our flight.

The last match was on the back nine of the South Course. We had a 1-up lead on the par-3 17th, our eighth hole of the match. The South Course at Forest Creek, a 1996 Tom Fazio design, is

The flag was on the left, and the breeze was into our faces. My GPS device measured 182 yards.

replete with picturesque holes, and this is one of the nicest — an amphitheater setting, downhill, a wide and shallow green with a pond across the front.

The flag was on the left, and the breeze was into our faces. My GPS device measured 182 yards.

I pulled my 5-wood and teed up my ball. I stood behind it and envisioned that crisp contact and a high, right to left ball flight. Believing is seeing, and that’s exactly what I got.

The ball stopped 6 feet from the hole. I made the putt and the match was over.

I won a very nice Scotty Cameron putter that weekend, and I still carry it in my bag. It’s held in high esteem but not quite as high as that smooth and silky 5-wood. PS

Lee Pace has been writing about golf from his home in Chapel Hill, N.C. for more than four decades.

•

Julian

In christening gown and bonnet, he is white and stoic as the moon, unflinching as the sun burns through yellow puffs of pine pollen gathered at his crown while I pour onto his forehead from a tiny blue Chinese rice cup holy water blessed by John Paul II himself and say, “I baptize you, Julian Joseph, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Nor does he stir when the monarchs and swallowtails, in ecclesiastical vestments, lift from the purple brushes of the butterfly bush and light upon him.

— Joseph Bathanti

Joseph Bathanti is a member of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. His novella, Too Glorious to Even Long for on Certain Days, was released in July, 2025. His next volume of poetry, Steady Daylight , will be published in 2026 by the Louisiana State University Press.

Open to Art

The Sandhills Photo Club conducts six competitions a year. The last competition of 2025 was “open,” allowing the 115 club members to submit their best images on any subject. The photo club posts its themed topics — voted on by the membership and suggested, in some cases, with the aid of artificial intelligence — two years in advance, and any submitted image must have been taken within the last three years. What appears here are the results of the memberjudged open competition when the camera is free to roam anywhere the photographer’s eye takes it.

Tier 3 – 1st Place

Horses of the Camargue

Pat Anderson

Tier 3 – Second Place, On the Rocks, Donna Ford

Tier 2 – Third Place, Standing Out, Cathy Locklear

T1 Tied –Honorable Mention America the Beautiful JoAnn Sluder

Tier 1 – Tied Second Place, Morning Glory, Catherine

Tier 1 – First Place,

Maready

White Whiskered Puffbird, Dawn Willis

Tier 2 – Second Place, Glen Coe Canyon, Michael Sassano

Tier 1 – Tied Second Place, I See Moo, Cindy Murphy

Tier 3 – 3rd Place First Light

Tier 1 – Tied Honorable Mention Embracing the Blue Horizon

Sharon Kitchen Miller

Dee Wiliams

Tier 2 –1st Place

Curious Chimp Joshua Simpson

b. 1949? — d. not long ago now

Fiction by Daniel Wallace illustrations by K eith borsha K

e wasn’t always Cowman. Before he was Cowman he was just a boy, and like a boy he played in the fields, in the river and the woods, near the lake, and down the road. He worked with his family planting things. In the summertime he didn’t wear shoes or a shirt, just a pair of cut-off jeans passed down from brother to brother, the blue worn nearly white, and sometimes he wore a hat, when the sun bore down so hot he could feel it boiling his brains. This is the way it was from May to the middle of September, and by then he looked less a boy than he looked like something that was once a boy, or that could become a boy, under the proper supervision and a bath.

Near the end of a long afternoon sometimes beneath the spindly towering pine trees that were everywhere, he cleared the pine needles away until he made an open patch of dirt. With the palms of both of his hands he would smooth it out, harder and faster, until the dirt pressed so hard into his skin that no bath would ever get it out completely. His hands would always be a little bit darker than the rest of him and that makes for an interesting biographical detail.

Then he would take a stick and carve a picture into the ground, and maybe some words. In the beginning, he always said, he drew nothing but cows.

This is how it started, becoming what he later became: Cowman.

Now of course he’s known the world over.

But before. Before all this, where was he?

A valley where there was a river — small at times, then bigger, frothy and white, then . . . not. Mountains this way, that. A hill, a dale. No place anyone has ever been, however, nor a place they would want to go, and for precisely this reason it remained undiscovered by the likes of you or us for centuries probably. It had no name, this place. For generations the people there weren’t aware there were other places, so isolated was this little town, quiet and dark in the hills and in the dales, the mountainous extremes of their lives. Why name it? Why name something there is no more of than one?

Home is what he called it. He hasn’t been home in such a long time and knows now he will never see that forgotten patch of soil ever again. But the day he left he knew he never would. All of his work is influenced by what he no longer has.

Dug into the side of a hill was his house. Two-sided wooden walls, the front stone, the back wall a dense red clay, which, true, he grew up eating.

Not for the main meals. Just a little something in-between. When a new baby came they just dug deeper into the mountain for room. Worms were a problem. When it rained the wall

dripped. But it mostly did the job it had to do.

The wall in his room had a streak of lime running through it. The pale white against the dull orange was like a late summer sunset, he said. The artist transforms the world with his eyes, even when his world is no more than an ambitious hole.

The fifth of seven, Cowman was. The first three were girls, the second three were boys, and the last was some odd combination of the two but less than either. They called it Tarp. While the others were passing fine in almost every respect — the boys big and strong, the girls industrious, pleasant — all of Tarp’s parts were either bigger or smaller than they were supposed to be, and inside his head was probably not something anyone could actually think with, no better than a peach pit, really, or gravel. Truth be told he never did amount to much and had he amounted to anything no one would have been more surprised than he. Everything surprised him, though. Even chairs and rocks.

The others were named, in order of their birth, Estem, Maudry, Ebee, Root and Mold. The Cowman’s real name is not included in the list, as it has been carefully lost to time. It has variously been suggested to be Remly, Tirk, Lebby, Crop, Moses or Pisky. No one can say. Cowman has thus become Cowman, now and forever, and can avoid the embarrassing parenthetical approximations which attach themselves to the nomenclature of famous geniuses.

Estem, Maudry and Ebee, his sisters, were beyond beautiful. They all had thick auburn hair and perfect freckles. It was said no man could look at any one of them without falling in love, and thus the daughters were never in the same place at the same time. Except once, one time, and a man fell in love with all three of them and courted each on a revolving basis. Finally, they all said no, and his heart was broken once a day for three days running by each of them in turn, repeated on a loop for months, and he did not live long thereafter.

Mold and Root were large — Mold largely fat, and Root like one big muscle. Root’s strength was legendary. He once threw a wild bobcat high into the air using naught but his little finger — and caught it with his face. Before this legendary event he was a handsome man, too. Or handsome enough.

Mold’s girth impressed as well. He was one of those constant growers — ever expanding, like a balloon blown up by God. One morning he overslept and could not leave the room through the same door he entered it and stayed there for several months. He eventually became so big that he filled the room from side to side, floor to ceiling. Root dug him out. He remained an outdoor child after that, and for as long as he lived was never allowed within the dwelling of another human being again. Sad.

Cowman, being the seventh child and the third boy, spent most of his childhood either lost or forgotten. The seeds of art are born within the desolate souls of the suffering. Wagon trips across the wide valley to visit relatives who lived in a holler never failed to exclude him — not out of cruelty,

or dislike, but out of pure absentmindedness. His family had a sense of him, but they could never be sure — like something glimpsed quickly out of the corner of your eye — was there a – ? did we have a – ? He was more of an idea, a vague one at that. Maybe he was a dream — a communal dream? Communal dreams were common in that time and place. Hard to conceive of nowadays, that people were too poor to have dreams of their own, but had to share them with their family, sometimes the entire village. But it was true. Dreams were crowded places. Cowman did not help his cause by being quiet in an exceptional way. He was neither small, nor large. He rarely complained, by nature content. When he would wake up and find his entire family had gone he tried to pitch in by cleaning up around the house and doing worm duty on the back wall. Then he might go fishing.

And then, of course, it goes without saying, sometimes he would make his art. He would use a stick, or a piece of charcoal, or pieces of bark crumbled almost into dust, making the line he wanted across the plank wooden floors of the front room. The famous Cowman line, a line that came from his bones and from the rest of him, from all his parts, and flowed into his hand and through whatever he was holding. He knew who he was before anyone else did, but he kept himself to himself. When he came of age he packed a small tote and left the red clay enclosure to parts unknown even to him and was never missed because no one was really sure he had ever been there at all. He did miss the old life, though, from time to time. He was a cave dweller at heart.

