TCB March 2, 2016 — Stark Choices

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com March 2 – 8, 2016

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STARK CHOICES H H H H the 2016 Primary Voter Guide H H H H

Educational disparities PAGE 8

Caleb’s Ghost PAGE 22

This is Sparta PAGE 24

PAGE 12

March 2 — 8, 2016

REINVENTED Solo Exhibit | C.P. Logan Opening Reception: Friday, March 11th from 5:30-8:30pm

Take Yourself-ie Downtown.

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Known for her rich, textual and colorful landscapes and still life, C.P. Logan has REIVENTED herself with this sculpted mono chromed, mixed media art collection.

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Get the lowdown on Downtown Greensboro and share your favorite downtown moments by posting on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter using #DGSOSelfie (or you can email them to Selfies@downtowngreensboro.net). And all your postings may get you featured in our upcoming ads and social media feeds!

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The mission, two years in

by Brian Clarey

21 UP FRONT 3 Editor’s Notebook 4 City Life 6 Commentariat 6 The List 7 Barometer 7 Unsolicited Endorsement

11 IJMW: Dog-treat vending machine 11 Fresh Eyes: Hillary’s and “super-predators”

COVER

GAMES SHOT IN THE TRIAD

NEWS 8 Still fighting for equal schools

20 Food: Coffee on Liberty 21 Barstool: A gay bar, reimagined 22 Music: Caleb Caudle’s Ghost 24 S&S: Symphonic redemption

10 Editorial: Historical precedent 10 Citizen Green: Trump must be stopped

26 Spartans stay frosty 27 Jonesin’ Crossword

12 Stark choices

CULTURE

OPINION

FUN & GAMES

28 Waughtown Street, Winston-Salem

ALL SHE WROTE 30 Oscar night

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

At a certain point I was able to afford to take a band out,” Caudle said. “I didn’t steal the band; it just worked out that way. I don’t really know if Rosewood is on hiatus or not. Those guys play together so well. I was like, ‘They would sound great on what I’m doing.’

— Caleb Caudle, in Music, page 22

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 • Office: 336-256-9320 BUSINESS PUBLISHER Allen Broach

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EDITORIAL EDITOR IN CHIEF Brian Clarey

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nest@triad-city-beat.com Carolyn de Berry Nicole Crews Anthony Harrison Matt Jones Amanda Salter Caleb Smallwood

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EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

CONTENTS

For the first time in a long time I trust the first flush of spring.

It’s gotta be at least two years since I went out to the back patio for my morning smoke and believed in the warmth behind the early March chill. There was always an ice storm on the horizon, stormclouds looming, fast-moving cold fronts that came without warning.

But not today.

Not without coincidence, Triad City Beat marked two years over the weekend with an informal bar takeover that, at times, felt like the final episode of “Seinfeld”: Almost everybody who had anything to do with it made an appearance.

Time goes by fast when your job is a lifestyle, when your co-workers are your best friends, when you are undertaking a mission as opposed to merely building a business. There’s always been a lot more to our company than just taking money for advertising.

And yet things are moving along smartly. We’ve gotten more than a million hits on our website since then. We gained acceptance to a national organization of alternative news media, almost unheard of for a publication in its first year. We’ve built an internal machine to service the journalism we serve up, supporting the mission on another front. We’ve delivered more than a hundred issues, written more than 2,000 stories, made meaningful connections throughout our cities and, not the least of it, named a neighborhood.

So that’s where we gathered — LoFi — to welcome what comes next.

We’ve got big things in store for this next phase: new stuff and upgrades, and even more of the investigative work, enterprise journalism, breaking news and cultural mapmaking we know our readers love.

We love it, too.

We didn’t know if we were gonna make it this far, but we always knew we could. A friend in the newspaper biz told me a couple weeks ago that most media folks in the Triad didn’t give us six months. And then we laughed and laughed and laughed.

I’ve learned in these two years that a business education is pretty expensive, whether you get it in a fancy school or out here on the streets like me. And I’ve learned that there’s no real secret to this business we’ve chosen, no shortcuts or easy scams.

Like I did the first warm breath of spring, I trust the work and my staff — the best in the business. I trust the business community that keeps us afloat, and the thousands upon thousands of readers who choose to pick up our paper every week.

I trust the mission, and everything that goes along with it.

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March 2 — 8, 2016

CITY LIFE March 2 – 8 ALL WEEKEND

WTH!? Con @ Guilford College (GSO) This annual convention hosted by the Yachting Club, which we’re told is actually the Geek Club, is OVER 9000!!! And if you get that reference, you should probably go.

Cosplay to your comfort level at this multi-genre, student-led convention featuring anime screenings, magic games and a “My Little Pony” panel. Guest of Honor Kylee Henke (know otherwise as the Meme Queen) holds a panel on Saturday evening. Admission is free. Direct your inevitable curiosity to wthcon.co.nr.

Helen Simoneau Danse presents “Land Bridge” @ Hanesbrands Theatre (W-S) Art Nouveau Winston-Salem hosts UNCSA alumna Helen Simoneau, who with her company presents a work that explores themes of heritage and identity, and this is the exact quote, “examined abstractly through the lens of caribou.” Guess you’ll have to show up to figure out what that means. On Saturday before the show, dance alongside company performers for a free community movement class at 11 a.m. or join Simoneau for drinks at 6:30 p.m. in the lobby. For tickets, go to rhodesartscenter.org.

WEDNESDAY American Made Movie @ A/perture cinema (W-S), 7:30 p.m.

Explore the golden heydays of American manufacturing employment and where it all started to go wrong in the screening of this 2013 film by Vincent Vittorio and Nathaniel Thomas McGil. The screening is part of a series hosted by Scalawag magazine out of Durham. Bob Leak, president of Winston-Salem Business, and David Coates, Worrell Chair in Anglo-American Studies Wake Forest University, helm the panel on unemployment and the manufacturing industry held afterward.

Visit aperturecinema.com for a trailer and more details.

THURSDAY Casa Azul discussion @ Weatherspoon Art Museum (GSO), 5 p.m.

Latino and Hispanic artists Socorro Hernandez-Hinek, Monica Weber and Victoria Morales, all NC-based, will discuss their favorite paintings from the Pan American Modernism running at the ’Spoon until May and talk about how the artists in the exhibit influence their thoughts on artistic practice. Sure to be a lively discussion with promised ample time for questions. Details at casaazulgreensboro.org.

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by Joanna Rutter

SUNDAY First Friday @ Downtown Greensboro and Winston-Salem, 6 p.m.

Your local loyalties will be tested this First Friday — the forecast calls for rainy snow — but don’t cave. You’ve probably got rain boots, so put your feet in them and head downtown for open galleries and neighborly camaraderie.

In Old Salem from 7 to 9:30 p.m. you can celebrate chocolate-dipped history with Mars Chocolate (yeah, the M&M’s guys) with live music. In Greensboro, Russ Clegg and Bob Martin of the Special Guests play at Scuppernong Books at 7 p.m.

Meet and greet @ North Star LGBT Center (W-S), 2 p.m.

Via a grant from the Winston-Salem Foundation, the North Star Center now has a fulltime manager. Meet Rayce Lamb, who is a student at Wake Forest University Divinity School and “has dedicated his life in pursuit of justice and creating safe spaces for those in the LGBT community.” Seems like a cool guy. Go double check for us, and bring along questions, suggestions and ideas. Extra info can be found on the event’s Facebook page.

triad-city-beat.com

FRIDAY

Brahms’ Beloved Requiem @ UNC School of the Arts (W-S), 3 p.m.

Robert Moody conducts a heavenly host of not only his whole symphony, but the Winston-Salem State University Choir and the Symphony Chorale as well, giving the rich, full sound this mournful piece calls for. Bring your hankies. Tickets can be found at wssymphony.org.

SATURDAY

Bernie Block Party @ Piedmont Triad for Bernie HQ (W-S), 2 p.m.

It’s primary season, baby, which means it’s time to put the party back in political parties.

Holy Ghost Tent Revival plays, so, there’s your reason for going regardless of whether you’re feeling the Bern and want to canvas or make phone calls alongside other volunteers. A $5 donation is suggested. Visit the event page on Facebook for details.

Journeys in Blackness @ Guilford College (GSO), 6 p.m.

This annual banquet celebrates black student excellence at Guilford. Organized by the student leaders of Blacks Unifying Society, Santes Beatty ‘97 gives the keynote address, “Liberating the Leader in Each of Us.” Register at journeysinblackness.com and don’t forget to wear your nice jacket; business casual attire is recommended.

Arts & Drafts @ High Point Art Council (HP), 7 p.m.

Buzzed fundraising for the arts in High Point? Pretty much the perfect vessel to direct any misplaced artistic benevolence welling up in you. Tasting tables of North Carolina craft brews from Brown Truck, Preyer, Four Saints and more wash down BBQ sliders and bacon-wrapped breadsticks by caterers at Plain & Fancy. Turpentine Shine’s “blues and motown” provide ambiance. Call 336.889.2787 for a ticket, which includes a souvenir beer tasting glass.

MONDAY Doing Our Work: Race and Law Enforcement @ Congregational United Church of Christ (GSO), 7 p.m.

