I took this picture at Black Pelican. Incredibly even break today.

It’s hard not to be optimistic at the beginning of a new year. It’s not that I’m naive–although that is subject to debate–or a wide-eyed optimist, or a hopeless romantic. It’s just that the details of the coming year have not yet taken shape and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, there’s no reason for pessimism.

On balance, I would have to say that 2011 was better than 2010, although it was by no means a straight line trajectory to betterness. At least the year overall seemed better for me than the previous year, but everyone will have to compare the years and come to their own conclusions.

I have to admit that I’m not very good at reading tea leaves, peering into crystal balls and certainly am useless in predicting the future, but 2012 does seem to hold more promise than the last few years. That prediction should be taken with a grain of salt–if I was all that good at seeing into the future, I would have filled my IRA with individual stocks that have soared to great value instead of watching everything stagnate in indexed funds and accounts administered by experts.

I suppose all of that falls under the “not straight line trajectory to betterness” category. Although viewing the whole thing from the glass half-full vision, at least it hasn’t gone down in value. No doubt I’ll have to add five or six years to my working life to retire in what little style I have become accustomed to. Honestly, though, I’m not sure what my retirement would look like, since I dreamed my entire life of being a professional writer and I am one of those rare people who actually gets paid to do what they want to do.

The thing about predictions is they’re so unpredictable. Which is fine. If everything was predictable, it would make for some pretty boring times. Conversation would come to a screeching halt, since everyone knows what everyone else is going to say before it’s said. The morning news line about stock market futures being up, down or unchanged . . . gone. No need for them, since we already know what they’re going to do. News itself would, of course, be useless–which may resolve the debate about whether or not there’s any point to it now.

Thankfully, we cannot predict the future.

Nonetheless, this being a new year and certain protocols are required, I will make some fearless predictions.

My daughter will continue to amaze me and prove to me over and over what an extraordinary young lady she is. I know this sounds like conceit on my part, but I checked with her mother to confirm this, and she agrees.

The Girl Scouts of America will turn 100 this year.

The Lost Colony outdoor drama will celebrate its 75 anniversary.

Visitors will come in droves this summer to the Outer Banks.

The world will not end in December of 2012. I know I’m going out on a limb on this one, since the Mayan calendar ends in December, but I just have a feeling.

Those are my predictions. Anyone who wants to is more than welcome to come up with their own and send them in.

Happy New Year, and may 2012 exceed your expectations.

Poulos House at Christmas. From a painting by Katy Caroline. The Poulos House, a spectacular celebration of Christmas lights, is on Ocean Acres Dr. just before Nags Head Woods.

I should mention that I am Jewish. Not a particularly religious Jewish, but I am proud of my heritage and comfortable with my beliefs. Although Jewish, my family did celebrate Christmas. The religious meaning of the holiday we left to others, rather we celebrated the belief that peace on earth is a worthwhile concept and that acceptance of others and generosity to them is something we should all practice.

It was my mother’s belief that some ideas are transcendent, that they have relevance far beyond the scope of their religion. If there is a legacy to my mother’s life, it is this belief–that certain ideas are universal in concept and are a necessary part of who we are as a society and should be a part of each of us as individuals.

I mention this because it has relevance to some Christmas thoughts.

Once upon a time, before I started writing for a living, I had a career in retail management–which taught me a lot of things, not the least of which was a unique perspective on the Christmas season.

Among other things I learned, is no Christmas song is worth listening to 15 or 20 times . . . in a day. For the most part, I discovered, people are in a remarkably good mood during the holidays. Some aren’t. In fact, in some cases, everything was wrong in a customer’s life and it was all my fault. Which, when I came to accept this, worked wonders for the customer, who, though still miserable and in a foul mood, had finally found a reason to be angry but at least was no longer mad at the world.

I suppose that act of taking responsibility for their misery was a physical manifestation of  my mother’s teachings.

As in any profession, a certain amount of expertise is needed to be successful in a retail setting. Part of that expertise is the knowledge that comes with being in a wide variety of situations so that over time there are very few scenarios or circumstances that are surprising.

Nonetheless, every once in a while someone says or does something that will catch you by surprise.

During the Christmas season I would thank customers by saying, “Happy holidays,” or “Enjoy the holidays.” Because I am Jewish, the phrase, “Merry Christmas” is not a comfortable fit for me. I have no objection to others saying Merry Christmas, I certainly do not find it offensive, and I accept it in the spirit in which it is said.