Why did he leave that place? No one left, ever, there being no known place to leave to. But he saw a light no one else could see, heard a song sung for him alone, and he smelled something sweet over yonder, something that could not be found in the red-clay, lime-striped box he called home.

He sought it out.

He seeks it still.

Cowman crossed many hills, many dales, and over the last of both came to the first town. So many people, dozens upon dozens, all of them arrayed in colorful garb and shoes made of shiny leather. Some wore hats that looked like clouds and hair that curled and bounced like a small animal living on their heads. Not the sort of people he was used to, and he not theirs. They gave him the side eye and hustled past, as if they were afraid he might bite them, for he looked like someone who lived at the bottom of a swamp, wearing clothes made of mud and dead leaves. A nice woman took him home with her, a young widow named Mary. She gave him a bath and a haircut. He was so handsome then. No one could ever believe he was the same boy who had scared the dogs with his face. She showed him the ways of the world,

too — Mary, to whom all thanks are given by him for everything always.

Oh, Mary.

He left at the end of the year, fluent in the ways of human beings, breaking Mary’s heart into so many pieces that no one was able to put it back together again. The first of many broken hearts left in his wake — but what could be done? Not a single thing. He had his work and that was all that mattered. No heart could pine for him more than he pined for the making of great things.

He is most in love with that which has yet to exist. That’s what mattered to him, and that’s what matters to him still.

(His poor children, though. The less said about them the better.)

An old man now, crumbling, silent, possibly happy as a clam, but who can say, waiting for death with his trademark wrinkly grin and nursed by his 7th wife, the lovely Sophia, who is 63 years his junior. All Cowman makes now are dreams, dreams made of bits and pieces of clay and leaves, caves and pine trees, rivers, hills and dales and of Mary, of course, to whom all thanks are given by him for everything always. He has regrets, to be sure, but none that really matter. He can’t remember much of what he’s done, the good things or the bad. He can’t remember his friends or his enemies or his children or any of his many wives, including the one at his bedside now. She is quite beautiful, though, this woman. Her skin is smooth and brown and her golden hair shines like sun on water. She reminds him of nothing because there is nothing in his mind. But he could look at her face forever, and so this is what he does. PS

Daniel Wallace is the author of six novels. He is the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his alma mater.

to

Fame From Fossil

A dino-sized discovery

By H ampton Williams Hofer

Step into the SECU DinoLab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, and you may find yourself shoulder-to-shoulder with a paleontologist dusting off a specimen or examining a slide with a microscope. This high-tech research laboratory is open to the public, a chance for regular folks to see real science in action. And it’s home to a pair of very famous residents: the “Dueling Dinosaurs.”

The Dueling Dinosaurs — thought to be the remains of an intact tyrannosaur and Triceratops that died 67 million years ago — are considered perhaps the most significant fossils ever recovered from Montana’s storied Hell Creek Formation. For one, the specimens were nearly complete and exceptionally wellpreserved. For another, these two dinosaurs had interacted, likely even died fighting, as evidenced by teeth fragments embedded in the Triceratops. They were first unearthed in 2006 by Clayton Phillips, a Montana rancher and self-styled dinosaur cowboy, who excavated and stored the specimens while spreading word of his discovery.

By 2016, Dr. Lindsay Zanno, head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, had heard of the fossils. She and her team traveled to New York, where the Dueling Dinosaurs were being stored, to verify the legitimacy of the fossils, then on to Montana to examine the conditions of the landscape where they were excavated.

Convinced of their importance, Zanno, along with the Friends of the NCMNS, worked to raise the funds to not only bring the Dueling Dinosaurs to North Carolina, but to build them a new home worthy of what she knew would be one of the most significant paleontological finds of the century. The NCMNS acquired the dinosaurs in 2020 — and got to work.

The museum built a new annex to support the Dueling Dinosaurs’ 31,000 pounds of bone, sediment and plaster. Unlike the way fossils have been treated in the past, the Dueling Dinosaurs would not be fully excavated and reassembled but remain within their plaster preparations — all the better to learn clues about how they behaved and appeared. (In the stone surrounding the Triceratops, for example, are impressions left by

octagonal formations on its frill, offering insights into how the dinosaur’s skin may have looked and felt.)

While paleontologists had historically spent their research work dusting bones in dark museum basements, their work at the NCMNS would literally be brought to light. Visitors can see them, even talk to them, ask questions and observe their work in real time. The SECU DinoLab at the NCMNS, which opened in spring 2024, revolutionized the visitor experience with this groundbreaking exhibition.

The remarkably preserved fossils and whatever Cretaceous secrets they held were, as Zanno said at the time, like “a big, unopened Christmas present.” Now, less than two years since the museum welcomed the Dueling Dinosaurs, the first gift has been unwrapped. And it’s a whole new species, flipping decades of Tyrannosaurus rex research on its head.

The small tyrannosaur was believed to have been a teenage T. rex for the 20 years since Phillips spotted its pelvis weathering out of the ground. Using CT scans and imaging to look inside the blocks of earth housing the fossils, paleontologists at the NCMNS uncovered characteristics in their tyrannosaur specimen that set it apart from a T. rex, including larger forelimbs, more teeth, fewer tail vertebrae, and distinct nerve patterns. In addition, growth rings and spinal fusion data proved that the specimen was an adult. But at 18 feet long and 1,500 pounds, it is only around a tenth of the body mass and half the length of a fullgrown T. rex.

That meant that the small tyrannosaur is, in fact, a mature Nanotyrannus lancensis.

“The implications are difficult to overstate,” says Zanno. “The fact is, much of our current understanding of T. rex was built on three decades of research that unknowingly mixed data from Nanotyrannus with that of Tyrannosaurus — two different tyrannosaurs that aren’t even closely related. Most of that research now needs a second look.”

Along with co-author Dr. James Napoli, a vertebrate paleontologist at Stony Brook

University, Zanno published the findings of their study in Nature this past October.

The scientific gift of the Dueling Dinosaurs exhibit will continue to give, as Nanotyrannus changes much of what paleontologists have believed about history’s most famous dinosaur and the world in which it reigned supreme. A longstanding debate in the realm of paleontology questioned whether Nanotyrannus was a distinct species or simply an adolescent T. rex. Zanno and Napoli showed that the Nanotyrannus at the NCMNS is biologically incompatible with a T. rex — meaning that the T. rex’s dominance in the final million years leading up to the asteroid was not unchallenged.

“To me, what’s exciting about this discovery is that it opens

the door to a whole new series of questions about how these drastically different predators — one built for brute strength and one built for speed — interacted in the twilight of the dinosaurs. What we can say right now is that life at the end of the Cretaceous was a lot more colorful than we had imagined,” says Zanno.

Though smaller than T. rex, Nanotyrannus was still a valiant competitor, and a quicker, more agile hunter. Its existence proves that predator diversity at the end of the age of the dinosaurs was richer than previous research suggests. Now a new question arises: How many other mistakenly identified dinosaur species could be hiding in plain sight?

“Scientists have long debated whether dinosaurs were thriving or diminishing when the asteroid struck,” Zanno says. “Without understanding the number of dinosaurs alive at the time and the ecological roles they filled, we cannot document how mass extinction events have shaped life on our planet in the past, nor how they are likely to affect us in the future.”

Zanno and Napoli conducted exhaustive research before releasing their findings in Nature, work supported by the State of North Carolina, N.C. State University, the Friends of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and the Dueling Dinosaurs Capital Campaign. Their process included examining

more than 200 other tyrannosaur fossils. One of those, like the specimen at the museum, was originally believed to be a teenage T. rex, but also ended up being a fully-grown Nanotyrannus.

Interestingly, this specimen differed enough from Nanotyrannus lancensis at the museum for them to conclude it was, in fact, a new species entirely. (Zanno and Napoli named it Nanotyrannus lethaeus after the underworld River Nethe in Greek mythology, where souls who drank the water forgot their past lives and were ready to be reborn.)

“Nanotyrannus was clearly an animal capable of speed, darting about on long limbs, unlike its bulkier cousin, T. rex. It also had powerful, dextrous arms, large hands, a shorter tail, and unserrated peg-like teeth at the front of the mouth — oddly, not that dissimilar from yours and mine,” says Zanno. “But how fast could it run? How did it hunt? What was its favorite prey? I am excited to dive into Nanotyrannus itself. We know next to nothing about its biology; in a very real way, this is a dinosaur being reborn to the scientific community.”

The specimens at the NCMNS have affectionately been named after two North Carolina locations. Murphy, the Triceratops, is named for the westernmost town in the state, signifying the strength and longevity of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Manteo, the Nanotyrannus, is named for the coastal town on Roanoke Island, home to The Lost Colony and the original American mystery. It suits the Nanotyrannus, a name that now represents question, discovery and the spirit of exploration.

