North Hills Beach Music Party 2014

The big party is here! North Hills beach music Thursday nights began with The Embers a few weeks ago and continued with the Fantastic Shakers last Thursday. The Guccis (sans socks) are shined and ready to go! Even though I've written about it previously, each year, the party seems to get better and better. Still haven't discovered it? Find out more here....

Trailer Trad Living: One of the Few Poems Every Man Should Read

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

The Trad, Manly Art of Saying YOLO: Go To Hell Pants, Scandanavian Style

Loud pants on a curling team seems as out of place as a loud speaker at a croquet match. And what group of people would you LEAST expect to wear something outlandish like Go To Hell pants? Yep, Scandinavians. Perhaps those things are what make the Norwegian Curling Team the curiousity/sensation that it is.

The Trad, Manly Art of Saying YOLO* Part One: Durham Academy Is NOW the Coolest School in the State. Sorry Little Bean.

There is so much to like here. The classic North Carolina combo of gingham shirt and bow tie. The official US Olympic Team 2014 sweater. Creativity and mad skills to pay the bills. But it's the style and audacity of dropping rhymes during a school closure announcement that sends kids a message.

That message is that it is not all about test scores and fitting in all of the time. Sometimes properly living life requires the ability, the discipline and the courage to say "What the 'F,' let's go for it." Not despite it being silly---BECAUSE it's silly. The second crucial life skill that these great principles are demonstrating is the ability to laugh at one's self and to say "and if you don't like it, go to hell." -The kids may not have had class but they learned a lot from this announcement.


*YOLO is an acronymn meaning You Only Live Once.

Trailer Trad Living: My Funny Friend Ke

For the first time after 450 blog posts (believe or not), I would like to introduce you to a real person, not more antiques and vintage clothes. Everyone, meet my beautiful, funny friend Ke.

Trailer Trad Living: New Year, New Friends and New Food (Traditional, Old World Lasagna)

Over the Holidays, a friend taught me a great traditional recipe for lasagna. The family recipe is hundreds of years old and is often served at Christmas. She says that a touch of cinnamon is sprinkled for a seasonal touch-What's more trad than that! 

Here it goes according to my good friend from Boston. 

If tomatoes are not fresh or in season, use a decent large of can of crushed tomatoes. Either use twelve tomatoes lightly boiled in water to make them easy to skin. If tomatoes are out of season, use two large cans of crushed tomatoes.

In a large sauce pot, cook at least six Italian sausages. Lightly brown the sausage in a few teaspoons of butter. Add several bulbs of garlic and a whole chopped onion until translucent. Add crushed tomatoes and a half cup of water. Simmer for a minimum of five hours covered.

Most people boil their lasagna pasta beforehand. -Waste of time and energy. Dish sauce into a pan. Place lasagna (uncooked) and cover with Ricotta (16 oz). Add two eggs and one tablespoon of Parmesan.

Layer Ricotta, pasta and gravy until five layers. Bake at 350 for an hour.

Steeple Chase Weekend: Montpelier Races 2013

I had a terrific time on the first Saturday in November at the Montpelier Races. It was held at the historic home of James and Dolly Madison in Orange County as it has been since the 1930s at least. The weather was glorious, the Virginia hardwoods were on fire with color and it was great to see family and friends for a time honored annual ritual. I actually, through some miracle, won a wager placed on one of the races (I picked the horse with the word 'awesome' in the name). I think its safe to say that everyone was a winner that afternoon.  

Blue Boy strikes again! I pulled an old favorite tie out of the closet to hit just the right note. People looked at the big bluish blobs on my club tie and asked "What ARE those?" expecting some equestrian motif appropriate for the Races. "It's Rembrandt's Blue Boy, of course." -A little confusion never hurt anyone.

 

 

 

 

Steeple Chase Weekend: The Farm House Homebase for the Weekend

My trip to Virginia from Raleigh was very pleasant indeed. Good friends made excellent arrangements for the weekend. For our home base, they found a nice farmhouse in the middle of  a working farm complete with horses. It was very lovely and quiet and not far from my mom's childhood home in Somerset.