After finishing a transaction one day, I handed a customer her bag and said, “Enjoy the holidays.”

She responded with, “I am Jewish and I do not appreciate the comment.”

I said, “I am also Jewish, and when I said ‘Enjoy the holidays’ I was including Chanukah in that thought.”

She left, not particularly pleased with my observation, I am sure, and I found myself reflecting on all that I wish I had said.

Her reaction was certainly a sad commentary upon a philosophy that deserves better.

The religious aspect of Christmas–the miracle of a virgin birth and Christ as the son of God–are specific to Christianity. But the philosophic underpinnings of the religion–that each of us are responsible to exhibit goodwill to all people and that God wishes for us peace on earth–is a universal message that extends far beyond the boundaries of any one religion.

It is, in fact, how we idealize who and what we should be, recognizing that we fall far short of that vision. The journey has not been easy, and will not be easy, yet this philosophy seems a light in the darkness, and it is for that reason that this season is so filled with hope.

And so, in this holiday season, may I wish there will be peace on earth and that we keep in our hearts goodwill to all mankind.

Food for Thought trailer leaving the packing shed for Manteo Elementary School.

It is the least among us who suffer the most and who have the quietest voice in calling out their need. There is hunger in Dare County, families that cannot feed their children; children whose only meals are what the schools provide. Children who have gone hungry over the weekend as families struggle to survive.

The original idea for Food for Thought came from a simple belief that helping those in need was the right thing to do. In February of 2006 members of the Duck United Church began a pilot program to provide two breakfasts and two lunches for the weekend for 54 children at Manteo Elementary School.

“Everyone chipped in and we bought the food and took it to Manteo,” Nina Teller, Secretary of the Organization, recalls.

It was immediately clear, though, that the need in Dare County was much greater than just one school. At the beginning of the following school year, with seed money from the Community Foundation and donations from local businesses and individuals, the program expanded to include all county elementary and secondary schools (although middle school and high school kids are uncomfortable taking a bag of donated meals)  and preschools.

The program has continued to grow, serving ten times as many meals as that first Manteo effort. “As the economy has gotten worse, more and more families are in need,” Teller says. “We feel like by the end of the year we’ll be feeding 700 kids.”

Food for Thought was then and still is an all volunteer program—there is no paid staff, yet they have been tremendously successful at what they have set out to do. Certainly an engaged and active board of directors and volunteers have helped, but according to Teller, the support within Dare County has been extraordinary. “The donations from the community have just been incredible,” she says.

Packing snacks on a Thursday morning.

It is that support, those donations, that have enabled Food for Thought to expand their program into the summer. Using the YMCA to help with distribution, the organization was able to provide weekend meals even when school was out.

Packing over 2100 meals (that’s four meals times 530+ kids) would seem to be an overwhelming task. The efficiency, however, of the volunteers has to be witnessed to be understood. Gathering on Thursday at a county owned shed that is no longer used, everyone seems to know their task, a production line is formed and in less than an hour, the Food for Thought trailer is packed and it’s time to go home.

Although most of the volunteers are adults, at least two of the workers are from the Dare County Alternative School, and the participation of the kids has been so successful that school was one of five recipients in Dare County to receive the North Carolina Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service.

For more information about Food for Thought or to make a donation go to http://www.foodforthoughtobx.org.

Town Hall in October still under construction

Five months beyond its planned opening, the Duck Town Hall will hold a ribbon cutting on February 16, 2012, it was decided by the Duck Town Council in their December meeting.

Although the meeting hall and town offices will be ready for occupancy and will be used after the new year, to insure that council members and town officials will be able to attend, the official opening to the new facility was pushed back to February.

Originally scheduled to open in September of this year, construction of the two buildings suffered from a number of weather related delays. “People probably don’t remember,” Chris Layton, Duck Town Manager, says. “But it was cold last winter and we weren’t able to drive the pilings for the buildings.” The delay in setting the pilings coupled with cleanup efforts from Irene pushed the completion date further and further back.

Comprising two buildings, municipal offices and a meeting hall, the complex takes advantage of green building techniques and 21st century technology. The current offices, located in a series of cubicles and rooms on the Currituck Sound at the Duck Waterfront Shops, have town officials scattered among two separate buildings.

NCDOT proposed bridge in existing transportation corridor.

Although the temporary bridge over the newly formed inlet on Pea Island has reconnected the land link of Hatteras Island with the rest of the world, the damage caused by Hurricane Irene highlighted concerns about the viability of NC12 as it passes through Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.