Zanno says this is just the beginning. “We have decades of incredible research in the pipeline on the Dueling Dinosaurs. This is all made possible not just by the outstanding preservation of the fossil carcasses and the talent and dedication of the team we have put together, but also by the community back-

ing we have received,” he says, adding, “The people of North Carolina and beyond banded together to protect these fossils for science and the public alike — a powerful force for good that will continue to pay dividends.

“We simply can’t wait to keep sharing the excitement with all.” PS

Hampton Williams Hofer is a freelance writer and essayist who lives in Zürich and Raleigh, where she chases children and good stories.

Boogie Pine Pollen

Words by Jim moriarty

It’s in the air It’s in my hair. It’s here and there and everywhere.

illustrations by HannaH roser

Is it yellow? Is it green? Is there nothing in between?

Lift my feet It’s underneath. I even taste it in my teeth.

It’s on my clothes. It’s up my nose. It’s other places, I suppose.

It’s on the dog. It’s on the cat.

It’s on my little brother Matt.

It’s on the path. It’s worse than math!

The whole big world needs a bath.

A constant pain

It’s just insane

Oh where, oh where is that heavy rain?

Photogra Ph F rom the tuF ts a rchives

The Inn Place

Return of the Magnolia

by Deborah salomon • Photogra Phs by John gessner

In a mere 130 years the Magnolia Inn has gone from overflow to intimate, a destination within a destination. Completed in 1896, just one year after the Holly Inn, the Magnolia began as a boarding house — its rooms referred to as chambers — needed to comfortably house the servants, doctors, even some family members of people attracted to James Walker Tufts’ new health resort for consumptives built on 6,000 acres in the Sandhills of North Carolina. Closer than Florida and located on a north/south rail line, with an adorable village layout designed by the firm of Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot — fresh from the completion of its work at Biltmore House in 1895 — and implemented by his right-hand man, Warren Manning, Pinehurst was positioned to attract those in need of a little R&R in the pine-scented outdoors. There

was just one problem: The disease, as it turned out, was communicable. Hanging around in groups was contraindicated. Just two years after its founding, the resort’s raison d’etre had been undermined. Pinehurst needed to find another path.

As luck would have it, the timing more or less coincided with the arrival in 1901 (the year the Carolina Hotel, the “Queen of the South,” opened) of a Scottish golf professional named Donald Ross. There were already 18 holes to be tended, built by Dr. Leroy Culver and John Dunn Tucker, Pinehurst’s first golf pro. The game, growing exponentially in the United States at the dawn of the 20th century, would become the backbone of Tufts’ resort. The Magnolia, designed by architect Lyman Sise (the brother of Gertrude Sise Tufts and the man who also designed the Holly Inn), morphed into an annex, handling the

overflow from the Harvard, Berkshire and Holly inns, ultimately adding the Carolina to the mix.

With deep Boston roots, Tufts knew how to attract talent from New England. He snared J.L. Pottle from the Highland House in Jefferson, New Hampshire, to be the first manager of Magnolia Inn. Pottle arrived with a complete staff of maids, janitors, cooks, handymen and other staff. An 1898 advertisement for the Magnolia in the Pinehurst Outlook touted “the finest Northern cooks.” Another boasted of amenities like steam heat, electric lights, bathrooms with hot water and “perfect sanitary arrangements’’ all for $8 to $12 per week.

In the 1920s the Magnolia was sold to Mr. E.J. Fitzgerald, manager at the Carolina, who used it as an annex to the main hotel. Fitzgerald’s wife continued to run the Magnolia after his death. Pottle’s son also remained in the area. During that period Dr. Francis Owens, who would become one of the founders of Moore Memorial Hospital, maintained his office in

the Magnolia, even performing some minor surgeries and child deliveries on the premises.

If its occupants changed over time, so did its footprint. The lovely Queen Anne-style building with 14 bedrooms was originally five stories rising between the village and the Carolina. Porches, verandas and rocking chairs hugged the structure. Not long after the completion of the Carolina, the Magnolia underwent its most drastic alteration. The building was making it difficult to see the village from the grand, new Carolina — and vice versa — so the top two floors were lopped off. The Magnolia still contains an interior stairway that now leads, well, absolutely nowhere.

After a half dozen or so changes of ownership through the

latter half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, the Magnolia was reacquired by the resort in 2023. It no longer answers to the name boarding house and instead is a stately presence overlooking village streets where well-dressed vacationers browse the shops and relax from days on the golf course. Inside, eight posh bed/sitting rooms, called spaces, each identified with a brass plate bearing the name of a village street, showcase period and early-modern furnishings. Colors are soft grays and pastels. Padded headboards, pull-across drapes, bay windows and angular upholstered chairs suggest the ’50s.

The enticing aroma comes from fine Italian dining at the inhouse Villagio Ristorante & Bar, and the only surgery performed in the Magnolia Inn these days is stress removal. PS

Terms and Conditions: $300 off any order of $1198 or more,$200 off any order of $998-$1198 or $100 off any order of $698-$998, on any complete custom closet, garage,or home office unit. Not valid with any other offer. Freeinstallation with any complete unit order of $600 or more. With incoming order, at time of purchase only. For a limited time SPECIAL FINANCING for 18 months *with approved credit* Expires in 90 days. Offer not valid in all regions.

ALMANAC

March

By Ashley WAlshe

March is a procession of tiny wonders.

In the wakening woods, where trout lily and spring beauty appear and disappear at the speed of life, red fox trots toward the forest’s edge, silent as a spring ephemeral.

Weaving between woods and meadow, bluebird combs the softening earth, harvesting grass and pine needles to craft its tidy, cup-shaped nest.

Behold the purple martin. A charm of hummingbirds, shimmering like flying prisms. Sprinkles of color in all directions.

Scarlet maple seeds cascade from naked branches. Fiddleheads brighten creeksides with a riot of luminous spirals. Electric redbuds dazzle.

Yellow transcends itself. Daffodils spill across rolling hills like a sun-kissed sea of trumpets. Spicebush quivers at the tender kiss of swallowtail. Dandelions present as wild, impassioned brushstrokes.

Earthworms animate the loamy soil. Black snakes dance across the warm earth like ribbons.

The humans emerge, too. Gardeners dawdle in dirt and sun. Lovers listen for warblers, sparrows, spring peepers. Children comb the earth as the bluebird does.

“Violets!” they squeal, gathering tiny purple flowers by the tiny precious palmful.

“Can we use them to make cookies?” they ask. “Pink jelly? Lemonade?”

Bare feet in feather-soft grass, they feel the wonder many have forgotten. The wonder of warm earth blossoming with new life. The taste of wild violet.

As the procession of spring continues, slip off your shoes. Let the tiny wonders revive and delight you. Awaken the purity of your own vernal spirit.

Red Clover, Red Clover

Should you happen upon a patch of tender clover, allow yourself to stay a while. Get quiet. Attune to the frequency of these sprightly, three-leaved sprigs. Some say you can hear them singing.

A symbol of the Emerald Isles, the seamróg (Gaelic for “young clover”) is a robust ground cover, building soil and, come spring, inviting a wealth of pollinators.

But did you know that their leaves and flowers are edible? If ever you’ve tried clover blossom jelly, delicate and sweet, then you know the ecstasy of butterfly and bumblebee. Nibbled a leaflet? Just a day in the life of a cottontail rabbit.

And if ever you’ve found a four-leaf clover, well, the luck of the Irish be with you.

Sun, Moon and Stars

Behold a blood moon just before sunrise on March 3 — a total lunar eclipse that, indeed, will give the moon a rusty hue.

On Friday, March 20, the sun crosses the celestial equator at 10:46 a.m., marking the official arrival of spring (although the birds have suggested it for weeks).

As for the stars? It’s Pisces season until March 21, when fiery Aries turns up the heat. In other words: in like two fishes, out like a ram.

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the spring. — Aldo Leopold

Local Flavors & Libations

A toast to the local culinary scene, where passion is served in every plate and glass.

PL8TE delivers a modern, upscale take on southern-inspired cuisine and cocktails. Casually, yet classically, overlooking the 18th hole from inside Pinehurst No. 8’s serene clubhouse, PL8TE offers handcrafted libations that are thoughtfully designed to pair seamlessly with any of the restaurant’s hearty entrees.

Standout selections include The Spicy Swing, a bold twist on the classic margarita made with Patron Silver Tequila, Triple Sec, Grand Marnier, agave syrup, and fresh lime juice, finished with a Tajin rim and jalapeno slice garnish.

