New Hanover Arboretum

 

Located at 6206 Oleander Drive in Wilmington, the New Hanover County Arboretum features specialty gardens, a cooperative extension/education program, and more. It is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, and admission and parking are free. The grounds can be reserved for special events.

 

The New Hanover County Arboretum may not be terribly large, but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in impressive design. Its gardens boast a variety of flora and are broken up into themed areas. Some (i.e. the koi pond) are decidedly kid-friendly while others (such as the Japanese garden) are serene. Well-maintained and inviting, this is a great place to walk around when the weather is cooperative.

The Oak House

 

Located at 126 West Main Street in City Center, Durham, The Oak House serves wine, beer, coffee, and tea every day except Sunday. It regularly hosts live music and community events. Online ordering is available.

This place was a lifesaver. We were on our way home toward the tail end of a travel-heavy day and were exhausted and thirsty. The Oak House won our business by virtue of being open and slinging caffeine, and it won our praise by doing so well. Nutella lattes were among the seasonal coffee offerings, and they were smooth, refreshing, and delicious.

Beyond that, The Oak House is nicely appointed. The woodwork and chalkboard drink lists add old-fashioned charm. While we only glanced at the latter, the selection seemed plentiful.

The bar-coffee shop combination doesn’t always work (one sometimes suffers for the sake of the other), but The Oak House certainly seemed to have its act together.

Wrightsville Beach Brewery

 

Located at 6201 Oleander Drive in Wilmington, Wrightsville Beach Brewery serves local seafood and brewpub fare. Outdoor seating is available, including a beer garden area. There is occasional live music, and food specials rotate regularly.

Capacious, comfortable, and convenient, Wrightsville Beach Brewery made for an ideal back-from-the-beach lunch destination. There was plenty of seating inside and out (we opted for the latter), and service was friendly and attentive. The biggest draw here, however, is the menu as both food and drink selections are strong. The former packs everything from burgers to seafood to some rather creative pizzas (a short rib, a crab cake, and a po boy were among the offerings) while the latter offers up a nice assortment of house taps and a few cocktails.

My wife and I opted for an order of fish tacos (tuna was the catch du jour) and a shrimp po boy with a cup of seafood stew. What the fish tacos lacked in structural integrity, they made up for in fresh flavor with the rasta sauce delivering a bit of peppery kick. The seafood stew brought a welcome bit of heat as well. Tasty as it was though, it was less a seafood stew and more a kicked-up tomato vegetable soup with a bit of added seafood. The po boy, on the other hand, was immensely satisfying from first bite to last. Here, they didn’t skimp on the shrimp, which were breaded nicely, and the crisp baguette (improbably) held everything in place. Among the drinks, my wife gave high praise to a newly-arrived Smoked Honey Scotch Ale while the Orange Krush Kolsch tastes like the offspring of an orange creamsicle and a dry seltzer. The house ginger soda packs a (welcome) punch.

With a reasonable price point for local fish (each lunch entrée was $13), amicable service, and boldly flavored food, Wrightsville Beach Brewery impressed across the board. If I’m ever back here, I will be curious to see how the pizzas (or the shrimp and grits, for that matter) measure up.

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story

 

Months after the beginning of the COVID outbreak, Michael Lewis looks at those medical professionals who foresaw the threat the pandemic posed and tried to manage an effective response only to be thwarted by stubborn bureaucracy. The visionaries include Charity Dean, a beleaguered California public health director who won’t settle for “no,” Carter Mesher, who formulated a federal pandemic response in the Bush years only to later be sidelined, and Joe DeRisi, a quirky lab director who once created a computer chip that contained data on every known human virus. Despite their ingenuity, a seemingly endless series of roadblocks – indifferent or incompetent state and federal agencies, slow-moving private labs, a lack of supplies, etc. – stood in their way.

 

From Moneyball to the Big Short, Lewis is a master of distilling complex subject matter into engrossing narratives, often by using a few colorful characters to bring readers closer to the action. This approach has raised questions about his accuracy and his allegiances, and as The Premonition follows the same formula, expect similar complaints to follow. Some readers may also question Lewis’s focus and wonder just how much remains untold.