Right on the heels of Michelle Alexander’s visit featuring her book The New Jim Crow, the Doing Our Work series returns for its March meeting to discuss “building resistance through truth-telling.” Lewis Pitts, a civil rights lawyer, provides an overview of the role of law enforcement in maintaining white supremacy, from slavery to the New Jim Crow right up to today’s police killings.

Examples from Greensboro will be used.

The event targets a white audience, but all are welcome. Seats go fast, so you’ll want to get there early. More info on the event’s Facebook page.

TUESDAY

Navigating the Juvenile Justice System @ the YWCA (GSO), 9:30 a.m.

Teens under 16 facing legal charges must go through the Guilford County Juvenile Court system, which can be a harrowing experience for both themselves and those who care about them. Carmen Graves, Guilford county court counselor, and retired judge Lawrence McSwain will speak about the system’s structure and procedures, along with how to be an effective advocate for those within the process. Visit ywcagsonc.org for more information.

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March 2 — 8, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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‘Keep these funnies coming’ Great read and very funny [“All She Wrote: Surrendering the box”; by Nicole Crews; Feb. 24, 2016]. Still think you do a great job and keep these funnies coming.

Norman Gleason, via email Now there are three As exciting as this seems, I’m not quite looking forward to it [“Crafted to open downtown Winston-Salem taco joint”; by Eric Ginsburg; Feb. 29, 2016]. The original Crafted has suffered a drop in quality since Kristina has turned all of her focus to the street food location. And while street food’s cuisine is enjoyable, the dishes simply make one crave a more authentic version than they offer.

Hopefully Kris can right the ship!

Daniel, via triad-city-beat.com Gentrification! Who cares what goes there as long as it brings people downtown and pushes out the terrible people that currently proliferate the area.

Steve, via triad-city-beat.com Republicans don’t need your help The new rhetoric just out today: “The Republican Party is not acting as we expect and depend — they are broken and only non-Republicans can save them!” [“It Just Might Work: Crash the Republican Party”; by Jordan Green; Feb. 24, 2016] If you cannot understand how absolutely asinine that sounds to Republicans then simply imagine millions of eyes rolling in disdain.

Seth Davidson, via triad-city-beat.com Kalvin Michael Smith and the Duke lacrosse case Smith probably deserves a new trial — and perhaps an outright pardon [“Roy Cooper’s gubernatorial campaign skirts race and justice issues”;

by Jordan Green; Feb. 24, 2016]. And Cooper can take a stand in this. But I doubt that any of those organizations or individuals now contrasting his case with the Duke lacrosse case were in any way active to try and right the injustice of the lacrosse case. (Is justice selective?)

In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were either silent, or else supporters of the prosecution.

(People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones…).

Algiers50, via triad-city-beat.com

6 terrible candidate websites

by Brian Clarey

1. Ernest T. Reeves (D-US Senate)

A grainy PDF introduces potential voters to Ernest T. Reeves, running for the Democratic nomination for Senate. He gets points for having a tab about his stance on the issues — a surprising number of candidates don’t — but the design is pretty basic, even for a Wix site.

2. Michael LaPaglia (R-secretary of state) What’s black and white and red all over?

LaPaglia’s website, with an emphasis on the red. It looks like the most basic of templates — created using nationbuilder.com, “software for leaders” that makes it easy to get on the mailing list, donate and share talking points, but nothing on the issues.

Marcus W. Williams, a candidate for attorney general, might have the quirkiest website.

3. Marcus W. Williams (D-state House)

Williams’ site looks like a blog straight out of 2002 — dense with text, quotes from the 1990s in fine print on the margins, counterintuitive navigation. A quote, “Proven Leadership With Athletic Balance,” hyperlinks to PDFs of his high school yearbook pages, which document some pretty impressive accomplishments.

4. Dr. Greg Brannon (R-US Senate)

A highlight of Brannon’s NationBuilder website is footage of a television appearance with Glenn Beck in which the TV softballer asks the following non-question: “We’ve prayed for people to come and be a part of this revolution, if you will, and try to restore the Constitution. We’ve prayed for people like this and now they’re here and you’re one of them.” The candidate would have responded, but his mic was off.

5. Matt Stafford (D-Guilford County School Board)

Stafford, running an uphill campaign against incumbent Deena Hayes who does not have a dedicated website at all, resorts to using his democracy.com page to support his campaign. He’s gone into some rambling detail on the Issues page, and he last posted in December.

6. Buck Newton (R-attorney general)

You sort of expect to see a giant, dead deer on the homepage of bucknewton.com, the candidate’s NationBuilder site. But instead we see a blurry photo of the red-

COURTESY SCREENSHOT

faced lawyer along with a letter loaded with code words and dogwhistles — “shining city on a hill,” “God-given freedoms,” “out-of-control federal government” — though nothing on the issues at all. I give him points for using proper hyphenation, though.

triad-city-beat.com

Your Republican presidential pick?

It’s almost election time for North Carolina voters, and we wanted to know where our readers stand on the Republican candidates. Next up, the Dems.

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Eric Ginsburg: I’m going to pass, but let me also say again for the record that Donald Trump is a fascist, or at least he’s doing a great job posturing as one. Make all the excuses you want (and I don’t mean to suggest the rest of the candidates are all sane), but supporting him is inexcusable.

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30

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Marco Rubio

36%

John Kasich

16%

Donald Trump

4%

Ted Cruz

2%

Ben Carson

Games

The ‘Dee-Tales’ podcast

by a rotation of friends to keep things interesting. Other favorite podcasts I listen to always feel like eavesdropping — see “Ninjas Vs. Podcast, Reveal” — and “Dee-Tales” is possibly the best conversation to listen in on.

Plainly put, Deidre James is a multi-talented, hilarious person we need to make sure stays in the Triad and blesses us with the sound of her voice forever.

So, if you’re looking for an episode to start with, the two-parter on “Carolina, Cam, Careers and Coldplay” is a good intro, which has a solemn and dramatic eulogy for Kanye tucked in there somewhere.

While you go do that, I’m gonna put on the latest episode and go work on my vision board.

All She Wrote

larger conversation about culture broken up by hysterical laughter.

James’ background is in TV and radio; upon reading her bio, I see that she’s interviewed Hillary Clinton. That doesn’t surprise me at all.

The show hits topics like racial profiling in neighborhood watch groups with humor and spirit: “There are prayer groups, donating water bottles to find lost pets, but if a kid’s playing outside and he looks at you the wrong way, lock him up!” I recommend not eating cereal while listening to the show, because you will hurt yourself.

Each episode tours through the week’s events and pop-culture moments at lightning speed. She’s joined

Shot in the Triad

by Joanna Rutter I instantly recognized Deidre James’ undeniably cheerful and warm voice from across the Green Bean a week or two ago. As I approached her at a table covered in magazine scraps, I couldn’t help but feel like a nervous fangirl.

I introduced myself like a nerd as she cleaned up after a vision board party she had just hosted, and confessed my love for her podcast.

Turns out she is just as delightful in person as she is on her show.

Don’t misunderstand — that’s not to say her podcast, “Dee-Tales,” is a light and fluffy tour of trending topics.

Sure, Queen Bey gets mentioned in almost every episode, and I’m not mad about it, but it’s usually a quick quip in a

Fun & Games

42%

Culture

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Cover Story

New question: Your Democratic presidential pick? Vote at triad-city-beat.com!

Opinion

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News

Jordan Green: Marco Rubio. Although his bellicose rhetoric is frightening, his establishment positioning is less objectionable than the theocratic extremism of Ted Cruz. The GOP must unite around an establishment candidate to stop Donald Trump, and Rubio is the best bet.

Readers: If our readers controlled things, we’d be living in a saner state and nation. Though it’s not a strong indication of how the votes will break down in the Triad, 42 percent said Marco Rubio, followed by John Kasich with 36 percent. Frontrunner Donald Trump ranked third with 16 percent, and the only other candidate to win a state as of press time (excludes Super Tuesday results) Ted Cruz proved incredibly unpopular with 4 percent. Only Ben Carson placed lower in the results, with 2 percent. Keep in mind that it’s an unscientific poll and that anyone could vote, regardless of party affiliation, but the results are still telling of our readership.

Up Front

Brian Clarey: I will probably choose the Democratic ballot this year — as an independent, I get to pick — but if I were going with the GOP, I would vote for Marco Rubio, loathsome as he is, because I am terrified of the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency, and all signs point to a Trump victory in North Carolina.

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March 2 — 8, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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NEWS

Urban leaders dismayed that school bond neglects East Winston

by Jordan Green

Urban community leaders in Winston-Salem are disappointed that a proposed $325.8 million school bond doesn’t include more investment in East Winston and other core-city areas.

The replacement of Ashley Academy, an academically struggling, majority black and Latino school located near the low-income La Deara Crest Estates community in Winston-Salem has been dropped from a proposed $325.8 million bond package despite being one of the most overcrowded elementary schools in the district.

The elimination of the project is but one example of what some community leaders, including Winston-Salem NAACP President Ike Howard, see as a failure of the school district to invest in urban-core areas. Howard and others in the Community School Bond Coalition, a group formed last fall representing neighborhood groups across the city, have also expressed disappointment that the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School Board is not planning to build a new middle school to serve the East Winston neighborhood.

“Once again, it’s the same-old-sameold inequity of resources — the inequity of school locations and inequality of funding to areas in the urban part of the city and black neighborhoods,” Howard said. “If we look around in our communities, we don’t see anything that benefits our community [in the proposed bond referendum]. If we look around our communities we don’t see anything that benefits our community.