Another guest favorite, the Briar and Barrel, blends Maker’s Mark Bourbon with fresh blackberry syrup and lemon juice for a bright, refreshing bourbon cocktail.

To end the meal on a decadent note, the Hazelnut Espresso Eighteeni – featuring Grey Goose Vodka, Kahlua, Frangelico, and rich espresso – pairs well with PL8TE’s Chocolate Chess Pie.

Drum & Quill

Classic Pub - Modern Fare

Nestled in the heart of the village, Drum & Quill is far more than just a favorite watering hole — it blends cozy pub charm with exceptional food and drink.

Open seven days a week for lunch and dinner, Drum & Quill serves up American Southern Fusion cuisine with dishes like crab cakes, chicken and waffles, blackened mahi tacos, and the everpopular Alpine Burger that showcase the restaurant’s creative twist on comfort food classics. And Drum & Quill sources many of its ingredients from local partners including Pinehurst Olive Oil Company, The Bakehouse, and Lazy Fox Lavender Farm.

As a true “public house,” Drum & Quill offers an intentionally intimate space — warm, welcoming, and filled with character. Guests can unwind with the largest selection of spirits in the area, alongside a rotating, seasonal cocktail menu and live music every weekend.

Pork Carnitas Tacos

Alpine Burger

Chicken and Waffles

Caprese with Fried Green Tomatoes

WTF JUST LANDED IN SOUTHERN PINES

Wisco Taco Foxtrot is cleared for takeoff in Southern Pines, delivering a casual yet elevated taco experience. Inspired by owner Jim O’Malley’s Wisconsin upbringing, an aviation meet-cute with his wife and a cheeky nod to its location near the Moore County Airport, the restaurant embraces the aviation vision throughout. Scratch-made tacos are paired with a bar program built for lingering. The menu balances familiar favorites and playful twists — from carne asada and fish tacos to cheese curds, bratwurst queso and other Midwestern nods. Behind the bar, agave-forward cocktails, a brandy Old Fashioned and a custom Weiss beer brewed with Sanford’s Hugger Mugger Brewing Co. highlight the drink lineup. Whether you come for pre-flight snacks and margaritas, a full meal or dessert with a splash of brandy, this is a place where fun is always cleared for takeoff.

Tropical Turbulence

For half a century, The Ice Cream Parlor Restaurant has proudly served hometown favorites in downtown Southern Pines. From burgers and fries to the classic club sandwiches, chicken salad, and their homemade ice cream, shakes, and floats, the menu offers something for everyone— yes, even dairy free!

Beyond the 24 flavors and lunch and dinner options, The Ice Cream Parlor is a place where friends connect, grandparents create memories with their grandchildren, and neighbors gather together. Celebrating 50 years and countless scoops, The Ice Cream Parlor proudly remains a loved and trusted family-owned establishment in this community.

A TOAST TO LOCAL FLAVOR

Elliotts on Linden has long been a gathering place where local flavors and thoughtful hospitality take center stage. The kitchen frequently showcases specials inspired by what is fresh, local and in season, creating a menu that reflects both the region and the moment. A staple in Moore County, the restaurant balances elevated comfort with an inviting atmosphere that keeps guests coming back. Its dedication to craftsmanship extends to the bar where they offer beautifully crafted seasonal cocktails. They’ve also been voted “Best Wine Menu” in Best of the Pines for several years. Whether raising a glass or savoring a seasonal special, Elliotts on Linden delivers a true taste of Pinehurst.

AUTHENTIC MEXICAN FLAVOR WITH LOCAL ROOTS

Casa Santa Ana brings the vibrant flavors of Mexico to Moore County, serving authentic dishes and refreshing cocktails with locations in Pinehurst and Seven Lakes. Family-owned and rooted in the community, the restaurant has shared its love of Mexican cuisine with the area for more than 11 years. Savory birria tacos, sizzling fajitas, handmade sopes and churros showcase fresh ingredients and bold flavor in every bite. Pair your meal with a perfect margarita or mezcal cocktail for a relaxed, local dining experience that feels both festive and familiar.

Pinehurst Location

Santa Ana’s Perfect Margarita

Seven Lakes Location

Quesadilla Mexicana

GATHER, DINE AND UNWIND AT PINE NEEDLES

From intimate evenings to special-occasion gatherings,dine or cater with Pine Needles Lodge. Enjoy elevated dining in The Crest Lounge and Dining Room, where classic ambiance, thoughtfully crafted dishes, and a robust wine selection define the experience. For dining before and after your round, the In The Rough Lounge offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner in a cozy atmosphere with a welcoming fireplace — perfect for a drink or relaxed meal.

Beefeaters is a cherished Southern Pines landmark that has stood the test of time. For over 25 years, this beloved establishment has been serving up mouthwatering steaks, burgers, seafood, salads and nightly specials that keep diners coming back for more. Owner Will Faircloth is deeply committed to food quality, never compromising it for cost. He upholds rigorous standards for every cut of beef and ensures that the cooking process delivers a consistently exceptional steakhouse experience. Come discover why Beefeaters has been voted Best Steak for 10 Years in a row!

A NEIGHBORHOOD FAVORITE FOR DAYTIME DINING

Midland Bistro blends neighborly charm with thoughtfully crafted breakfast, brunch and lunch offerings that draw on fresh ingredients from local partners. Savor house favorites like fluffy quiche to hearty breakfast sandwiches and thoughtful specials, all elevated by flavors that reflect local offerings. Raise a glass to good company with a pitcher of mimosas, perfect for lingering over sunny conversation. As the days get warmer, Midland Bistro’s outdoor patio offers a relaxed setting to enjoy your meal and a local brew or wine among friends. With its welcoming atmosphere and menu built around community tastes, Midland Bistro has become a cherished stop for locals and visitors alike.

Quiche Florentine

Bacon Egg & Cheese Croissant

Bistro Prime Dip

Belgian Banana Waffle

LOCAL INGREDIENTS MEET WORLDLY FLAVOR

Table On the Green blends locally sourced ingredients with Thai and American influences, creating a food and cocktail menu that feels both rooted and global. Specialties include vibrant pad thai and Korean-braised short ribs, various brunch options and delectable desserts. Each pairing reflects seasonal flavors and the spirit of Pinehurst. Whether you’re unwinding after a round of golf or celebrating with friends, the libations elevate every dish with balance and character. Table On the Green also offers catering for events of all sizes and comfortably accommodates large parties — perfect for gatherings meant to be remembered.

Lychee Martini

Mini Creme Brûlée

Butterfly Pea Spritz

Belgian Waffle

At Chapman’s Food & Spirits, you’re invited to slide up to the copper penny bar and try one of their delicious cocktails. If you prefer al fresco dining, bask in the sunshine on the patio and enjoy a unique spin on fresh, homemade comfort food such as their famous Bacon Jam Burger and the beer-batter Haddock and Fries.

If you’re looking for something to share, the Cajun Crawfish Fries are a must-try. These crispy fries are smothered in chipotle cream sauce and loaded with flavorful crawfish. It’s a local staple that’s wicked good!

Chapman’s menu offers something for everyone, and every dish is cooked to order. Join them daily for lunch and dinner and experience the best of Chapman’s in a comfortable, casual atmosphere.

Bacon Jam Burger

Chappy’s Chiller

Cucumber Jalapeño Rita and Loaded Nachos

The bar at Sly Fox offers a cozy, lively atmosphere built around a curated beverage program that’s perfect for both casual drinks and full dinners. With 16 draft taps, the bar features 8 core staples and 8 rotating selections, spotlighting local North Carolina breweries while also bringing in seasonal, popular, and new releases from out of state. Guests can also choose from over 30 bottled and canned beers, alongside a seasonally rotating cocktail menu that changes for fall/winter and spring/ summer, supported by a back bar of over 70 spirits. With fullservice dining at the bar, multiple TVs, and a menu rooted in gastropub fare with a British-inspired innovative twist, this is a place where guests can settle in and stay awhile.

Although conscientious effort is made to provide accurate and up-to-date information, all events are subject to change and errors can occur! Please call to verify times, costs, status and location before planning or attending any events.

SUNDAY, MARCH 1

CHILDBIRTH CLASS. 9:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. Prepare your body and mind during this childbirth education and movement workshop. Whitehall, 490 Pee Dee Road, Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpines.net.

HORSE EVENT. Sedgefield Hunter/Jumper show. There will be arena jumping and food trucks onsite. Carolina Horse Park, 2814 Montrose Road, Raeford. Info: www.carolinahorsepark.com.

WRITING GROUP. 3 p.m. Are you interested in creating fiction, nonfiction, poetry or comics? Come to the Sunday Afternoon Writing Group. Connect with other writers and artists, chat about your craft, and get feedback about your work. All levels welcome. Info: lholden@sppl.net.