 

It actually was quite close to the Montpelier Races themselves but, through my 'locals' mastery of the countryside, I managed to steer them way out of the way on our drive there. Oh well, no one was rushing and the scenery was perfect. Plus, the Mennonite market Yoder's provided us with great tailgate contributions (a FIVE POUND apple cake and a pumpkin roll cake) that were graciously accepted by the hostess.

 This was the main house while we stayed down the hill in a little 19th century farm house that was perfect for the task.
 
 Sunny, perfect afternoons started out on the chilly side that were perfect for morning strolls with the dog.

 
 
 Is it me, or does Virginia STILL do classic, hunt country style better than North Carolina? Or anywhere else? Hand-me-down furnishings and second-hand books made for comfortable, familiar surroundings.
 
 
 

Young Women and Leadership Part 1: It's Camp Time Again for Lil' Bean

It's camp time again for Lil' Bean (who's not so little any more) and time has flown. -She's already been there for two weeks! While I've shown you a little of the her beautiful waterfront camp in eastern, coastal Carolina, there's lots more fun things and beautiful sights that I didn't show here.

The camp helps girls become young ladies and young ladies become leaders. And what great leaders they are! This leadership is perhaps the most valuable, irreplaceable thing about my daughter's camp. It is evident in the people that staff the camp, the people that administer the camp and the people that guide and support the camp from Raleigh and elsewhere

The girls are carefully, gracefully, enthusiastically taught all of the good things. There are too many to list. The young women that counsel in the cabins provide such a welcoming, caring environment that it's almost impossible not to get caught up in the boating, crafts, and lets not forget KP duty and cleaning the bathrooms.

 

My daughter's camp is a most impressive effort and being able to send my daughter there has been a great privilege.

 

 

 

 

Roland Garros 2012: Four Champions Molding Clay Into Art (Reshown)

(Editors note: this is from last year but, really, very little has changed. -Should be an awesome Roland Garros 2013)

The stars have aligned for tennis' Big Four to wage an extended, epic campaign across Europe this summer, beginning with Roland Garros going on now in Paris. The sport's pinnacle is populated by a quartet of gentleman who each, in their own unique ways, offer sporting audiences what many have long missed.

We live in a time of great tennis champions but, sadly, that is often overlooked by the mainstream sports media which focuses on the machinations of big business team sports. Sport, even at the college level, has been reduced to a commodity to be bought and traded, wagered and weighed. This has led to too many televised games and too little real drama and interest for the casual viewer like me.

In attempts to remedy this, manufactured melodrama like ESPN human interest pieces like Outside The Lines seem designed to generate real fan interest in what has long been a very migratory, mercenary endeavour which leaves fans like me increasingly detached. So, either the action has been compressed into Sports Center clips or the games drag on and on. And those sports writers who are interested in real sports drama seem stuck in time warped sports eddies like baseball or boxing. This may be because it often seems sports like baseball are more about looking back than enjoying greatness today.

Where are the intense battles waged upon epic stages that are tailor made for the typewritten sports column or the beautifully photographed coffee table book? Baseball used to be that sport, certainly, but where can one look to find that mix of emotion, ballet and aggressive kinetic force applied to a ball?

Today's men's professional tennis is that sport and there are a number of reasons for this. While the U.S. often still sees its best athletes go to bigger money team sports, the rest of the world has seen some of the very best athletic talent gravitating toward tennis while, at the same time, tennis fitness and strength training have been made a huge priority for everyone from high school players to touring pros. On top of that, athletic performance is correlated to practice and tennis players practice ball striking much, much more than any other major sport. From a cocktail napkin calculation, I would guess that a junior tennis player strikes a bill with his racquet well over a million times by the time he ARRIVES in high school. For the most talented, this type of repetitive hitting practice translates into amazing shot-making feats displayed during matches. 
Men's tennis has not always been what it is now. I played high school and college tennis and all facets of the game; from fitness to coaching to strength training to equipment, have vastly improved. Also, the way the game was played was different. Tennis in the 1940s, say, was all-court and featured volleying with baseline rallies but it had a slower pace and a 'badminton' feel about it. Today's women's tennis is stricken with the same problem, in my opinion. This is because it is dominated by methodical base liners who belt the ball back and forth and eventually net it or hit it wide. -Not too exciting, sometimes. Men's tennis in the past was also dominated by big serve and volley players like Pete Sampras. While this could be exciting, it could also be kind of boring due to all of the aces and balls hit wide.