The vitality of your community is your educational institutions.

“We got umpteenth churches in our black community — got more than we ever had,” Howard continued. “We have a minimum amount of schools.

What people have done, even in recruiting businesses and the people that come in with them, the first thing they’re going to ask is, ‘Where are the schools for this neighborhood and what kind of schools are they?’ If there are no schools, you’re going to look elsewhere.”

Ashley Academy is currently 136 students over capacity, even taking into

consideration mobile units, according to data provided by the district.

Replacement of Ashley Academy was included in an initial list of projects totaling $552.5 million that staff presented to the school board in July 2015, and as recently as November staff told community leaders they were trying to negotiate a land deal to secure property to build a new school.

“That was something in our longrange plan that the board felt like all the pieces that would need to happen wouldn’t fall into place for it to happen in this construction cycle,” said Chief of Staff Theo Helm, declining to comment on any efforts to secure property for a new school.

“I’m very concerned and highly dismayed that it was left off the school education bond, reason being that the magnet was recently pulled from Ashley,” Howard said. “We felt strongly that the school needed to be included in the bond.”

The district has made no secret of the fact the construction and replacement of six schools, along with additions and renovations to eight others, will still leave many schools relying on mobile units to house classrooms. What happened after the passage of the last school bond, totaling $250 million in 2006, is instructive: The number of mobile units rose from 358 in 2006 to 468 in the current school year. An analysis by Triad City Beat using the districts current enrollment and building capacity numbers found that 6,290 out of 53,633 students, or 11.6 percent, are housed in mobile units or overcrowded in classrooms. With the addition of building capacity for 3,605 students, as outlined in the proposed $325.8 million bond package, 2,685, or 5.0 percent of the currently enrolled students would remain housed in mobile units or overcrowded into classrooms.

Asked what the district plans to do to meet the population needs of Ashley Academy, Helm responded, “Make use of extra space, extra rooms in the building and use mobile units. Where possible, we want to move students from

Jerry Herron questions why the school board isn’t planning to build a new middle school in East Winston.

mobile units to brick-and-mortar classrooms. Unfortunately, it’s not the only school in a situation like that.”

Indeed, the proposed bond does not include any projects that would directly address capacity at Kernersville Elementary and Flat Rock Middle School, two suburban schools that are even more overcrowded than Ashley, although the bond includes $1.5 million to purchase land for a future eastern elementary that could relieve Kernersville Elementary.

The most overcrowded middle school is Southeast Middle School in Kernersville, with 208 students over service capacity. The district plans to build a new middle school in the suburban Smith Farms area with a capacity of 800 and at a cost of $27.0 million. Similarly, Jefferson Middle and Meadlowlark Middle on the affluent west side of Winston-Salem are each over service capacity by about 141 and 193 students respectively, and the district plans to build a new school on Robinhood Road at a cost of $27.0 million to house 800 students.

The request by urban community leaders to build a new middle school in East Winston runs into the reality that

JORDAN GREEN

Winston-Salem Preparatory Academy, the middle school whose attendance area covers the neighborhood, is among a handful of schools that remain under capacity, with only 177 students for 362 seats. Only 77 out of 177 seats at the magnet school, housed in the former Atkins High School — a black institution during the segregation era that dates back to 1931 — are held by students who live in the school’s attendance area.

The remaining students are bused out to 10 other middle schools, with suburban East Forsyth Middle and Paisley Middle to the west absorbing the largest numbers.

The urban community leaders argue that lack of investment in schools in the urban core contributes to a vicious cycle of divestment, with families with young children reluctant to purchase homes and elderly people who want to downsize unable to sell their properties, instead hiring property managers to convert formerly owner-occupied dwellings into rentals.

Howard also noted that in the past year the district has closed Hanes Middle School, an urban school on the north side. The school board voted to

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the proposal, the district will partially replace the school, increasing capacity from 400 to 750, at a cost of $19.0 million. Highsmith is currently running for Winston-Salem City Council in the South Ward.

Robert Leak III, president of the Easton Neighborhood Association, expressed dissatisfaction that the plans to invest $9.0 million in additions and a new cafeteria at Easton Elementary won’t be more extensive.

Helm noted that capacity is not the only criteria the district is using the prioritize projects.

Maintenance and upkeep are also factors. That’s why the district proposes to spend $17.0 million to renovate North Forsyth High School, which was built in 1963.

The district also wants to use the bond to help meet three goals — getting 90 percent of third-graders to be able to read at grade level, having 90 percent of high school students graduate in four years and closing the racial achievement gap. Towards that end, the district wants to spend $24.2 million on projectors, interactive tablets and cameras. Helm said the 2006 bond equipped about 1,860 classrooms with technology. The remaining 1,840 classrooms will be updated with technology while the district will refresh technology in the classrooms addressed in the 2006 bond.

Howard, the local NAACP leader, said that while he supports the investments in Konnoak Elementary, Easton Elementary and Philo-Hill Magnet Academy as critical to preventing further student migration to the suburbs, he remains dissatisfied that there are no plans to invest in schools in East Winston.

“You promised us a school for our kids,” he said. “My concern is for East Winston that has no viable schools.

You’re talking about spending all this money and you want to keep enhancing the inequality of resources in the schools. It’s nothing good at this point in time that the residents and parents can see that the urban schools and specifically East Winston will get. What do we have to vote for? Nothing. What do we have to support? Nothing. Taxation without representation — that’s what it boils down to.”

triad-city-beat.com

close the school after concerns about contaminated groundwater were raised and many angry parents withdrew their children. Air-quality test results that came back after the closure revealed that the contamination posed no hazard to students and staff. The district is busing the students across town to the former Hill Middle School in the southeast — an arrangement expected to remain in place for the foreseeable future.

“Instead of increasing schools in East Winston, they’re eliminating them,” Howard said. “There are no viable middle schools in East Winston. That was Hanes. You’re taking the residential kids in that went to Hanes — they stayed on 26th and 27th streets; they went to that school all the way from Piedmont Circle. You’ve taken that school out of the community.”

Some reassurance about the stability of the neighborhood surrounding Winston-Salem Prep is offered in Census data that shows the median value of owner-occupied homes in the Census tract cover the school increased from $60,500 in 2010 to $86,900 in 2014.

The fortunes of the Census that encompasses Ashley Academy have more or less stagnated: Housing values dropped from $84,700 to $79,800 over the same period.

In contrast, the Census tract that covers Brunson Elementary in the affluent West End neighborhood, which the district is planning to replace at a cost of of $25.2 million, has seen home values modestly increase from $202,900 to $203,200. The new school will increase capacity from 400 to 800 even though Brunson Elementary is currently 13 students under capacity.

While Ashley Academy and 14 other schools that are over capacity are not being directly addressed under the winnowed bond proposal, the list includes four schools that are under capacity and stand to gain additional classroom capacity. Three out of four — Philo-Hill Magnet Academy, Easton Elementary and Konnoak Elementary — are located on the south side of the city.

Carolyn Highsmith, president of the Konnoak Hills Community Association and a member of the Community School Bond Coalition, publicly thanked the school board during a community meeting last month for keeping the school on the priority list. Under

336.708.0479 frankslate.brooks@trm.info

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March 2 — 8, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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OPINION EDITORIAL

Historical precedent One might be tempted to believe we’re breaking new political ground when the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee steps down so she can endorse a Democrat Socialist over a legacy Wall Street centrist, when the Republican frontrunner talks about punching people in the face and his closest competitor makes a public speculation based on the size of the other man’s hands.

It’s looking a lot more like professional wrestling out there than anything even remotely presidential, scenes which make for great YouTube fodder but cause those of us who understand the stakes to bemoan the eventual fate of this conflicted nation.

We’ve come apart at the seams before: A power vacuum created by the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the withdrawal of one-term President Lyndon Johnson gave a dangerous energy to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where a police riot broke out after Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the nomination despite not having competed in any primaries. Not one. And that, friends, is how we got President Richard Nixon.

These days the left is divided between a business-friendly, legacy candidate and an upstart who is most often compared to President Franklin Roosevelt — often as a slur, as if the only fourterm president in history is some sort of stain on the country. But FDR’s distant cousin, a few generations removed, might understand Sanders’ predicament.

President Theodore Roosevelt was a popular, progressive Republican, if you can imagine such a thing, that stepped down after two terms, allowing his secretary of war, William Howard Taft, to win the 1908 presidential race. By 1912, Roosevelt wanted back in but Taft had secured all the delegate votes before the convention. Roosevelt led his people off the convention floor and formed his own party, the Bull Moose, to run against Taft and that year’s Democrat, Woodrow Wilson.

Is it reasonable to assume most people know how that played out? Roosevelt came in second, with 27 percent of the vote, which was still better than the establishment Republican, Taft, who scored just 23 percent. Wilson became the 28th president with just 41 percent of the vote, and would go on to create the Federal Reserve.

Interesting side note: the remaining 6 percent went to the socialist candidate, Eugene V. Debs.

CITIZEN GREEN

Trump must be stopped Our country is hurtling towards fascism. There can be only one imperative for people of decency and goodwill in this presidential election, and that is to defeat Donald Trump.