MONDAY, MARCH 2

QUILTS OF VALOR. 12 - 4 p.m. Quilts of Valor meets the first Monday of each month to create lap quilts made especially for veterans. If you sew, bring your machine; if you don’t sew, you can iron or cut out fabrics for new designs. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15-501, West End.

ACTIVE LIVING. 2:30 - 3:30 p.m. Adults 55 and older can come to this 12-week behavior change program that teaches inactive people the skills necessary to become physically active. The program will be every Monday for 12 weeks. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

TUESDAY, MARCH 3

BRAIN FITNESS. 10 - 10:45 a.m. Adults 18 and older are invited to enjoy short relaxation and brain enhancement exercises, ending with a mindfulness practice. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

TWEEN COLORING HOUR. 3:30 - 4:30 p.m. Grab a cool coloring page or try a fun reverse coloring project where you design the lines and shapes yourself. A librarian will be there to talk books and more. For ages 8 - 12. Registration is encouraged. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.sppl.net.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4

WOMEN OF WEYMOUTH. 11 a.m. This month’s featured speaker is Suzanne Adair with a lecture on “Oh Those Tea Parties: Edenton Tea Party.” The Great Room, Weymouth Center for

To add or delete an event, email us at pinestraw.calendar@gmail.com

the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org.

THURSDAY, MARCH 5

EDUCATIONAL TRAINING. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Adults 55 and older can come for educational training with a new topic each month. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

FRIDAY, MARCH 6

SENIOR TRIP. 8 a.m. - 3 p.m. Adults 55 and older can travel to Rocky River Vineyards for a wine tasting followed by lunch at Mt. Pleasant Smoke House. Cost is $27 for residents and $37 for nonresidents. Info: (910) 692-7376.

YOGA. 9 - 10 a.m. Ages 12 and older can come participate in a vinyasa flow to holds class. Train House, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpines.net.

LUNCH BUNCH. 11:30 a.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to dine on different cuisines each month visiting restaurants in the area. Carpool with friends or meet at the restaurant. Dining locations will be chosen the week before. Info: (910) 692-7376.

KARAOKE. 7 p.m. Bring your friends, family and co-workers. There’s no cover charge or fee to participate. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

SATURDAY, MARCH 7

CAMELLIA CLUB SHOW. 7 a.m. - 5 p.m. Bloom entry is from 7 - 9:30 a.m. Judging will be from 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. The show will be open to the public from 1 - 5 p.m. with educational demonstrations. Cape Fear Botanical Garden, 536 N. Eastern Blvd., Fayetteville.

KID’S SATURDAY. 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Families are invited to a monthly themed craft event to socialize and get creative. Geared toward ages 310. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-3642 or www.vopnc.org. GLASS WORKSHOP. 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Make your own miniature glass flower. Cost is $80. Advanced registration required. Starworks, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

MOTHERSHIP OF THE PINES. 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Kick off the season with a family field day for all ages. Location to be determined. Info: www.southernpines.net.

OUTDOOR YOGA. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Ages 12 and older can participate in an outdoor vinyasa flow to holds class. Downtown Park, 145 S.E. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpines.net. HORSE EVENT. Southern Pines Horse Trials. There will be arena jumping, dressage and cross country. Food trucks on-site. Event continues

through March 8. Carolina Horse Park, 2814 Montrose Road, Raeford. Info: www.carolinahorsepark.com.

CERAMIC WORKSHOP. 1 - 3 p.m. Make your own salt and pepper shakers. Registration required. Starworks, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

LIVE THEATER. 7 p.m. Red by Rhinoleap, live at Starworks. Performances will continue through March 22. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

SUNDAY, MARCH 8

CHAMBER SESSIONS. 2 p.m. Saxophonist Gabriel Sánchez Porras and pianist Elizabeth Loparits present a program showcasing saxophone and piano music from Latin America. The Great Room, Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org.

MONDAY, MARCH 9

PHOTO CLUB. 7 p.m. Sandhills Photo Club’s monthly meeting presents “How Did You Get That Shot?” by Betsy Wilson, who will discuss a variety of techniques to achieve unique and unusual images. Guests are welcome. Sandhills Horticultural Garden Ball Visitors Center, 3245 Airport Road, Southern Pines. Info: www.sandhillsphotoclub.org.

TUESDAY, MARCH 10

SHOPPING AND LUNCH. 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. Adults 55 and older can travel to Fayetteville for shopping at Hamrick’s followed by lunch. Cost is $4 for residents and $6 for non-residents. Info: (910) 692-7376.

HATHA YOGA. 10 - 11 a.m. Adults 55 and older can increase flexibility, balance, stability and muscle tone while learning the basic principles of alignment and breathing. Gain strength, improve circulation and reduce chronic pain practicing gentle yoga postures and mindfulness. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

AARP TALK. 12 - 12:30 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to join AARP for a fraud talk. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

IRISH FILM FESTIVAL. 2 - 4 p.m. Enjoy a showing of Riverdance for its 25th anniversary. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.sunrisetheater.com.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11

ACTIVE ADVENTURES FOR LITTLE ONES. 10 - 11 a.m. Kids ages 2 - 5 can join a fun gym session designed for homeschool students. There

will be interactive games and activities. Southern Pines Recreation Center, 160 Memorial Park Ct., Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpines.net.

TECH TIME. 11 a.m. Get hands-on help with tech questions at a walk-in tech time. Whether you’re new to computers, want to learn more about your smartphone, or want to learn how to use your eReader, staff will guide you. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: jmilford@sppl.net.

HOMESCHOOL FUN ZONE. 11:15 a.m.12:15 p.m. Enhance your curriculum and connect with other homeschool families. For ages 5 - 13. Southern Pines Recreation Center, 160 Memorial Park Ct., Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpines.net.

IRISH FILM FESTIVAL. 2 - 4 p.m. Enjoy a showing of The Commitments. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: w ww.sunrisetheater.com.

DOCUMENTARY. Turner & Constable, exhibition on screen. Cameo Art House Theatre, 225 Hay St., Fayetteville. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

THURSDAY, MARCH 12

POETRY READING CLUB. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m.

Adults 55 and older can bring a favorite poem or one you have written to share with friends. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CORNHOLE. 12 - 1 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to work on their aim and have some fun

with friends. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

IRISH FILM FESTIVAL. 2 - 4 p.m. Enjoy a showing of My Left Foot. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.sunrisetheater.com.

HOT GLASS, COLD BEER. 5:30 p.m. Attend a glass demonstration followed by live music and food trucks. Cost is $5. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

BOOK EVENT. 6 - 7 p.m. Mark Oppenheimer will be discussing his new biography, Judy Blume: A Life. The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

FRIDAY, MARCH 13

SPARK STORYTIME. 10 a.m. Join a special, once a month story time at Fire Station 82. Ages birth to 5 are welcome. Fire Station 82, 7850 NC-22, Carthage. Info: www.sppl.net.

SHOW AND TELL. 10:30 - 11:30 a.m. Take a trip down memory lane and share a piece of your past with others at a Senior Show and Tell. Celebrate stories, memories and make new friends at this fun event. You can register in advance by calling the library or visiting its website. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: mhoward@sppl.net.

CRAFT NIGHT. 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. Join a monthly community craft night. Free to join. Starworks, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

THEATER. 7 - 9 p.m. West Pine Middle School theater students present Aladdin Jr. There will be another performance on March 14 at 2 p.m. Southern Pines Land & Housing Trust Auditorium, 1250 W. New York Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

JAZZ. 7 - 9 p.m. The Arts Council of Moore County presents a jazz series featuring the Carrie Marshall Quintet. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.sunrisetheater.com.

SATURDAY, MARCH 14

HORSE EVENT. 8 a.m. - 2 p.m. Friends and neighbors day at the park. There will be a people’s steeplechase, chili cook-off and dog agility demonstration. Event continues through March 15. Carolina Horse Park, 2814 Montrose Road, Raeford. Info: www.carolinahorsepark.com.

ZOO TRIP. 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. Ages 13 - 17 are invited to visit the zoo and learn about our natural neighbors. Pack a lunch for picnicking or money for food. Cost is $29 for residents and $40 for nonresidents. Recreation Center, 160 Memorial Park Court, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

PARADE. 10 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. The village of Pinehurst will flood the streets with Irish spirit during the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. James W. Tufts Memorial Park, 1 Village Green Road W., Pinehurst. Info: www.vopnc.org.