The “S” curves, just north of Rodanthe, in particular occupy one of the most dynamic beaches on the East Coast. Retreating at a rate of up to 12’ per year, the the forces that create some of the best surfing on the East Coast are the same forces that are eating away at the shoreline.

Nonetheless, North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) engineers felt they had a few years–at least until construction of the replacement of the Bonner Bridge was well under way. The damage to the highway at Mirlo Beach, however, on the north end of Rodanthe, occurred earlier than the engineering models had indicated, and the state of North Carolina is moving quickly to develop a long-term answer.

At a public hearing in Manteo on Monday, representatives of NCDOT discussed plans for a permanent solution to the damage to NC12. Well-attended by the public, the plans that were presented were taken from Bonner Bridge Final Environmental Impact Statement.

Almost all of the damaged road is within Pea Island and is managed by US Fish and Wildlife (USFW), and there are significant restrictions on what NCDOT is able to permit. The overriding mandate for USFW is to allow nature to run its course within land it owns. Because of its mandate, many of the options any highway engineer would consider, are not available.

It is doubtful, as an example, if beach nourishment could be used to stabilize the shoreline, according to a number of engineers at the Manteo meeting. The question of whether or not nourishing the beach would or could be a practical solution was secondary to concerns about whether USFW would be allowed to issue a permit given the rules that govern the agency.
Moving the roadbed would also be problematic. NCDOT is granted a 100’ wide right-of-way through Pea Island. The right-of-way is a permanent corridor that does not move with the shoreline; i.e., if the shoreline retreats 20’, the road does not move with it. The transportation corridor is simply 20’ closer to the ocean.

At the hearing four solutions creating a permanent and improved connection to Hatteras Island were presented, but three of those seemed to present significant permitting problems. The only scenario that appeared to have the least number of obstacles to moving forward was to bridge the entire corridor from the new breach at the Pea Island maintenance sheds to Rodanthe.

Highway engineers indicated the project is feasible and may be the only solution in the long run. As currently envisioned, the bridge would be 23’ above sea level–although one of the engineers at the hearing indicated that is a preliminary figure and more tests of wave heights would have to be done to determine a final figure.

The height over ocean waves will be important over time. The universal belief was that within 10 to 12 years the S Curves road bed will be under water.

This is an issue that will effect lives on the Outer Banks or enjoys visiting. For more information go to www.ncdot.org/travel/nc12recovery or contact us here at the North Beach Sun and we’ll pass along the information we have.

Feedback will help determine long-term fixes for breaches at Pea Island, Rodanthe

            The N.C. Department of Transportation invites citizens to attend one of two public workshops next month to discuss design options for permanently fixing the breaches on N.C. 12 on Pea Island and Rodanthe caused by Hurricane Irene in August. NCDOT will use the feedback it receives to help determine the best long-term solution for each breach.

“Creating jobs is my top priority. N.C. 12 is the economic lifeline for the Outer Banks, and I’ve told NCDOT to quickly develop permanent solutions to ensure the road will reliably connect people to jobs and education for decades to come,” Gov. Bev Perdue said.

NCDOT will hold the public workshops on:

* Monday, Dec. 5, from 4 p.m.-7 p.m.

Dare County Administration Building

954 Marshall C. Collins Dr., Manteo

* Tuesday, Dec. 6, from 4 p.m.-7 p.m.

Rodanthe-Waves-Salvo Community Center

23186 Myrna Peters Rd., Rodanthe

            The meetings are informal, and citizens are welcome to drop in at any time between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. NCDOT representatives will be available to explain the design options under consideration for each breach and answer any questions. The public is urged to share their ideas, thoughts and suggestions with department staff.

Following the public workshops, NCDOT will take the steps below to reach a final decision on how to fix each breach:

*Late November – NCDOT will announce the design options it plans to present to the public at the workshops in December. The department will post the maps, which engineers are currently developing, detailing those options on the N.C. 12 website. At that time, citizens will be able to provide comments online;

*Dec. 15 – The Merger Team, a group made up of state and federal agencies tasked with developing the long-term solutions, will meet. They will discuss the information shared by the panel of experts in the fields of coastal science and engineering who met in October and the feedback given at the two public workshops;

*Dec. 21 – NCDOT will officially close the public comment period. At that time, the department will begin assessing all the feedback received; and

*January 2012 – NCDOT will meet with the Merger Team to select the design option for each breach. The department will then take the group’s realistic, fundable recommendation to Gov. Perdue.