By the time this column is published, the results of Super

by Jordan Green Tuesday will be in, and Trump may well have locked up the Republican nomination, but one prays that Ted Cruz will eke out some wins from the evangelical vote here and Marco Rubio will put a couple points on the board with support from the pro-business establishment there.

There’s no turning back once we allow a megalomaniac whose platform is built around his overblown personality to take power as the chief executive of the most powerful nation on earth. Trump’s magical promises to “make America great again” by building a giant wall along the Mexican border, defeating ISIS, striking a better trade deal and with the Chinese, and being “the greatest jobs president that God ever created” cannot be fulfilled. He will have no choice but to deflect attention from his failings by scapegoating domestic enemies — already identified as undocumented immigrants, Black Lives Matter activists and Syrian refugees — and embarking on foreign military misadventures. For anyone who is seriously considering voting for Trump, you need to reflect hard on your decision and recognize you’re putting our country on a ruinous path.

Trump is a demagogue who skillfully exploits the deep divisions in our country to consolidate power while taking advantage of the fact that a wide swath of the electorate has given up on the conventional politics of persuasion and compromise to solve problems. Blocking his path to the presidency must at least temporarily supersede all the enduring divisions between progressivism and conservatism, secularism and the evangelical movement, and business and labor.

The parallels between Europe in the 1920s and ’30s, and this American moment are eerie.

The connection between economic anxiety and the appeal of fascism in Germany and Italy after the First World War is well understood. Today, in the United States, the fact that the economic recovery has been well underway for five years while huge segments of the population have experienced deterioration in their personal finances creates an opening for a strongman who promises to get the job done without heed to political process or legal restraints. As HR Trevor-Roper wrote in a 1968 essay, “The Phenomenon of Fascism”: “The dynamism of fascism depends directly on the existence of a strong industrial middle class — and on the malaise of that class.”

Trump’s giddy pledges to use ruthless torture and indiscriminate killing as a cudgel against foreign foes resonates with euphoric crowds in New Hampshire and South Carolina,

not because jihadists pose a significant threat to civilians in the United States, but because our national prestige has been diminished with the decline of our superpower status in the wake of President George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq. There is a faint echo here of Germany’s military humiliation after the First World War and conservative reaction to the liberal Weimar Republic.

There’s another striking parallel that doesn’t get as much attention. Christian evangelicals, since the 1920s, have felt that their traditional values are under siege — from scientific reason, women’s control over their own bodies and, very recently, the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the Constitutional right to same-sex marriage. The Catholic Church in Europe, similarly, had been reeling from loss of authority since the mid-19th Century when laissez-faire capitalism upended the old feudal order.

Many political observers are scratching their heads over the fact that white evangelicals appear to be flocking to Trump instead of Ted Cruz.

“I think evangelicals are tired of being betrayed,” Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. recently told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, explaining his choice to support Trump over Cruz. “I think tea-party conservatives are tired of being betrayed by politicians who promise the world over the past few decades.”

There’s a hint of desperation in Falwell’s endorsement of Trump and willingness to give precedent to issues of “the security of the country, the economy” over abortion and same-sex marriage, while overlooking the flaws of a man who has been twice divorced and peppers his speeches with vulgarity and personal insults.

“I heard a very prominent pastor who is a friend of yours, by the way, Greta, tell me just this week that if we don’t save the country then abortion, traditional marriage, all those social issues are gonna be a moot point,” Falwell continued. “We’ve gotta save the country first. And I believe and many evangelicals believe that Donald Trump is best equipped to save the country in those areas.”

The Catholic Church struck similar deals with Mussolini, an avowed atheist, and Hitler, who was decidedly unmoved by religion, while withholding support from Christian democratic parties.

The Catholic Church, writes Trevor-Roper, “intervened” to allow Mussolini and Hitler to rise to power, reasoning that parliamentary democracy was not equipped to halt the spread of socialism and that the new, authoritarian regimes would help preserve Catholicism. The church and the conservative classes believed that they could use Mussolini and Hitler to destroy “socialism” in the streets and then they could be discarded.

“In fact, the reverse happened,” Trevor-Roper writes. “It was the conservative patrons and their ideas that were discarded, the vulgar demagogues that survived.”

Vending dog treats on the greenway

Cover Story

Lamar Gibson is a development manager for Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC and a sales executive at Triad City Beat.

Opinion

nations are already spreading. Clinton has responded to these calls and did in fact apologize for her words, for her insensitivity only after being very publicly called out by Ashley Williams, an activist from Charlotte. Sadly, the callousness of her original words and the fact that she was a fierce advocate for the policies they represented may have no impact on her standing (or poll numbers) in the African-American community. We are too inundated with media messages that focus more on her coronation than the policies and practices that are a part of her record, built over decades in public life.

My concern is for what must be done to address the very real fears we experience daily, built on years of the black struggle in this country. I draw inspiration from the new generation of organizers, artists and thinkers who dare to remind us that black is beautiful. I gain hope from the fearless foot soldiers and allies who refuse to live in despair. I take note of the wisdom that self-care is essential and while experiencing fear is real, being paralyzed by it cannot be an option. As I write these final words, my feet are moving again — the goosebumps are nearly gone. A song I learned at a gathering of elders, Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, starts to play in my head and I smile: “Freedom, freedom, freedom come and it won’t be long.”

News Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

On occasion, I come across things that bring me closer to the acute fear many young black people have learned to circumnavigate in order to try and lead productive, meaningful lives. It’s a fear that takes hold of you even when you are in the safety of your

by Lamar Gibson home, away from harm. It can be in the form of a newspaper story or the latest shooting video making the rounds on the Internet.

Today, it was the video of Hillary Clinton defending the tough-on-crime legislation her husband championed and passed during his tenure as president that has helped contribute to the alarming mass incarceration of African Americans.

“They are not just gangs of kids anymore,” Hillary Clinton said at the time. “They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended [up] that way, but first we have bring them to heel.”

The video ends. The all too familiar goosebumps spread like a flame over my arms, back and neck. The slight tightening of my chest and the uneasiness in my stomach arrive in milliseconds. My hands grow cold and I thrust them into my pockets as if I am trying to avoid frostbite. Both legs shake. I cannot move from where I am standing.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, at a speech at Wake Forest University last year, recalled the video of a South Carolina police officer violently dragging a young girl from her desk for “non-compliance.” The images, which had dominated the news cycles in the weeks after its release, sparked widespread discussion on the roles of school resource officers and their role in the larger conversation around policing in communities of color. Coates said something to the effect of, “If you watched the video and thought, ‘Well, what did she do wrong?’ then that’s messed up.” Coates then argued that no one would ask that question if it was their child being body-slammed and that it is only in a society where we grant unchecked power to those who police us that we can blame victims in this way.

Joshua Adams, in a piece on fatal police encounters for the Huffington Post wrote: “These officers’ testimonies often read like petrified men shooting at monsters in the abyss. But unlike boogeyman nightmares, this fear will destroy the lives [of] more black men, women, and children if we don’t deal with it.”

Hillary Clinton’s words serve as a poignant reminder of the deeply rooted biases that inform the thoughts and actions of so many in our amnesiac nation.

In dog training, our pets are taught to assume the “heel” position in relationship to their owners. It is a key indicator to both the dog as well as other people that the dog is obedient. In suggesting that we must first “bring them to heel,” Clinton gives us a crystal clear view into the rationale that has informed decades of racist policies and practices against marginalized communities. The animals must be trained.

In response to the video, the calls for apologies and expla-

Up Front

One day, hopefully before my knees start to give out, the Downtown Greenway in Greensboro will be finished. And

by Eric Ginsburg when it is, there will be plenty of amenities. But there’s one that would be a perfect fit that I’m not sure anyone has considered.

Dog treats.

Picture a vending machine designed to dispense dog treats, situated along the greenway loop somewhere near a trailhead (like Spring Garden) where people also walk their canines on the sidewalk. It would slay.

I don’t know if the machine could or should also offer things like Gatorade and bottled water — that’s a technical question above my pay grade and knowledge base. I have no idea if such a machine would need to be custom built or could be retrofitted, but it can’t be all that difficult a task in the right hands.

And like I said, it would slay.

In the unlikely event that you don’t immediately recognize the brilliance of this plan, allow me to point out ArcBarks, a locally based company making dog treats. Oh, and it’s just up the street.

It would’ve been easier to execute this concept flawlessly if the pop-up dog park at South Elm Street and Gate City Boulevard overlapped with the completion of the greenway (which will roll through along the adjacent Bragg Street along the former popup’s south side). But I’m inclined to believe a treat trap near the Edgeworth overpass on Spring Garden would do so well, the pilot project could be expanded to other city greenways and dog parks before quickly taking over regional cities.

Winston-Salem may be more fertile ground for such an experiment, considering the presence of K9 Doggie Bakery & Boutique as well as Alison Industries, a locally based vending company. I don’t care much who does it first — I don’t even have a dog — but I hope someone around here tries it and thrives.

Why Hillary’s ‘super-predator’ comment instills fear

triad-city-beat.com

IT JUST MIGHT WORK

FRESH EYES

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March 2 — 8, 2016

STARK CHOICES H H H H the 2016 Primary Voter Guide H H H H

Democratic primary President

Cover Story

Candidates: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Rocky De La Fuente

Clinton

Candidates: Deborah K. Ross, Chris Rey, Kevin D. Griffin and Ernest T. Reeves

Chances are you’ve heard of the first two candidates for the Democratic nomination for president — Hillary Clinton has been involved in politics since high school, when she worked for Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. She’s been first lady, served in the Senate and as secretary of state. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic socialist whose politicization dates back to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, represented Vermont in the US House from 1991 to 2007, and in the Senate since 2007.