CIDERFEST. 1 - 4 p.m. The North Carolina Cider Association presents the Bloomtime Ciderfest. Sample ciders from over 15 N.C. cideries, enjoy live music, orchard tours, food

trucks and more. Cost is $40 per person. James Creek Ciderhouse and Orchards, 172 U.S. 1, Cameron. Info: www.jamescreekciderhouse.com/ bloomtime-ciderfest.

CARTOON COLLECTION. 4:30 - 5:40 p.m. See a screening of classical cartoons from the Fleischer era. Cameo Art House Theatre, 225 Hay St., Fayetteville. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

LIVE MUSIC. 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. Nolan Goodwin, live in the cafe. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

MONDAY, MARCH 16

BEDDING PLANT PRE-SALE. Sandhills Community College Landscape Gardening and Turfgrass Management presents the bedding plant pre-sale. There will be a variety of vegetables, herbs and flowers. Info: www.sandhills.edu/ horticultural-gardens.

PICKLEBALL LESSONS. 4:30 p.m. Youth and adult pickleball lessons will be offered. For ages 5 and older. Memorial Park, 210 Memorial Park Ct., Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpines.net.

TUESDAY, MARCH 17

BRAIN FITNESS. 10 - 10:45 a.m. Adults 18 and older are invited to enjoy short relaxation and brain enhancement exercises, ending with a mindfulness practice. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BINGO. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to play 10 games of bingo. Cost is $4

for residents and $6 for non-residents. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

JAMES BOYD BOOK CLUB. 3 p.m. Enjoy a monthly book club. Free admission, but registration is requested. The Great Room, Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org.

TENNIS LESSONS. 4:30 p.m. Youth and adult tennis lessons will be offered. For ages 5 and older. Memorial Park, 210 Memorial Park Ct., Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpines.net.

TEEN BOOK CHAT AND CHILL. 5 p.m. Teens ages 13 and up can share a favorite book, discover new ones and connect with other teens. Enjoy a discounted coffee courtesy of Swank. Registration is encouraged. Swank Coffee Shoppe, 232 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.sppl.net.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18

BOOK EVENT. 6 - 7 p.m. Enjoy an evening with Spring Council, author of Southern Roots: Recipes and Stories From Mama Dip’s Daughter. The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

SNOW WHITE. 7 - 8 p.m. The ballet Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs features the music of Bogdan Pavlovsky and the dancers of the National Opera and Ballet of Ukraine. Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

5140 Dunstan Road, Greensboro, NC 27405 336-441-5189 fellowshiphall.com/admissions-now

THURSDAY, MARCH 19

HORSE EVENT. The 13th annual Carolina International CCI and Horse Trials. Event continues through March 22. Vendors and food trucks will be on-site. Carolina Horse Park, 2814 Montrose Road, Raeford. Info: www.carolinahorsepark.com.

GARDEN EVENT. 1 - 2 p.m. Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden at Monticello with presenter Peter Hatch. Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

MEET THE AUTHOR. 2 p.m. Author and journalist John Yewell draws on decades in journalism and a lifelong love of storytelling to explore The Botsworth Dossier. The Great Room, Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org.

OPEN MIC NIGHT. 7 p.m. Let your talents shine. Musical numbers, spoken word or other performances welcome. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

FRIDAY, MARCH 20

KIDS DAY OUT. 8 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. Kids ages 5 - 11 can join the recreation team for games, park visits, crafting and more. Bring a lunch and water. Cost is $42. Southern Pines Recreation Center, 160 Memorial Park Ct., Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpines.net.

MAINSTAGE SERIES. 7 - 8:30 p.m. Sheena Easton performs. BPAC, Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

VIDEO EXPERIENCE. 7 - 9 p.m. Electric Avenue: The ’80s MTV Video Experience. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.sunrisetheater.com.

SATURDAY, MARCH 21

GLASS WORKSHOP. 10 - 11:30 a.m. Make your own flower sun-catcher. Cost is $75. Registration required. Starworks, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

SPRING INTO READING. 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. The Spring into Reading event is a free, fun family event with vendors, crafts, activities and a costume contest. There is a special presentation of Tall Tales of Appalachia by Connor Gerney, in partnership with the Southern Pines Public Library and The Country Bookshop. On the lawn at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org.

PAGES OF THE PINES. 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. SPPL’s local author festival is back. Pages of the Pines will host local authors for teens and adults at the library. Chat with local authors, learn about their work. At 2:30 p.m., attend an author chat with Meagan Church. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.sppl.net.

MET OPERA. 12 - 5 p.m. Tristan und Isolde, an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.sunrisetheater.com.

PUPPY PALS LIVE. 5 - 6:30 p.m. Puppy Pals Live, the action packed comedic stunt dog show, returns.

BPAC, Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

DANCE. 6:30 - 9:30 p.m. Join the fun with Carolina Pines Dance Club for swing, shag, ballroom, Latin and line dances. Cost is $10 per person. Given Outpost/Roast Office, 95 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 331-9965.

TRIVIA NIGHT. 7 p.m. Bring a group of friends and meet new ones competing to see who has the most trivia knowledge. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

SUNDAY, MARCH 22

JAZZ. 2 p.m. Latino-American jazz pianist Joshua Espinoza and his trio blend jazz, classical, pop and folk music on the lawn at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www. weymouthcenter.org.

TRIBUTE CONCERT. 3 - 5 p.m. Enjoy an afternoon with the Sounds of Simon and Garfunkel, an authentic live tribute. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.sunrisetheater.com.

TUESDAY, MARCH 24

CREATIVITY CLUB. 3:45 p.m. Creativity Club at the fire station is a monthly program. This month is sculpting with clay. Activities are designed for kids in grades K-5 but are adaptable to other ages and abilities. Caregiver participation is required. Fire Station 82, 7850 NC-22, Carthage. Info:

www.southernpines.net/FormCenter/Library-11/ Creativity-Club-Registration-117.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25

DOG EGG HUNT. 10:30 - 11:30 a.m. Join Southern Pines Parks & Recreation staff for paw painting, fun activities, treats and pictures with the Easter Bunny. The event will conclude with a dog egg hunt. Martin Park, 350 Commerce Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

ACTION HOUR IN THE GYM. 11:15 a.m.12:15 p.m. Kids ages 2 - 12 can enjoy open play in the gym. Southern Pines Recreation Center, 160 Memorial Park Ct., Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpines.net.

THURSDAY, MARCH 26

CONCERT. 7 - 9 p.m. The Infamous Stringdusters are coming for one night only. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.sunrisetheater.com.

FRIDAY, MARCH 27

VEGETABLE PRESENTATION. 10 a.m. Join the Southern Pines Public Library and the N.C. Cooperative Extension for a session on “Growing Vegetables in the Sandhills.” Topics include which vegetables grow well in the region, seedstarting tips, and common insects and diseases local gardeners encounter. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.sppl.net.

MUSIC BINGO. 6 p.m. Enjoy playing music bingo.

Free to play. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

FLASHLIGHT EGG HUNT. 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. Ages 12 and under can have fun with crafts, a flashlight egg hunt and much more. Bring your camera for a picture with the Easter bunny. Don’t forget to bring a flashlight for the egg hunt at 7 p.m. Recreation Center, 160 Memorial Park Ct., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

SATURDAY, MARCH 28

CRAFT DAYS. Children and families can come by the library for a drop-in craft day to work on a fun, hands-on craft at their own pace. Crafts are designed for children in grades K-5 and their families. This is a self-guided activity, so caregivers should plan to assist as needed. While supplies last. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

BLOOMING ART. 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. There will be an abundance of flowers and art on display as the Garden Club of the Sandhills ushers in the spring season. Arts Council Galleries at Campbell House, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

EGG HUNT. 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Kids ages 9 and under can participate in the annual Easter egg hunt. There will be additional family activities, food and beverages and a visit from the Easter bunny. Cannon Park, 90 Woods Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.vopnc.org.

THEATER. 2 - 4 p.m. Sandhills Repertory Theater

presents The Music of Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.sunrisetheater.com.

HORSE EVENT. March Magic Dressage. The event continues through March 29. Carolina Horse Park, 2814 Montrose Road, Raeford. Info: www.carolinahorsepark.com.