 

That said, it is still an intriguing and insightful book. Lewis deftly connects George W. Bush reading an account of the 1918 influenza pandemic to the formation of a federal pandemic response, tragically undone in 2018 when John Bolton gutted biodefense. This and other aspects of the Trump administration’s malfeasance and ineptitude (i.e. Mike Pence’s insistence on tight messaging to the detriment of keeping the public informed) have been well-documented elsewhere. The Premonition, however, pulls back the veil on the Centers for Disease Control, revealing long-seated problems – a reluctance to act, a preoccupation with its own image, attempts to hamper state officials – that plagued the CDC long before Trump. Moreover, the book shows Dean effectively doing the job her boss (the since-deposed Sonia Angell) should have been doing without being allowed to take credit for it for the sake of giving Gavin Newsom political cover. Infuriating as this is to read about, it is also inspiring to see Dean stick it to everyone who underestimated her, to see Mecher labor doggedly behind the scenes to get people to take COVID seriously, to see several voices rise in opposition to the once-prevalent ideas that COVID was either insignificant or, later, untraceable and uncontainable.

Crumbl Cookies

 

Located at 1218-A Bridford Parkway in Greensboro, Crumbl Cookies serves gourmet cookies. Chocolate chip and sugar cookie are permanent flavors while four additional flavors rotate weekly. Online ordering and delivery are available, and rewards can be earned via the Crumbl app.

Opening day experiences should be taken with a grain of salt as businesses have ample opportunities thereafter to either improve or crash and burn. That caveat aside, Crumbl made a very favorable first impression.

The Greensboro store was giving out a free cookie to anyone who downloaded the Crumbl app, and so I had anticipated waiting in line to get in. There was one, but thankfully, it moved quickly. Given the sheer volume of foot traffic they must have faced, Crumbl staff were impressively collected, efficient, and polite. Ordering was simple and quick: I picked up a four-pack to go with my freebie, and it was served up warm and ready to go in under five minutes. These were fairly large cookies, so four for $10.98 was hardly an outrage.

Those four - chocolate chip, Oreo chocolate, blueberry crumb cake, and waffle - were varying degrees of tasty. The Oreo, creamy and gooey when warm, was the best of the lot while the waffle (topped with buttercream and served with a side of maple) was very sweet and a bit gimmicky, but there were no losers here.

Greensboro may not have needed another cookie place, but the ironically named (these are not dry cookies) Crumbl acquits itself well regardless.

Later

 

In the late 2000s, young Jamie Conklin lives in New York with his mother Tia, a once-successful literary agent who has fallen on hard times. The two of them alone know that Jamie secretly harbors the ability to communicate with the dead, a gift that comes in handy when one of Tia’s clients dies before completing his final novel. Later, Tia’s ex-girlfriend, ethically compromised NYPD detective Liz Dutton enlists Jamie to find the final bomb left behind by mad bomber Kenneth “Thumper” Therriault, a recent suicide. But unlike the other ghosts, Thumper has no intention of leaving Jamie alone once the boy finishes asking his questions.

 

A new Stephen King novel is usually cause for celebration, but his work for the Hard Case Crime imprint has been inconsistent. The Colorado Kid was a nice change of pace albeit underwritten while Joyland was somewhat predictable and failed to capture a North Carolina setting. Add to that the aging King’s wavering ability to write young characters, and Later invites lowered expectations. However, it easily surpasses his previous Hard Case works, delivering a deft blend of coming-of-age story, crime caper, and supernatural suspense.

 

One of the best moves King made here was providing some built-in cover for stylistic discrepancy. From snarky digs at The Sixth Sense to precociousness beyond his years, Jamie’s narrative voice sounds more like King than that of a child, but the conceit of Jamie raised by a literary agent and sharing his story as a young adult makes it easier to accept. It also helps that Jamie is a sympathetic character, exposed to and shaken by death at an early age yet trying his damnedest to live a normal life.

 

King’s secondary characterization is also surprisingly adroit. Soapbox Stephen has, in recent years, been known to populate his casts with one-dimensional strawmen, a quality that is significantly toned down here. Rather than offer up a homophobic preacher antagonist as a target of audience venom, for example, he gives his characters much more believable moral shading. Tia is a largely good person who nevertheless cuts several ethical corners to ensure her and Jamie’s survival while Liz, though motivated by selfishness, still puts a stop to dangerous and depraved criminals.