The importance of the North Carolina primary in this race hinges on the primaries over the next two weeks, most notably the Super Tuesday group of a dozen plus states.

Rocky De La Fuente, a California businessman of Mexican descent, landed a position on the ballot by obtaining the requisite 10,000 signatures from North Carolina voters. He describes himself as a conservative Democrat, and has so far garnered enough signatures to also appear on primary ballots in Ohio, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Arkansas.

website. He is a Forsyth County Day School and UNCG graduate.

A retired US Army captain, Ernest T. Reeves of Greenville ran unsuccessfully against Sen. Kay Hagan in 2014.

He challenged an incumbent again the next year in a bid to be the mayor of Greenville. After his military service, Reeves worked for United Airlines and later attempted to start Jesusa Coffee and Jesusa Entertainment.

The candidate who wins the Democratic primary will likely face incumbent Richard Burr in the November general election.

Ross

Rey

Governor

Griffin

Reeves

Cooper

Sanders

De La Fuente

12

US Senate

Deborah K. Ross is a Raleigh lawyer who has taught law at Duke University and served in the state House from 2003 to 2013. According to her website, “she was a leader on ethics reform and election law,” and she has been endorsed by the Replacements Ltd. PAC for its LGBT voter guide. Her previous leadership of the ACLU of North Carolina and experience as general counsel for GoTriangle, the Triangle transit agency, is relevant.

Chris Rey is the three-term mayor from Spring Lake.

A major in the National Guard with military experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rey has received “numerous military awards and accolades including the Bronze Star,” according to his website. Rey is the executive director of Cumberland HealthNET, a nonprofit that “helps to coordinate care” for uninsured residents, and an adjunct professor at University of Mount Olive in the criminal justice department.

Durham staffing-company president Kevin Griffin has been involved with the Durham Living Wage Project, Dress for Success, Hiring Our Heroes and more.

He helped found the living wage project in 2015, and previously lived in all three Triad cities, according to his

Candidates: Roy Cooper and Ken Spaulding

Spaulding

Ken Spaulding, a Durham lawyer and former state lawmaker, has been running for governor for two-and-ahalf years, struggling to gain exposure for his campaign.

Meanwhile, long before Attorney General Roy Cooper officially announced his candidacy last October, the press was holding him up as the Democratic standard-bearer against Republican incumbent Pat McCrory. The latest poll by Public Policy Polling gave Cooper a 55/10 advantage over Spaulding, which explains why Cooper’s maintaining an extremely low profile. Cooper refused to debate Spaulding at High Point University, and hasn’t so much as outlined his positions on his website. Spaulding proposes to raise teacher pay and increase the affordability of higher education. He opposes voter ID, calling it “voter suppression.” He supports Medicaid expansion and marriage equality.

Lieutenant governor

Candidates: Linda Coleman, Holly Jones, Ronald L. Newton and Robert Earl Wilson Linda Coleman was the Democratic nominee in 2012 and narrowly lost to Dan Forest by only 6,858 votes.

Candidates: Mazie Ferguson and Charles Meeker

pal in Durham, is running on a fairly standard platform of support for teacher tenure and increased pay, resources for staff development, character development and computer technology.

Treasurer

Candidates: Dan Blue III and Ron Elmer

Coleman

Jones Ferguson

Newton

Wilson

With YWCA USA, Holly Jones led initiatives for energy independence and women’s health. Ronald L. Newton is a Durham businessman and self-described populist. Robert Earl Wilson worked in state government for 30 years in the Secretary of State office and in corrections.

Attorney general

Candidates: Josh Stein and Marcus W. Williams

Stein

triad-city-beat.com

Commissioner of labor

Williams

Josh Stein is the legacy favorite to fill the vacuum in the attorney general’s office left by Roy Cooper as he campaigns for governor. Stein served as first deputy to Cooper from 2001 to 2008 and in the state Senate representing Wake County since 2009. As a state lawmaker, he voted against a bill that would redistrict Greensboro for municipal elections, voted for a bill that forbids public-school teachers from working on political campaigns and against the amendment that allows magistrates to opt out of performing same-sex marriages — though he posted an excused absence on the day of the veto override vote.

Marcus W. Williams, a lawyer from Lumberton with 37 years of courtroom experience, is for better teacher pay and the restoration of tenure, the earned-income tax credit and the expansion of Medicaid in North Carolina— none of which are functions of the attorney general’s office. He ran in 2012 for the 8th Congressional District, losing the primary to Jane Smith by 20 points.

Meeker

Mazie Ferguson of Greensboro is a former president of the Greensboro Pulpit Forum, where she helped lead the boycott of K Mart in the well publicized and successful local labor battle. Ferguson, who has been a lawyer since 1978 but isn’t an active member of the bar, served as assistant legal counsel for NC A&T University for most of the 1990s. Ferguson said she was the first woman to pastor a Baptist church in the state — First Baptist Church in Siler City — though she is currently without a specific church.

She’s been active on labor issues and fighting for working people for decades, she said, adding that she is following God’s calling.

Charles Meeker spent a decade as Raleigh’s mayor, ending in 2011, and preceded his tenure with eight years on the Raleigh City Council. He has been a lawyer since the 1970s after graduating from Yale University and Columbia Law School, according to his website. Meeker is running “to provide effective, accountable leadership” and would address an array of issues “from worker injuries to employee misclassifications to workers not being paid,” his site says. He has been endorsed by the Replacements Ltd. PAC for its LGBT voter guide.

The winner of the Democratic primary takes on incumbent Republican Cherie Berry in November. You might recognize her from the signs in elevators.

Superintendent of public instruction

Candidates: June Atkinson (i) and Henry J. Pankey

Blue

Elmer

Government veteran Dan Blue III was speaker of the state House before taking his current role as Senate minority leader, before which he worked in pharmaceutical healthcare. Elmer, a CPA with a background in investment management, plans to improve retirement systems pensions.

State House District 58

Candidates: Ralph C. Johnson (i) and Amos Quick

Johnson

Quick

For this large swath of Greensboro, newcomer Amos Quick from the Guilford County School Board challenges incumbent Ralph Johnson. Johnson emphasizes Medicaid, and Quick focuses on school improvement. Read more at triad-city-beat.com.

Forsyth County register of deeds

Candidates: Norman Holleman (i) and Lynne Johnson

Atkinson

Pankey

As a three-term incumbent, June Atkinson consistently polls in elections as one of the most popular Democrats in statewide elections. She touts an increase in high school graduation rates from 68 percent to 86 percent under her watch, and is currently working with the Republican-controlled General Assembly to implement changes in the common course of study. Under Atkinson’s leadership the Department of Public Instruction is piloting Proof of Concept, a computerized assessment tool to replace end-of-grade tests, which she calls “20th Century artifacts.”

Challenger Henry J. Pankey, a former high school princi-

Holleman

Johnson

Norman Holleman, a former real estate agent first elected to the gig in 2008, has implemented several cost-cutting measures since his first term, including the elimination of six full-time positions from the registrar’s office. One of those was held by Lynne Johnson, who now

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March 2 — 8, 2016

works in the clerk of courts office and is running against her old boss.

The most pertinent issue facing registrars in North Carolina is that they, by law, can opt out of performing same-sex marriages. Both candidates said they would not opt out of this part of their official duties.

Guilford County School Board District 1

Candidates: Aaron Keith McCullough (i) and Dianne Bellamy-Small

school board’s interest in putting tablets in classrooms, arguing that “kids need flesh-and-blood tutors and teachers” on his campaign website. Stafford is a member of Greensboro’s Committee for People With Disabilities and says on his campaign site that he wants to make education more accessible and cut things like homework for kindergarteners.

The winner of the primary takes the seat by default, as no Republicans filed in this district.

Winston-Salem City Council Northeast Ward Candidates: Vivian Burke (i) and Keith King

to downtown of the two candidates in the Democratic primary for the South Ward, while Carolyn Highsmith has built her political base as president of the Konnoak Hills Community Association further out and to the south of Interstate 40. Larson is comfortable working the inside track and has won the endorsement of Molly Leight, who currently holds the seat and is retiring at the end of the year, while Highsmith is more of a populist outsider, occasionally opposing rezoning requests that come before city council. Both have expressed concern about neighborhood stability.

HHHHHHHH Republican primary President

Candidates: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Ben Carson

Cover Story

McCullough

Bellamy-Small

Aaron Keith McCullough of High Point was appointed to fill the vacant District 1 seat on the school board after its former occupant won election to the Guilford County Commission. The process was something of a fiasco, with two sequential appointees being disqualified because they lived outside the district, but the third time with McCullough was the charm. Dianne Bellamy-Small served on Greensboro City Council from 2003 to 2013, when she lost her re-election bid to Sharon Hightower. For the first time, District 1 includes parts of both High Point and Greensboro; previously, it lay within the confines of High Point. McCullough argues that it’s important that a High Point resident hold the seat, but Bellamy-Small notes that she’s worked as a substitute teacher in High Point schools and says her track record of public service means she can provided good representation, no matter where she lives.