            The process to develop long-term solutions for the two breaches on N.C. 12 is a continuation of work already under way as part of the Bonner Bridge Replacement Project. Phase one of the project involves replacing the 2.7-mile bridge over Oregon Inlet, which is currently in the design stage. The project also includes an active coastal monitoring program that uses scientific data to determine what types of improvements are needed on N.C. 12 between Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge and Rodanthe and when that work will occur. Using this program, NCDOT is enacting phase two of the project, which will implement the long-term solutions for the areas damaged by Hurricane Irene.

In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, NCDOT will provide auxiliary aids and services for disabled persons who wish to participate in the workshops in December. To arrange appropriate accommodations, please contact Beth Smyre in the NCDOT Project Development and Environmental Analysis Branch at (919) 707-6043 or via e-mail at bsmyre@ncdot.gov.

For more information about the damage to N.C. 12 from Hurricane Irene and NCDOT’s efforts to temporarily fix it, visit www.ncdot.org/travel/nc12recovery, follow our N.C. 12 Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/NCDOT_NC12  or go to our Repairing N.C. 12 blog at http://nc12repairs.blogspot.com/.

By Emma McFarlane

My best friend and I were sharing a hotel room in Shanghai on the first leg of the China Partnership’s second official trip to China. It was our first night, and we were completely exhausted from an overnight twelve hour flight followed by a day of doing touristy things around the vast city of Shanghai.

I decided to take a long, hot shower to relax. I turned on the water, and the showerhead loosened in its holder and began spinning round and round, dousing the whole room with practically boiling water. I twisted the nozzle, trying to turn the water off. It wouldn’t turn! The nozzle was stuck in the “hot” position and still spraying full-force all over the now-soaked bathroom walls.

Still in my bathrobe, I ran out of the bathroom to find someone with a bit more upper body strength than myself. My best friend—a tennis player, mind you!—tried futilely to turn the stubborn nozzle.

After several minutes and several inches of steaming hot water, the nozzle was still not moving. I bounded out of the hotel room and to the room next door, which housed two boys who were on the trip with us. It wasn’t until they answered the door that I realized I was still in my fluffy white bathrobe. But no matter! I dragged them into my room, begging them to MAKE IT STOP!

Finally, after almost ten minutes of grunting and pulling, one of them managed to turn that stupid nozzle off.

Meanwhile, my friend and I had run downstairs to alert housekeeping to our little incident. The hotel sent up a maintenance man to fix our shower.

The ancient little man wobbled into our bathroom and took one look at the shower, let out a high-pitched giggle, and motioned for us to come closer. Tentatively, we stepped forward. He said something in Chinese and made a turning motion with his shriveled old hands. He then turned the nozzle on the shower, and it came to life. Then he turned it in the opposite direction and it glided to the “off” position, all too easily I might add.

As we watched the hobbling senior citizen exit our (still soaked) hotel room, all we could do was stare at each other in disbelief.

By Anna Bachman

Nín h?o! or Hello! as they say in China. This was one of the many things I learned in my experience with the China Program.

As a freshman it was my first time engaging with the China Partnership Program. We met, got some basic information and were assigned our partners. Jiang Shanwen was to be my new friend.

Many of the First Flight students stayed behind for SAT tests in the morning; the rest of us piled into the bus with signs and roses for our partners. When we arrived at the airport we clutched out flowers and signs at the turnstile as we waited.

It was nerve-wracking standing there. What were we going to say? Would we be able to communicate with them? Would they like my house?

At last, we glimpsed people turning the corner. They were here! Everyone was smiling and looking around at each other. Those who had been a part of the China Partnership in the past, hugged their friends.

On the bus ride home, my partner and I chatted and she told me to call her Seven. It’s a very auspicious number in China and Shanwen means seven. Almost every Chinese student chose an American name—a relief because for many of us it was difficult to pronounce their original names.

At home I showed Seven around the house. At first, it was awkward, but soon we warmed to each other. I had fun teaching her about “typical American culture.” She got to eat her first taco, and have her first smore’s! Many had not seen the stars because the smog is thick in Wuxi. The ocean was new for them, along with seeing so much open space and sand dunes (or as they called it, “the desert”). We showed them the beauty of our barrier island and, in return, they opened our eyes to a whole new culture. The experience made such an impact on my life and I count the days until my turn comes to visit them.