 

For the most part, Later’s genre-blending is more asset than albatross. Anyone who picks up a King book looking solely for “horror” should know better at this point though the combination of supernatural and human threats and Jamie’s youth does raise the book’s stakes even when it isn’t particularly scary. That said, Later’s hazy connection to It feels underdeveloped and awkwardly shoehorned in.

 

With its ubiquitous cell phones and references to Bernie Madoff’s schemes, Later provides a decidedly 21^st century backdrop for King to explore some of his favorite themes. Later isn’t a revelation, but it’s also better than it needs to be.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

 

Months have passed since Steve Rogers retired as Captain America and passed his shield on to Sam “The Falcon” Wilson (Anthony Mackie), who declined to take up the mantle. A tip from Air Force officer Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) puts the wingsuit-wearing hero on the trail of the Flag Smashers, a group of serum-enhanced terrorists opposed to restoring the pre-Blip status quo. Sam teams up with the recently pardoned Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), who is attempting to make amends for the murders he committed as the brainwashed assassin the Winter Soldier. Their pursuit of the Flag Smashers is crashed by John Walker (Wyatt Russell), a decorated soldier tapped by the government as the new Captain America whose brash style conflicts with Sam and Bucky’s approach. Desperate to thwart one terrorist, Sam and Bucky reluctantly turn to another: the imprisoned Helmut Zemo (Daniel Bruhl), whose prior vendetta nearly tore The Avengers apart.

 

Following on the heels of WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier swaps magic and metanarrative for a much more grounded milieu that sees Bucky deny the existence of wizards and Sam fight lending discrimination to secure a bank loan to help his sister (Adepero Oduye) fix up their family’s fishing boat. For those seeking escapism, this may seem a discomfiting letdown, but for many more, the show’s exploration of relatable themes – confronting legacies and coping with traumas – is one of its strongest points.

 

In its own way, writer/creator Malcolm Spellman’s work here is as bold as anything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He discards the colorblind fantasy of Sam simply being able to pick up the shield and put on the costume in favor of exploring the trials and travails of being a Black man tasked with embodying American ideals, an issue further complicated by Sam’s discovery of Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), a would-be Cap replacement who was secretly imprisoned and experimented on years ago. Spellman’s eye for complexity extends to the antagonists as well, allowing the Flag Smashers and their young leader Karli (Erin Kellyman) to tap into the “voice of the dispossessed” zeitgeist. Zemo isn’t exactly redeemed – if anything, revealing his closer-to-the-comics aristocratic roots would seem to make him a candidate for further villainy – but he too gets the “ruthlessness in service of a benevolent cause” treatment, questing to rid the world of super soldiers before they cause further damage. As worthwhile as these ideas are, a six-episode series seems at times too small a venue for them. While there is no shortage of powerful moments, the series can feel overstuffed and underdeveloped, with its pacing the most frequent victim of its ambition. The final episode in particular has an odd rhythm, compounded by Sam’s overly long and stagey rebuke to a senator whose life he just saved.

 

Unevenness aside, director Kari Skogland deserves credit for putting together a polished production amid the challenges of a global pandemic. The COVID outbreak during filming led to location changes and wreaked havoc with the schedule, yet the on-screen product doesn’t look like something put together on the fly. From immersive aerial sequences to tense, fluid fights, the action is cinema-smooth. The show also makes good use of local color whether it’s highlighting a Louisiana fishing community or the shimmering nightlife of the Southeastern Asian enclave Madripoor (astonishingly, shot in a well-disguised Atlanta neighborhood).

 

Beyond The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s technical merits, it’s also a much-deserved spotlight for Mackie’s talents. From The Hurt Locker to Night Catches Us to Pain and Gain, Mackie has proven adept at providing everything from panic to panache to pathos. His MCU debut, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, gave him a chance to do some character exploration, but the sheer size of the cast in recent Avengers outings has left him largely sidelined. Not anymore. Here, he gets to do everything from trade banter with Bucky to convincingly project having the weight of the world on his shoulders. Speaking of burdens, Russell too deserves plaudits for humanizing a walking jingoistic stereotype. Walker’s blunt embrace of violence, mirroring that of the Flag Smashers, is meant to be contemptible, but in both cases, we’re allowed to understand where the characters are coming from.

 

By its conclusion, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has left a number of threads for future movies to tackle, but it is more than a mere placeholder. Tense and timely if sometimes also rushed, it offers fun without frivolity.