Guilford County School Board District 8

Candidates: Deena Hayes (i) and Matthew Stafford

Burke

King

Vivian Burke has served on Winston-Salem City Council since 1977, the year the first Clash album was released. As a pioneering public servant — first black woman elected to city council, first female mayor pro tem and first female chair of the public safety committee — Burke is honored with a bust in city hall. With much of her ward covering the economically depressed area to the east of Highway 52, Burke’s recent tenure hasn’t been marked by uniform success — city-supported efforts to open a restaurant at Ogburn Station Shopping Center and a farmers market on Liberty Street remain unrealized.

Among her accomplishments, Burke cites launching a scholarship fund and engaging residents in voluntarism.

Keith King, a downtown storeowner, contends he could provide more effective representation, and faults Burke for lack of progress on the Liberty Street Market and for not being more visible after a 31-year-old resident died in police custody in the ward in December. The winner of this primary will most certainly serve on the next council.

Read more at triad-city-beat.com.

Trump

Cruz

Rubio

Kasich

Winston-Salem City Council South Ward Candidates: Carolyn Highsmith and John Larson

Hayes

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Stafford

Veteran school board member Deena Hayes may be most known for her anti-racism work, including persistent advocacy around the achievement gap and pushing her fellow board members to more proactively address racism in the classroom and school system. She is also the chair of the board for the International Civil Rights Center & Museum and has been endorsed by the Replacements Ltd. PAC for its LGBT voter guide.

Disability-rights activist Matt Stafford criticizes the

Carson

Highsmith

Larson

As the vice president of restoration for Old Salem Museum & Gardens, John Larson is the most proximate

Donald Trump understands that presidential elections, in many respects, are about entertainment, and though Trump has masterfully manipulated the media as if this election were his very own reality TV show, we’re not laughing. The Donald is espousing fascist positions this campaign season, and it doesn’t help that he’s tweeting Mussolini quotes or waffling on the KKK. Triad City Beat doesn’t endorse political candidates, but we stand firmly in

triad-city-beat.com

opposition to the rhetoric of this billionaire jerk, and we urge readers to take him seriously.

Ted Cruz isn’t Donald Trump, but the warmongering, Canadian-born Texas senator is so far afield that even most of his party is distancing itself from him. Though he may not be the Zodiac Killer, Ted Cruz isn’t exactly killing it in the polls either, though he did win Iowa.

The preferred Republican candidate of Triad City Beat readers (according to an unscientific poll on our website this week) and the GOP establishment, Marco Rubio is still hanging onto hope that he can surpass Ted Cruz and eat into enough of Trump’s lead to win the nomination.

Who? Just kidding, but more seriously, by the time the North Carolina primary rolls around, the rest of the states that have weighed in will have already made Ohio Gov. John Kasich completely irrelevant.

Rumor has it that the Republican establishment would like Dr. Ben Carson to stay in the race — and maybe make some more comments about pyramids and fruit salad — because it could take votes away from Trump. Regardless, the only black contender left on either side is a lost cause.

US Senate

Candidates: Richard Burr (i), Greg Brannon, Larry Holmquist and Paul Wright

Burr

Brannon

Holmquist

Wright

As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, two-term incumbent Richard Burr has burnished his national security bona fides by defending the NSA domestic surveillance program and blocking the release of the committee’s secret 6,700-page report on the CIA’s secret prison program and torture activities under President George W. Bush, while making himself an expert on Islamic State. Notably, Burr was one of only eight GOP senators to support the repeal of the “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” policy that had long forced gay military service members to keep their sexual orientation secret.

A trio of challengers is assailing Burr from the right. Most prominently, Dr. Greg Brannon received 27.2 percent of the vote in the 2014 Republican primary for the Senate seat then held by Democrat Kay Hagan. Brannon fell short to Thom Tillis, who went on to defeat Hagan in the general election. Public Policy Polling rates Brannon’s chances as worse this go-around, giving him 10 percent to Burr’s 55 percent, and concluding, “The support Brannon got running in the primary against Thom Tillis in 2014 doesn’t appear transferable to a bid against Burr this year.”

Brannon, a self-described constitutionalist, calls the Republican establishment as “the No. 1 foe we have.”

Larry Holmquist similarly accuses Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of enabling President Obama’s supposed agenda of destroying America.

Retired Superior Court Judge Paul Wright’s platform is a bit more esoteric. He calls on supporters to resist what he calls the “de-Christianization of America,” and warns against “antichrist voices of discouragement so prevalent in our media and culture.” The candidate opposes same-sex marriage and warns against provoking war with Russia.

Governor

Candidates: Pat McCrory (i), C. Robert Brawley and Charles Kenneth Moss Pat McCrory has spent one term presiding over a dramatic rightward lean to the state during which we outlawed same-sex marriage (only to have the law overturned as illegal and discriminatory), eased corporate and personal tax burdens while adding service fees

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March 2 — 8, 2016

Troxler McCrory

Brawley

Stevens

Andy Stevens, an Army veteran from Greensboro with experience in the propane industry and director of local government affairs for Gun Rights NC.

Commissioner of insurance

Candidates: Mike Causey, Joe McLaughlin and Ron Pierce

Cover Story

Moss

and sales taxes, changed the way public school teachers are compensated and refused federal Medicaid funds in order to weaken the effects of the Affordable Care Act. C. Robert Brawley, a former Iredell County state House representative, was primaried in 2014 — he says over a conflict with the speaker over toll roads. He runs on a platform of governmental integrity and transparency that includes raising teacher pay and opposing corporate incentives and private/public partnerships — as well as a promise to fight against toll roads.

Charles Kenneth Moss, a preacher from Randolph County, ran unsuccessfully in the 2012 primary, attracting about 1.5 percent of the Republican vote. He told the Charlotte Observer that he wants to get McCrory out of office, and that he paid his filing fee with his monthly Social Security check.

Attorney general

16

Causey

McLaughlin

Pierce

Buck Newton is hoping to leave his seat as a state senator, where he sponsored bills such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and one allowing hunting on Sundays. Jim O’Neill is currently Forsyth County’s district attorney, where he’s led initiatives cracking down on chronic violent offenders.

Commissioner of agriculture

Secretary of state

Newton

O’Neill

Candidates: Steve Troxler (i) and Andy Stevens Incumbent Steve Troxler, a tobacco-farm owner from Browns Summit who’s held the seat since 2005, faces

LaPaglia

defeated challenger AJ Daoud and three other hopefuls in that year’s primary. Daoud finished last; this year he and his wife waited 29 hours in front of the state board of elections building so he could be the first to file. The former cop and small-business owner — he has funeral parlors in several states — hopes his fight against burdensome government regulations gets traction this year. He has no elected experience, but he was the Republican Party chair of the 6th Congressional District, Howard Coble’s old turf, and served at the appointment of Gov. McCrory on the Lottery Commission.

Michael LaPaglia is another small-business owner with no elected experience, also looking to “ease the regulatory burden on business,” according to his website.

Superintendent of public instruction

Guilford County farmer Mike Causey came within 150,000 votes of beating current Commissioner Wayne Godwin. This time he maintains the same platform, including a pledge to fight “on the front line” against the Affordable Care Act, modernize the department and to minimize the Democrat’s presence in Raleigh. “[T]oo many Council of State offices are firmly under Democrat control,” his site reads.

Joe McLaughlin is a former Onslow County commissioner — the only one in the Republican field who has ever held office — insurance agent and talk-radio show host.

Ron Pierce is an insurance agent who was accused of fraud by the department of insurance in 2014 but later cleared. He’s “mad as hell,” according to his Facebook page, about what he sees as corruption of the department by insurance companies.

Candidates: Buck Newton and Jim O’Neill

Daoud

Candidates: AJ Daoud and Michael LaPaglia Incumbent Democrat Elaine Marshall kept her seat in 2012 by about 7 points against Ed Goodwin, who in turn

Candidates: Mark Johnson, J. Wesley Sills and Dr. Rosemary Stein

Johnson

Sills

Stein

A trio of Republicans is vying for their party’s nomination to challenge Democratic incumbent June Atkinson in the November general election. Mark Johnson, who serves as corporate counsel for Inmar, won a seat on Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School Board less than two years ago. He’s gone on the offensive against Dr. Rosemary Stein, a pediatrician in Burlington and chair of the NC Republican National Hispanic Assembly. First, Johnson took issue with Stein, an advocate for classical education, saying that America is moving towards a “twoclass education system.” Then he accused her of mocking teachers by saying their profession “is not that difficult.” J. Wesley Sills, a social studies teacher in Dunn who became fully licensed in 2015, is also running for the seat.

State Senate District 31

Candidates: Joyce Krawiec (i), Peter Antinozzi and Dempsey Brewer Joyce Krawiec is seeking re-election after her first term, in which she sponsored a bill to further define the revocation of sexual consent. Dempsey Brewer, an engineer who challenged her in 2014, is seeking a rematch. Peter

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Antinozzi, a biomedical professor at Wake Forest University, is also a candidate. With no Democrats filing, the winner of the Republican primary claims the seat.