Goodbye, Zàijiàn!

By Matt Mahler

Standing atop the Great Wall of China, I could see for miles: the wall stretching out over mountains and valleys in both directions. Walking along one of the Seven Wonders of the World and being able to see and feel the stones that thousands of laborers spent years laying down one by one was exhilarating. The sight was so vastly different from the picture on the internet I had previewed before my trip. Nothing could come close to the experience of actually trekking across this astounding piece of history.

The exquisite cuisines and delicacies I encountered in China demonstrates that this country has a culture like no other—truly unique. Where else in the world would I wake up to a steaming ostrich egg? Or walk down the streets of and outdoor market in Beijing and smell fried scorpions and centipedes, baby pigeons on a stick, or a heap of grey that was actually ox stomach? Picking a duck and having the duck killed, cooked, and cut right in front of me; eating snails from a river where people also wash their clothes; drinking 17 different blends of tea in 4 days; a small part of our experience.

Western history in America is a few centuries old. When visiting places like the Lost Colony and Williamsburg and hearing about how in the 1600s settlers came and began to prosper, we think that 400 years is such a long time. Yet, China is one of the oldest nations in the world. Its history dates back thousands of years. The Terra Cotta warriors unearthed in 1974 were crafted in the 3rd century B.C. to guard the emperor’s tomb. The Big Wild Goose Pagoda we visited was built in 652. Visiting sites like these gives us a much better perspective about the world around us.

Thinking about what to write, I realized that I may have created a topic without conscious effort, however.

For some time now, I have been taking an informal survey, asking everyone from strangers to relatives to tell me their favorite holiday. I don’t think I was doing this to write a story about Thanksgiving, but now that the results are in, I’m certainly thankful that I did.

Thanksgiving wins hands down. I admit, I don’t have firm statistics to back this up, but I am very confident in my results. In fact, the choice was almost universal. Almost universal because I found anyone I asked 10 years of age and younger clearly preferred birthdays and Christmas.

Something happens, though, about the age of 11 where family and food become more important than cake and presents. And the farther away from childhood we get, the more important those things become.

It is no wonder that Thanksgiving is so universally preferred—it asks only two things: spend time with the people you love and trust the most, and eat a lot of food.

I am not naive. I realize that family is not always a genetic sibling or a mother or father. I know there are dysfunctional families—places where the pieces of the human puzzle will never mesh. And yet, even the least among us, is deserving of love and companionship and it often springs from the most unlikely of places.

Years ago (it’s moments like this that  I understand that it truly has been a long strange trip) I was living in San Francisco in circumstances that could charitably be described as trying. Arnold Brewster (a dear friend who passed away far too soon) and I had driven to the west coast because . . . well, I’m not sure the why matters, except it wasn’t illegal. Suffice to say we were in San Francisco living in Dante’s Hotel, which would probably have qualified for one of the mid rings of Dante’s Inferno.

For both of us, it was our first Thanksgiving away from our families, and both of us—although I never asked Arnold about this—felt a profound sense of loss on that day. We did not have money to go somewhere and have a feast and there was no way to bake a turkey in the room we shared at the hotel. A hot plate challenged the wiring, and if memory serves, there wasn’t much in the way of fire suppression in the hallways.

There was a knock on our door, and one of our neighbors said, “Hey did you want to go to Bill’s place for Thanksgiving (I forget the name, but Bill is as good as anything else). All you have to do is bring something and show up.”

So we brought something. I don’t even know what it was. Maybe a bottle of cheap wine and a couple of pieces of fruit.

We get there and there are at least 20 or 25 people stuffed into a one bedroom apartment. And these are the people your mother warned you about. They were drug pushers, prostitutes, drag queens, con men, ex-cons . . . and they are all sitting around, talking, eating (I remember turkey and mashed potatoes, I don’t know what else) and enjoying that moment in time.

Bill, as I recall, was working really hard to get his life straight after serving 10 or 12 years for armed robbery. I know he did not have a lot of money to spend on Thanksgiving, yet there was something about this that was so important to him; that he felt he had to give a Thanksgiving to anyone who came through his door.

At one point I thanked him for having us over and having a Thanksgiving gathering. He looked around the room and said something that has stayed with me. “A lot of these people don’t have a family,” he said. “So this is their family.”

Perhaps that is the message that we should take from this: that family is not always a legal or dictionary definition and for all the imperfections of our families, they are the still the one place that we belong. And for that, we should be truly thankful.