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Greetings from Carrboro, There needs to be a hotline. Like the Butterball cooking gurus you can call on Thanksgiving Day to save the meal when you’re terrified that your all-important turkey may be doomed. Some kind soul to talk you off the holiday ledge. Because Valentine’s Day seriously needs guardrails to keep you from skidding […]

Greetings from Carrboro, My grandmother loved to fish. In the summer, she’d assemble rods and bait after breakfast. Then we’d march across cow pastures and over barbed-wire fences to test our collective luck in some neighboring farm pond. But mostly she caught the fish – spot and bream, a rare catfish. The rest of us […]

Greetings from Carrboro, New Year’s resolutions can be a lot like those games at the state fair; failure is pretty much baked in the cake. Yes, I know, it is possible that you’ll learn Italian by the end of the year. Or that you’ll go through your phone and delete all the unwanted photos from the last […]

Greetings from Carrboro, What if it was HA HA HA? Can you imagine? Somehow Santa wouldn’t be, well, Santa. And god knows, having jolly St. Nick chortle HE HE HE would be so-so-so much worse. Because there’s no doubt that the man with the bag needs a certain trustworthy gravitas. He already dresses oddly, knows […]

Greetings from Carrboro, There’s got to be some merry app for the Advent Calendar. Some dose of digital optimism promising a carefree holiday with lots of playful elf emojis and to-do lists and jolly reminders to check it twice. As if December could be wrapped so neatly. As if the Christmas snowball that starts rolling […]

Greetings from Carrboro, It’s a lot. There is, of course, the tree extravaganza. And the never-ending shopping. Then there’s cookies to bake, parties to oh-so-merrily attend, rambunctious children to nightly sedate. Not to mention the rest of your life that rushes forward towards the new year unabated. I get the sense that Rex – the […]

Greetings from Carrboro, He called it a gin and tonic. And I do believe that both of those things were in the glass. Along with some ice and a submerged lime wedge. But this was no hi-ball glass or tumbler. This thing he handed to me was more akin to a footed terrarium. And the […]

Greetings from Carrboro, It’s definitely not a gold watch. But on someone’s last day at Acme, they get a very nice whipped cream pie. In the face. The planning is intense, the plotters always scheming to figure out who the victim would least expect to deliver the blow. And honestly, they will be pied (yes, […]

Greetings from Carrboro, I don’t have a tattoo. Though not completely on purpose. There was a hot minute when I debated getting a Duke’s Mayonnaise tramp stamp. Then I remembered the process was unquestionably painful and my feverish yearning quickly, um, cooled. And anyway, I have kids – even tatted up kids – that mark […]

Greetings from Carrboro, I say it pretty often – as if it’s connected to a common experience and not – in fact – utterly impossible. “Why don’t we kill two birds with one stone.” Let me be clear: I’ve never killed even one bird with one stone. Or with any other projectile for that matter. […]