Forsyth County Commission District B

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The Republicans have the majority on the seven-member Forsyth County Commission, but a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats actually holds the effective balance of power. Chairman Dave Plyler, an incumbent in the three-seat District B, is one of two moderate Republicans who has voted with the Democrats to raise the debt limit and favors a more robust school bond that would potentially go before voters in November. If Bill Whiteheart, a former commissioner who lost his seat in 2014, edges out Plyler, the conservative faction — in favor of tight limits on spending — will gain clout if not an outright majority. The conservatives make no secret of their desire to send Plyler home. “Bill Whiteheart, Richard Linville and Gloria Whisenhunt have played on the same team, and they have worn the red Republican jersey,” Whitheart said at a recent candidate forum, “while Dave Plyler has played for the other team and worn the blue jersey.”

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Guilford County School Board District 2

Candidates: Anita Sharpe and John Bradley Nosek Anita Sharpe served on the county school board from 1992 to 2008, deciding not to run in 2008 because the economic downturn meant she couldn’t be away from her job as an accountant and office manager for a high-end builder. But now that Sharpe has the time, she’s back and said she will pick up where she left off.

Sharpe also said school employees trust her and raise issues confidentially.

Sharpe Nosek John Bradley Nosek, a first-time candidate grew up locally, attending parochial school and then Page High School. But when he and his wife decided to live here, he said the only downside was the school system, which he characterizes as suffering from administrative bloat. Nosek also said he is concerned about student safety after a student was allegedly raped at High Point Central High School, which is part of the district. Nosek runs his own real-estate company.

The winner of the Republican primary faces current board member and Democrat Jeff Belton in the redrawn District 2 general election.

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March 2 — 8, 2016

Guilford County School Board District 3 Candidates: Brian Pearce and Pat Tillman

Lawyer and parent Brian Pearce has two kids, one of whom is on the autism spectrum, which informs his understanding of the school system’s needs, his website says. He has served as the chair of the Greensboro Board of Adjustment and on the board of the Greensboro Jaycees.

Returning candidate Pat Tillman Pearce Tillman served as a platoon sergeant and commander in the US Marines and is a combat vet from Iraq. He is the former executive director of the county GOP, a member of the Greensboro Transit Advisory Board, the Safe Schools committee and a precinct chair. He is currently on the board of the Servant Center and Friends Homes, and teaches Sunday school at First Friends Meeting.

The winner of this primary contest will face newcomer Democrat Angelo Kidd in the general election. Read more about this primary in next week’s issue of Triad City Beat.

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Guilford County School Board District 6

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Candidates: Linda Welborn (i) and Paul A. Daniels

Incumbent Linda Welborn defeated her challenger in the last election. Since then, she’s been criticized for not being conservative enough, primarily because she eschews the GOP stance on charter schools. She has been endorsed by the Replacements Ltd. PAC for its LGBT voter guide.

Paul Daniels, who served on the Welborn Daniels Guilford County School Board before being defeated by Welborn, is concerned about wasteful spending and student safety.

He bills himself as more conservative than Welborn and calls himself a budget hawk. The winner of the Republican primary automatically takes the District 6 seat, as no Democratic candidates have filed.

Winston-Salem City Council Northwest Ward

Candidates: Eric Henderson and Jimmy Hodson Jeff McIntosh took more than 58 percent of the vote when he eased into the solidly Democratic Northwest Ward in 2013. Hoping to unseat him is Eric Henderson, a physics professor and PhD candidate at Wake Forest University running on a platform of deregulation, low taxes and solid constituent services. Jimmy Hodson works in software marketing, and is running on a Christian platform of integrity, fiscal responsibility and “putting people Henderson Hodson first,” according to his website.

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March 2 — 8, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

20

CULTURE Locals endorse new downtown Winston-Salem coffee joint

by Eric Ginsburg

I

’m a believer in the Rule of Two. Three is better.

When one person recommends that I check out a new venue, I generally ignore them. It’s a matter of practicality and time management more than anything — only a few people’s solo endorsement is enough to entice me on its own. So when a friend who works downtown Winston-Salem said I needed to stop by a new coffee shop on Liberty Street, I only wandered over a week later when I realized I was only a few blocks away.

But I couldn’t find it. The block of Liberty south of the new art park and Camel City BBQ Factory is largely forgettable, largely an expanse of urban decay between the energy of Trade Street and the glistening Innovation Quarter — a convenient cut-through from the Garage towards Business 40 more than anything.

I walked up to the faded façade of Artists on Liberty, a storefront that looks as outdated as the internet acronym by the same name.

I tried the door. Locked. Given the time, 3 p.m. on a Wednesday, I figured I must just have the address wrong.

A few days later I found myself sharing a table at one of Spring House Grill’s hallmark Valentine dinners with several strangers, including two Triad City Beat super fans — a med student and her boyfriend, a High Point University employee off to law school in the fall.

The conversation quickly turned to favorite restaurants and unknown dives when they learned my line of work, but one of their recommendations stuck with me.

They live above Barista Co-op, the new pocket coffee shop a friend had already recommended. It closes at ERIC GINSBURG Justin Kirkus is running a one-man show in the building next door to where the new Crafted 2:30 p.m. daily, they explained, and implored me to try restaurant will open on Liberty Street in downtown Winston-Salem. again. With the Rule of Two (or Three) met, I assured them I would. week, running the small coffee bar himself. too.

I found Justin Kirkus behind the counter, and you will As indie hits from the likes of Sleigh Bells and RJD2 The spare shop, which opened about six weeks ago, too if you visit — Barista Co-op is, despite the name, played in the background, Kirkus explained that includes a modest corner desk and two little one-pera one-man show. Some will recognize Kirkus from his though there isn’t a lack of local shops, nobody is realson work stations among more conventional seating days at Café Roche, which later became Ardmore Cofly focusing on coffee the way he wants to here. He uses such as barstools and two tables. fee, or more recently as the former general manager at Ritual, a company that sources ethically and focuses You could wait until your own Rule of Two is fulfilled Coffeeology in Greensboro. on seasonal availability, switching its offerings with before checking it out, but by then, seating might not The Lexington native graduated at 19 from Boston considerable frequency, he said. He usually stocks the be as available for a coffee date or morning meeting.

University, and traveled to Florence, Italy for a job, coffee and espresso bar with four varieties, rotating where he ended up in a bariseach week for freshness, and uses ta training program. Upon his a refractometer to determine the Pick of the Week stateside return, Kirkus remained Visit the Barista Cooperative ideal heat, grind size and amount Earn your ‘Sugar Coma while Buzzed’ badge in the industry for the better part of exposure for each coffee. And at 521 N. Liberty St. #101 Girl Scout Cookie Beer Pairing @ CRU Wine & of the last eight years, includhe exerts more control over the Beers (GSO) Tuesday, 5:30 p.m.

(W-S) or call 336.293.4812. ing stints in Boston and New drink with a Kalita Wave dripper You may think, Thin Mints and stouts? That can’t York. But in 2009, attracted by — the kind of things coffee nerds end well. The answer to that is… maybe, or maybe the city’s diversity, growth and might care about, but most consumers probably just you’re in for the palate adventure of your life. Balaffordability, Kirkus and his wife moved to Winston-Sacare that it’s supposed to make the coffee taste better. timore’s DuClaw Brewing brings its famous Sweet lem.

Barista Co-op does sell some food, including toast Baby Jesus! chocolate peanut butter porter, preThe somewhat desolate strip of Liberty is cheap or a bagel with cream cheese, surprisingly affordable sumably to pair with whatever that peanut butter enough that Kirkus could step out on his own but cenlox, smoked roe or butter. Oh, and vegemite; there’s a cookie is called. With that much sugar, make sure tral enough to the action that it made sense, he said. to hydrate well. It costs $5. Check out the event on sizable local Australian population, enough to justify it He’s open from 6:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m., seven days a Facebook for details. as one of the few choices, Kirkus said. There’s oatmeal,

News Opinion

The patio at Q Bar is one of the best, and most overlooked, in the city. ERIC GINSBURG

Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

And so a month ago, the two took it owner, Q had come to be known as over, renaming it Q Bar as a way to pay more of a lesbian bar than a gay one, homage to its roots while signaling a Cozzi said, likely due in part to the change. closure of Time Out. He felt it struggled Cozzi built a new bar top and back to do too much, straddling the line bebar, installed some new lighting and tween a bar and a club at times, which painted the interior and exterior, but he described as a losing proposition for for the most part, Q Bar resembles its everyone. With Chemistry not too far predecessor. It kept some of the same away on Spring Garden Street, Cozzi art on the walls too, as a signal to said the new Q can focus on just being existing patrons that this is still the dive a bar. they love.

But he wants Q Bar to appeal to a The biggest change may be the decibroader audience, inviting in more sion to open up a front window, which LGBT friendly patrons who are looking required removing a storage area and for a judgment-free safe space rathputting in a cocktail table with chairs. er than focusing exclusively on LGBT But customers can also expect more customers. Q Bar will retain its role aggressively priced drinks and a larger as an LGBT community institution, he liquor collection, Cozzi said. And some said, gesturing to a sign from the old day, they’d like to install a retractable incarnation that he installed on a wall awning to cover the near the front door patio, which is one proclaiming Q as a Visit the new Q Bar at of the city’s nicest gay bar where all are overlooked outdoor 708 W. Market St. (GSO). welcome. spaces.