SUNDAY, MARCH 29

STEAM. 2:30 - 3:30 p.m. Elementary-aged children and their caregivers are invited to learn about topics in science, technology, engineering, art and math, and to participate in STEAM projects and activities. This month join a zipline challenge. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

MONDAY, MARCH 30

CLASSICAL CONCERT SERIES. 7:30 - 8 p.m. The Arts Council’s classical concert series presents the Galvin Cello Quartet. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

TUESDAY, MARCH 31

WELLNESS CLASSES. 10 - 11:30 a.m. Adults 18 and older are invited to learn about different educational topics improve the overall mind, body and spirit. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

ADULT EGG HUNT. 12 - 1 p.m. Adults 55 and

older can come for games and crafts followed by an Easter egg hunt. Cost is $2 for residents and $3 for non-residents. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

UPCOMING EVENTS

THURSDAY, APRIL 2

AUTHOR EVENT. 6 - 7 p.m. Pinehurst native and PineStraw magazine columnist Bill Fields will discuss his memoir, A Quick Nine Before Dark: A Life in Golf. Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

FRIDAY, APRIL 10

PRISCILLA PRESLEY. 7 - 8:15 p.m. Priscilla Presley — An Evening of Magic, Memories and Truth. Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

SUNDAY, APRIL 12

POP UP IN THE PINES. 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. Pop up in the Pines returns with live music, food trucks and more. Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.popupinthepines.com.

WEEKLY EVENTS

MONDAYS

CHAIR YOGA. 9 - 10 a.m. For adults 55 and older. Help offset body aches encountered with desk work. This is an accessible yoga class for

bodies not able to easily get up from and down to the floor. Do standing or sitting in a chair. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

JIGSAW PUZZLES. 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. Adults 55 and older can enjoy puzzle fun with friends or solo. Free of charge. Puzzles can be done Monday through Friday. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

FITNESS MEMBERSHIP. 9 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Adults 55 and older can use a variety of equipment such as treadmills, free weights, stationery bikes and more. Cost for a six-month membership is $18 for residents and $26 for non-residents. The fitness room is open Monday through Friday. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

INDOOR WALKING. 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Adults 55 and older can get an indoor walking membership in the climate controlled gym. Membership can be used Monday through Friday. Cost for a six-month ’s is $18 for residents and $26 for nonresidents. Southern Pines Recreation Center, 160 Memorial Park Ct., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

SENIOR FITNESS. 11 a.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to a TruFit gym class to improve strength, mobility and flexibility. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

RESTORATIVE YOGA. 12 p.m. For adults 55

and older. Practice gentle movements to improve well-being, alleviate pain and improve circulation. Bring your own mat. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

GAME ON. 12 - 1 p.m. For adults 55 and older. You and your friends are invited to play various games such as corn hole, badminton, table tennis, shuffleboard, trivia games and more. Each week enjoy a different activity to keep moving and thinking. Compete with friends and make new ones all for free. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

TAI CHI. 1 - 2 p.m. Adults 55 and older can take a Tai Chi 8 and Beijing 24 forms class. The classes continue every Monday through May 27. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BRIDGE. 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Enjoy games of bridge with friends. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

TUESDAYS

VIRTUAL SPINNING CLASS. 8:30 - 9 a.m. Adults 18 and older can do a 30-minute bike workout. Limit of seven people per class. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

INTERVAL WALKING. 9:15 - 9:45 a.m. Adults

18 and older can alternate between periods of brisk and slow walking. Free of charge. No class on the second Tuesday of the month. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

PLAYFUL LEARNING. 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. Come for a drop-in, open playtime for ages 0 - 3 years to interact with other children and have educational playtime. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-3642.

BABY RHYMES. 10:15 a.m. Baby Rhymes is designed for the youngest learners (birth- 2) and their caregivers. Repetition and comforting movements make this story time perfect for early development and brain growth. An active library card is required. Dates this month are March 3, 10, 17, 24 and 31. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

GAME DAY. 12 - 4 p.m. Fun, fellowship, games and activities. For adults 55 and older. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CHESS. 1:30 - 5 p.m. Join a chess group, whether you have been playing for a while or have never played. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15-501, West End.

TABLE TENNIS. 3 - 5 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to enjoy free games of table tennis while making new friends. The second Tuesday of the month games will be played on Thursday instead. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

LINE DANCE. 4:45 p.m. Put on your dancing shoes and line dance. This is for beginners and is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15-501, West End.

WEDNESDAYS

INTERVAL WALKING. 9:15 - 9:45 a.m. Adults 18 and older can alternate between periods of brisk and slow walking. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CHAIR AEROBICS. 10 - 11 a.m. For adults 55 and older. Stand and chair dance to this energizing, lowimpact aerobic workout. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BRAIN BOOST. 10 - 11 a.m. Test your memory while creating new brain connections. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15-501, West End.

KNITTING. 10 - 11 a.m. Enjoy knitting with other people or learn how to knit. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15-501, West End.

BABY STORYTIME. 10 - 11 a.m. Have fun developing the foundation for your baby’s later reading with stories, songs and play. Open to parents and caregivers of infants from newborn to 24 months. Moore County Library, 101 W. Saunders St., Carthage. Info: (910) 947-5335.

LEARN AND PLAY. 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Enjoy an open play date with your toddler or preschooler where there will be developmental toys and puzzles

as well as early literacy tips. Dates this month are March 4, 11, 18 and 25. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

SENIOR FITNESS. 11 a.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to a TruFit gym class to improve strength, mobility and flexibility. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

PIANO. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Join Flint Long to play piano or just listen. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15501, West End.

LINE DANCING. 12 - 1 p.m. Looking for new ways to get your daily exercise in and care for yourself? Try line dancing. For adults 55 and older. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CHAIR VOLLEYBALL. 1 - 2 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Get fit while having fun. Free to participate. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BRIDGE. 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. Enjoy games of bridge with friends. All materials included. For adults 55 and older. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

DANCE. 2 - 2:30 p.m. Instructor Maria Amaya will introduce you to dance fitness in this class designed for anyone who wants to gently and gradually increase cardio function, mobility and balance and have fun at the same time. For adults 55 and older. Free of charge. Douglass

Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

LINE DANCING. 2 p.m. The town of Vass will host line dancing for seniors every other Wednesday. Cost is $5 per session. Vass Town Hall, 140 S. Alma St., Vass. Info: www.townofvassnc.gov.

TAI CHI. 2 - 3 p.m. Adults 55 and older can take a Tai Chi 8 and Beijing 24 forms class. The classes continue every Wednesday through May 27. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

LIBRARY PROGRAM. 3:30 p.m. At The Library After School (ATLAS) is an after-school program for children ages kindergarten through second grade who enjoy activities, crafts, stories and meeting new friends. Dates this month are March 4, 11, 18 and 25. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net

TAI CHI. 6:30 p.m. Come learn tai chi. There is no age limit and the classes are open to the public. Cost is $10 per class. Seven Lakes West Community Center, 556 Longleaf Drive, Seven Lakes. Info: (910) 400-5646.

THURSDAYS

VIRTUAL SPINNING CLASS. 8:30 - 9 a.m. Adults 18 and older can do a 30-minute bike workout. Limit of seven people per class. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

MARCH 20

12 NOON

Bach’s Lunch

“Olivet to Calvary” with Emmanuel Choir

AT EMMANUEL EPISCOPAL CHURCH

TRADITIONAL SPOKEN EASTER SERVICE 7:00AM SUNDAY, APRIL 5

EASTER SERVICE TIMES

CHORAL EASTER EUCHARIST bring a flower to flower the cross 8:00AM

CHILDREN’S EGG HUNT & TREATS 9:15AM

CHORAL EASTER EUCHARIST with incense 10:00AM

MARCH 29

PALM SUNDAY

8:00am Spoken Holy Eucharist

9:45am Blessing of the Palms & Procession from Downtown Park 10:00am Holy Eucharist

APRIL 2 6:00PM Maundy Thursday Holy Eucharist, Foot-washing and Stripping of the Altar

MOORE COUNTY FARMERS MARKET.

9 a.m. - 1 p.m. The year-round market features “producer only” vendors within a 50-mile radius providing fresh, local and seasonal produce, fruits, pasture meats, eggs, potting plants, cut flowers and local honey. Market is located at the Armory Sports Complex, 604 W. Morganton Road, Southern Pines.

GIVEN STORY TIME. 10 a.m. Bring your preschooler to enjoy stories, songs and activities. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-3642.

BALANCE AND FLEXIBILITY. 10 - 11 a.m.

Adults 55 and older are invited to enjoy a class that will help reduce the risk of taking a tumble and increase your ability to recover if you do. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

MUSIC AND MOTION. 10:15 and 10:45 a.m. Does your toddler like to move and groove? Join to get those wiggles out and work on motor skills. For ages 2 - 5. An active library card is required. Dates this month are March 5, 12, 19 and 26. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

GENTLE YOGA. 12:30 - 1:30 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to unwind, recharge and find peace in your week. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

MAHJONG. 1 - 3 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Mahjong involves skill, strategy, calcula-

tion and luck. Requires four players. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

IMPROVERS LINE DANCE. 3 - 5:30 p.m. Put on your dancing shoes and line dance. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15-501, West End.