That changed with Andre Agassi in the Early Nineties where aggression and pin-point accuracy met. He ushered in our current era where top ATP players are part magician and part diplomat who travel the world spreading the word about what the sport offers to today's sports fan. While players  had long been international stars such as John McEnroe, this new breed just seems classier both on the court and off. This led the way for the arrival of The Meistro, Rafa and Nole. These three have won an incredible 27 of the last 28 Majors.
Roger Federer is, and will probably always be, my favorite tennis player because he brought the game into the 21st Century by pulling from its past (if you think I don't have an allegiance, check out my socks). An absurd combination of athletic brilliance and elegance, he is the perfect bridge between the past, present and future. His all court game would be right at home with that of Bill Tilden or Don Budge but brought up to the Digital Age. His strokes are classic yet modern in their engineering. It seems fitting that he endorses Rolex - Swiss, classic perfection. -His off court demeanor is no less elegant. If James Bond ever took up tennis professionally, he would BE Roger Federer. A finalist at Roland Garros in 2011, Roger has the best record on the tour since the US Open. 

Raphael Nadal is perhaps the Anti-Federer. Defending and six-time champ Rafael Nadal is ranked No. 2, after beating top-seeded Novak Djokovic in the finals in Rome on May 21. He is fiery on the court, yet gracious to a fault. His game is that of a Spanish bull, inhuman endurance and will coupled with unequaled torque applied to the ball from his leftie ground strokes. Those who have never played advanced level tennis simply cannot understand what an oppressive advantage his ground strokes are. His corkscrew, leftie serve and strokes spin THE OPPOSITE direction from 'normal' strokes while the brick heavy top spin must be counter-acted ON EVERY SHOT returned back to Nadal. Throw in his incredible endurance over five sets in a major like Roland Garros and his invincibility on clay becomes understandable. 
Novac Djokovic has bettered both players over the last 24 months with his own unique style and personality. He has won the last three Majors but has never reached the final in Paris. His athletic gifts are absolutely incredible. His fitness is amazing while his variety and mastery of every conceivable tennis shot is jaw-dropping. If you had a room full of super computers, one could not replicate the calculations necessary to generate one of Djokovic's backhand drives to his opponent's baseline or touch volleys just out of reach of his opponent's outstretched racquet head. Off the court, he is perhaps the best natural comedian in sports today and does spot-on impersonations of everyone from Nadal to Sharapova. Novac takes the game, but not himself, very seriously.
That's the Big Three. But there's a fourth wild card just waiting to be dealt into the mix this summer. Andy Murray is similar to all three of these gentleman but very different. Arguably, he's as strong as Nadal, as pinpoint accurate as Djokovic and has the strategic court sense of Federer. Plus, he's a little pugnacious. A boxing aficionado, Murray relishes the combat of the sport and is prone to fiery outbursts aimed at himself or perhaps his coach. There's definitely a little 'Willie The Groundskeeper' in Scot Andy Murray! Like a Kentucky thoroughbred, he has been bred for play on the grass (although his formative years were actually spent on Spanish clay) of Wimbledon which will see action TWICE this summer. The hopes of Great Britain will again be on his shoulders but he seems revel in the opportunity to be the first Brit since Fred Perry to win Wimbledon. -Maybe since it's the Queen's Jubilee year, it's his to win.

Tennis is truly in one of sports' golden ages and there is no reason why Roland Garros 2012 should not be a thrilling, opening salvo in an epic battle to be waged on fiery, red dirt this summer.