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Greetings from Carrboro, Hope is a fragile thing. As my father would say, “That and 25 cents will buy you a cup of coffee.” My dad liked to play the role of the familial pragmatist; it was his paternal armor. Whether explaining that every beer was exactly the same or the “scientific” fact that successful people […]

Greetings from Carrboro, We try. But North Carolina doesn’t really get “festive.” It’s just not part of our social DNA. Most of our festivals are awash in the requisite homespun pottery, strawberry jam, and wood carvings of cute farm animals. And Raleigh’s annual nighttime shindig is to gather and watch a rather large man-made acorn slowly […]

Greetings from Carrboro, He’d stop religiously. Whether it was cement-block houses on the edge of small farming towns between Charlotte and Myrtle Beach or store fronts in run-down business districts, the colorful, hand-painted signs drew him like a moth to a flame. Tea leaves, crystal balls, coffee grounds, palms – he couldn’t get enough. The […]

Greetings from Carrboro, Oh, 2020. I should’ve read the fine print and swiped left. Your profile promises of a wild ride mixed with excellent cocktails and unlimited Netflix and chill got me, though. Admittedly, the word “pandemic” down at the bottom should have set off alarms. But, hey, that’s all Monday morning quarterback stuff now. […]

Greetings from Carrboro, There isn’t a consensus around timing. At least our limited survey doesn’t offer one. Some families have their big Christmas meal on the 24th and then spend the 25th in pajamas eating cookies and fudge and watching Die Hard. Others choose something easy for Christmas Eve so that any requisite wrapping actually is […]

Greetings from Carrboro, It’s a holiday tradition. Though, to be honest, I can’t point to the exact day on the advent calendar. But it seems to always be about now. Quite religiously I wake up one morning and abandon a good 60% of what I’d hoped to accomplish pre-Christmas. It’s not the crazy stuff like handmade wreaths and […]

Greetings from Carrboro, I’ll give it to you straight; I really, really don’t like Jingle Bell Rock. At all. Even with Earth, Wind, and Fire re-releasing September as December to cash in on Christmas, Jingle Bell Rock is still the season’s anthem most likely to make me visibly cringe. Somehow blatantly co-opting and corrupting the name of a classic holiday song makes it […]

Greetings from Carrboro, One by one, she brought them home from Chapel Hill. I imagine each recipe as her quixotic attempt at 70’s-style culinary enlightenment for our poor southern souls. Peace, Love, and the Moosewood Cookbook. I distinctly remember the ratatouille. And several run-ins with various renditions of chickpeas that required stealthily devoured pre-dinner ham […]

Greetings from Carrboro, I could only see the smallest part. A hard brown nub about six, maybe seven feet up. I pulled myself onto a branch and stared at it for what must have been 20 minutes. Until then my sole tangible measure of time was the clearly dated pencil lines on the frame of […]