LITTLE U. 3:45 p.m. A preschool program for children ages 3 1/2 – 5 with stories, songs, rhymes and activities that explore the world of books, language and literacy, designed to help preschoolers develop early literacy skills in preparation for kindergarten and beyond. Dates this month are March 5, 12, 19 and 26. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 6928235 or www.sppl.net.

FRIDAYS

AEROBIC DANCE. 9 - 10 a.m. For adults 55 and older. Enjoy this low-to-moderate impact class with energizing music for an overall cardio and strength workout. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

JAM SESSION. 9:30 - 11:30 a.m. Do you like to play an instrument, sing or just listen to music? Join a music jam session. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15-501, West End.

TAP CLASS. 10 - 11:30 a.m. For adults 55 and older. All levels welcome. Cost for six-month membership: $18/resident; $26/non-resident. Douglass

Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

SENIOR FITNESS. 11:30 a.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to a TruFit gym class to improve strength, mobility and flexibility. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

QIGONG. 1 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Classes will consist of chair and standing movements that can help soothe achy feet, tight hips, lower back pain and ease restriction in mobility. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BRIDGE. 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Enjoy games of bridge with friends. All materials included. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

DRUM CIRCLE. 2 - 3 p.m. Adults 18 and older can feel the rhythm, find their groove and connect through beat. No experience necessary. Free. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

SATURDAYS

MOORE COUNTY FARMERS MARKET. 8 a.m. - 12 p.m. The market features “producer only” vendors within a 50-mile radius providing fresh, local and seasonal produce, fruits, pasture meats, eggs, potting plants, cut flowers and local honey. The market begins March 14 and runs through Nov. 21. Downtown Southern Pines, 156 S.E. Broad St., Southern Pines. PS

PineNeedler Answers from page 127

Monday, March 30 • 7:30 Sunrise Theater

Back by popular demand, the GALVIN CELLO QUARTET returns to Moore County with their untamable desire to bring joy through music and to explore and expand the possibilities of the cello quartet. The group takes its name from Galvin Recital Hall at Northwestern University where three of its original members met as students and then captured the Silver Medal at the 2021 Fischoff Competition, followed by winning the 2022 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition. Based on the response to their incredible concert here in 2024, Galvin is well on the way to fulfilling the group’s mission to establish the cello quartet as a core part of the classical music world.

March to the Gallery

Exhibit March 6 - 27

Opening Reception

Friday, March 6 • 5:00-7:00

The March exhibit will showcase the work of Artists League members in a variety of styles and mediums. Join us for the opening reception or stop in during the month to view the largest selection of fine art in the Sandhills with 34 studios and hundreds of available paintings to view. The Artists League of the Sandhills is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1994 to promote interest in the visual arts by providing art education and a friendly environment in which to work, exhibit and sell members’ art.

Skin Me (acrylic) Carol Gradwohl-Monday & Tuesday, March 23, 24 10:00-2:30 $106

Discovering Color - Beth Ybarra-Thursday & Friday, April 23, 24, 10:00-2:00 $106

Something Different(drawing)-Bonnie Bessette-Wednesday, March 25, 1:00-3:00 $24

The Mechanics of Drawing the Face and Hands-Linda Bruening-March 19, 26, April 9, 10, 9:30-11:30 $97

Black and White Landscape Drawing-Bob Way-Monday & Tuesday, April 6, 7, 9:30-4:30 $156

Drawing Basics II-Laureen Kirk-Monday & Tuesday, April 20, 21, 10:00-3:00 $82/$92/$101

Scratchboard for Beginners/Intermediate-Emma Wilson-Monday, March 9, 10:00-2:30 $68

Weaving Free Style & Patterns-Connie Genuardi-Tuesday, March 10, 10:30-3:30 $60

Photo by Joseph Hill

SandhillSeen

Martin Luther King March

Southern

Pines

Saturday, January 17, 2026

Photographs by Diane McKay & Ted Fitzgerald

Jay Cole, Anne Halway

Anthony McCauley, Zaye Harris

Sandhills Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

Zachary & Jennifer Riley, Heidi & Henry

The Mason Family

Caring Citizens of Moore County

Tayshawn & Tasha Daniel, Joyce Chambers, Tamia Barrett

March PineNeedler Check

Across

1. Where a family lives

5. Musical production

10. RDA count

14. Extremely long time periods

15. RDA count

16. Tempt

17. Allows

18. Dwelling

19. Upon

20. Spiked hairstyles

22. Francis __

23. Affirmative

24. Reasoning

27. RDA count

30. RDA count

33. “Step ____,” move

34. Not ’fer

35. Information

37. Deface

38. Hand wear

39. Facial twitch

40. Apiece

42. Healing plant

43. Representative

45. Punishes

47. Letter styles

48. Shakers and movers

49. Time period

50. RDA count

53. RDA count

57. Canal

58. Hall

61. Visage

62. Game cubes

63. ___-Lay, chip brand

64. Consumer

65. Adam’s garden

66. Lil’ __ (cartoon character)

67. Make over

Down

1. Steering mechanism

2. Dunking cookies

3. School subject

4. Wrote

5. Japanese city

6. Taverns

7. Freudian term

8. Really cool

9. To be

10. Floppy

11. Motor vehicle

12. Horse’s gait

13. Fall mo.

21. “As you __”

22. Title of respect

24. Shallow ponds

25. Martini garnishes

26. Away

27. Glory

28. Abraham’ s son

29. White barked tree

30. Telephone dialer

31. Eroded, in a way

32. Period of work

36. Parts of plays

38. Fence opening

41. Was (2 wds.)

43. Hairdo

44. Angora (2 wds.)

46. Distress call

49. Mistake

50. Surrender

51. Dry

52. Japanese staple

53. “Texas ___,” hot sauce

54. Loosen

55. Chilled

56. Roman emperor

58. School agricultural group, for short

59. Sphere

60. Yang

partner

Sole Searching Finding just the right fit

By EmilEE P hilliPs

The outfit begins with the shoes. Everyone knows this. Even in my tomboy years when my sense of personal style went no further than hating the color pink and having a small but mighty hoodie collection, it was true. I needed nothing more than a beat-up pair of Chuck Taylor Converse to anchor the look.

Today my boyfriend would kindly direct your attention to the fully loaded shoe rack that’s taller than I am, but somewhere between then and now I came to love fashion for the same reason I enjoy writing — it tells a story.

Oh, those Chuck Taylors. I loved the flat sneakers because they were easy and unintimidating and they went with everything. One year, I saved up birthday money to buy a pair of the customized Chuck Taylor Converse online. Today the options are more limited, but back then 11-year-old me was able to construct a pair of the most obnoxious high tops that have ever been laced up.

My favorite color was teal, so naturally that was my primary choice. The tongue and heel stripe accents sported lime green. I even had “Emilee” sewn onto the heels. I thought it made me en vogue though in reality it looked like something your mom would write in your underwear at sleepaway camp. What did I care? I was running off the fumes of a high octane mixture of teal and lime green.

The look was dealt a minor setback since my pre-teen feet had grown faster than what was living above them. My disproportionately large feet made my au courant Chuck Taylors look like clown shoes. My dad took one look at my bright new kicks and

busted out laughing. “Nice water skis,” he chuckled. But nothing could rain on my parade. I wore those shoes every day, no matter how poorly they matched the rest of me, until the holes in the bottoms let the rain in.

By the time my size eight feet no longer mismatched the girl, I had evolved. Somewhere, somehow, I had acquired what passed for taste. While my current shoe rack is admittedly large, the threshold for “too much” is, I believe, subjective.

My sister gets it. She has shoes for every outing. It’s not all about fashion, practicality requires a healthy mix. What if you need to make jeans look fancy? What if it snows? What if you’re going to a Dropkick Murphys concert? What if you’re in a step count challenge with a friend and need to walk 10,000 steps in a day? What if you have to line dance in a pub in Savannah? What if you’re at a ’60s-themed party? What if you get invited to a brunch you know will turn into a sightseeing tour of the city? What if you’re walking through a fish market? What if you’re going to the ballet? What if you have to chase a rolling lime down a grocery store aisle with dignity? What if you’re on a cobblestone street? What if you’re hiking on a muddy trail in Asheville? Pure white Hokas wouldn’t stand a chance, which is why you need multiple colors: one pair for getting mucked up and one for everything else.

My current shoe rack might look like a small storage unit, but every pair has a purpose. Whether they’re painfully impractical heels that I’ve only worn once or sneakers that I could walk across the desert in, they each have a history, from an impulse buy to the perfect pumps I found at the end of the internet. And if that makes me obsessive? Fine. But at least I’ll be obsessively prepared — for weddings, walks and maybe even water skiing. PS

Emilee Phillips manages PineStraw’s social media.