Gay bars used to Cozzi entertains be hush-hush sort thoughts of a small of places, Cozzi said, kitchen in the future as well. He’s almost like dark dungeons. But as already selling mugs that say “Q Bar evidenced by the decision stop obscur2016” that patrons can bring to paring the front window, Cozzi believes ticipate in a 50-cent mug special, and exposure and an open attitude is now intends to release a new design each a more beneficial stance, both for the year.

LGBT community and the bar itself.

In its final era under the previous

Cover Story

to.

After a decade in business, the owner of Q Lounge — later known simply as the Q — planned to close Greensboro’s longstanding gay bar. Located on the edge of downtown in a troubled shopping strip cattycorner to Greensboro College, the Q walked the line between a visible outpost and a hidden safe space, with blacked out windows obscuring any street view and a high fence around the side patio.

Several venues have catered to LGBT residents in the past, though options dwindled as the Warehouse and Time Out — a lesbian staple — closed in recent years. Cozzi and Wofford, who opened the gay nightclub Chemistry, didn’t want to see yet another community hub turn into a memory.

Cozzi, who grew up in Las Vegas, has been working in bars and clubs for 15 years, first in his hometown and then southern Florida before relocating to Raleigh. The muscular bar owner with a close-cropped haircut and a large cross tattoo on his forearm is bisexual, and until opening Chemistry, his industry experience had been in straight venues.

The club he opened with Wofford is fundamentally different than the Q — it’s high energy, he said, where people are dressed to the nines.

“It’s your little baby New York,” he said.

The Q, though, often caters to an older crowd and is the kind of neighborhoodbar where people can show up in flip-flops and socialize in a more relaxed environment. To make his point, Cozzi noted the weekly board-game days.

When Cozzi and Wofford heard that plans to close the Q were imminent, they felt they had to step in.

“Because of what Q offers the community, I couldn’t see it close,” Cozzi said.

Up Front

by Eric Ginsburg

It wasn’t so much that Matt Cozzi wanted to buy the bar as much as he and business partner Drew Wofford felt like they had

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A gay bar, reimagined

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March 2 — 8, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

22

CULTURE Caleb Caudle gets sober, comes home and makes his finest album yet

by Jordan Green

T

his is not the way the story of the lonesome troubadour is supposed to go. And that’s for the best.

With a half-dozen well regarded but largely ignored albums full of authentic folk-country songs in the mold of Steve Earle and Townes Van Zandt, Winston-Salem’s Caleb Caudle could have found himself in a creative eddy during a brief but dissolute sojourn in New Orleans in 2014. But he got sober, moved back to Winston-Salem and went back to work with renewed creative focus. Carolina Ghost, the album that came out of Caudle’s sessions at Fidelitorium Recordings in Kernersville with co-producer Jon Ashley, is the result.

Caudle marked the release of Carolina Ghost with a sold-out hometown show at the Garage in Winston-Salem on Feb. 25, and followed two nights later with a well-received concert at the Evening Muse in Charlotte. By the end of the weekend, Carolina Ghost was topping Amazon’s Alt-Country & Americana charts, alongside the Band’s Greatest Hits and the Waco Brothers’ Going Down in History. It could only help that Caudle received a rush of favorable press, including raves from Huffington Post, Aquarium Drunkard, Paste, CMT and Pop Matters, along with a thoughtful long-form piece by former Spin magazine editor Charles Aaron for the Bitter Southerner. And lest you think that it’s all music-critic hype, Caudle’s Facebook is bursting with testimonials, including one from a fan from Mobile, Ala. who calls Carolina Ghost his “favorite album of all time,” with the caveat that “a significant portion of my collection is obscure European metal.”

So on Sunday, on what was supposed to be his day off, Caudle found himself driving down to Athens, Ga. to pick up the second pressing of vinyl albums. It’s a good problem to have.

Sitting for an interview at a concrete table outside Krankies Coffee on Monday afternoon, Caudle has switched from coffee to Coca-Cola. He’s clearly pleased that the album has gained traction, remarking, “I’m just trying to enjoy it and not completely be a workaholic.”

Pre-sales on the record are strong in Richmond, Va., DC and Baltimore, where Caudle has solo shows lined up this week, and later this month he’ll take his ace backing band to South by Southwest in Austin.

Caudle forged a bond with guitarist Tommy Scifres, drummer Jack Foster and bassist Jordan Powers of Rosewood — initially formed as a country side project to House of Fools — during a tour in which they shared billing a couple years ago and the band would join him onstage for five or six songs.

“At a certain point I was able to afford to take a band out,” Caudle said. “I didn’t steal the band; it just worked out that way. I don’t really know if Rosewood is on hiatus or not. Those guys play together so well. I was like, ‘They would sound great on what I’m doing.’”

Caudle also brought in Greg Herndon to play Wurlitzer, piano and Hammond B3, Brent Resnick on pedal steel and Alex McKinney on dobro for the sessions at Fidelitorium Recordings.

The 11 tracks on Carolina Ghost soar with a kind of crisp clarity, putting Caudle’s resonant voice out front and every note of the dobro, guitar and pedal steel in the right place as the songs cruise comfortably over a restrained drum click. It’s traditional country with excellent musicianship and standout vocals of the kind JUSTIN REICH Caleb Caudle’s Carolina Ghost, recorded in Kernersville, recalls that gave George Strait the country sound of the early 1980s. a stunning run of hits in plicity of punk rock and the simplicity of country, it the 1980s before Nashville gets straight to the emotion. It’s trying to strip away country went to crap. It’s the kind of music that might anything from the song that gets in the way so it’s just come over the radio in a gentleman farmer’s pickup exactly what you want.” in Kentucky in the early ’80s during a slow roll down Like his alt-country peers John Moreland and Aaron country lanes bracketed by tobacco fields.

Lee Tasjan, Caudle says he carries a DIY ethos into the In contrast to the pathos of George Jones or the music business. Despite the plaudits and the full housrough outlaw stance of classic Waylon and Willie, most es at shows these days, he doesn’t anticipate changing of the turmoil in Caudle’s music is in the rearview, as up his approach any time soon. with the romantic insecurity of “Wasted Thursday” “These three dudes are working hard,” Caudle says (“This afternoon is nothing less than lonely/ Yesterday of himself and his peers. “We’re going on the road, was one long kiss goodbye”) or the dissolute living of making fans and shaking hands.

“Borrowed Smiles” (“I used to stay out, I used to stay “We drive ourselves everywhere and print our own out every night/ I used to run my mouth and always merch,” he continues. “People see what we do — the try to start a fight/ And get out the way just in time for 45 minutes to an hour onstage — and think that’s it. someone else to take the blame”). “Broken Hallelujah” That’s only 5 percent of the job. I kind of like to work. better represents the album’s overall feeling of reasMe and John and Aaron all are from punk rock. You surance: “Second chance, oh second wind/ Whatever it should see my living room now. There’s hundreds of takes to begin again/ Small reminder of what used to packages spread over the room. You can’t even sit on be/ I came home for more than a memory.” the couch. I like to work. I’d probably be lost without Reflecting on the making of Carolina Ghost, Caudle it.” says, “I wanted to make a really, really great sounding record. I had a more lo-fi sound in the past, but that wasn’t by choice. I really like to have the vocals out Pick of the Week front, and I’m drawn to really strong singers, singers who belt it out. I’m really drawn to the soulful singers.”

Catch for us the Foxes At the age of 29, Caudle has seven albums to his Amplifier Presents @ the Green Bean (GSO), 8 p.m. name, both with his band the Bayonets and, since 2012, Amplifier magazine, forever immortalized online as a solo artist. As a teenager, he primarily listened to even though it’s no longer in print (RIP) supports the Hurt Ensemble and Twin Foxes as they make punk rock bands like the Clash. their way down the East Coast. More closeHe smiles when he thinks of the evolution he’s made to-home acts play as well, such as Greensboro from punk through rough-hewn folk music to this prog-rockers Ebon Shrike and Chapel Hill’s Soon, sparkling vintage of traditional country. which releases its debut album this weekend. More “I think it probably would have surprised my younger info on the event’s Facebook page. self,” he says. “When I step back and look at the sim-

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March 2 — 8, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

24

CULTURE A false start and redemption for Tchaikovsky’s ‘Winter Dreams’

by Joanna Rutter and Anthony Harrison

A

s the last note of the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1 in G minor, “Winter Daydreams” died out, the conductor walked off stage.

An urgent hand from the wings had gestured for him. The audience of hundreds coughed and rustled their programs.

A projector screen hanging over the musicians that had been blank shimmered to life with a blue screen of death and a text bar which flashed, “Searching…” The reason for his departure painfully clear, the conductor hustled back to his mark and addressed the audience with a sheepish smile.

“Good evening, everyone,” Conductor Nate Beversluis said, repeating his exact introduction from 15 minutes prior. “You’re in for something special tonight.”

Uneasy laughter from the audience.

The projector glitch in Guilford College’s Dana Auditorium on Feb. 25 during “Winter Dreams,” a concert of Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s oeuvre, embodied a Greensboro Symphony gloriously out of sorts: Maestro Dmitry Sitkovetsky was missing due to minor surgery, substituted by Greensboro Youth Symphony conductor Beversluis.

“We’re going to play that movement for you again,” Beversluis continued with sudden sincerity, “and you’re going to see some lovely paintings by Aleksander and Lyuba Titovets. I’m true to my word.”

Even the ensemble of professional musicians couldn’t hide their collective surprise as they flipped back to the score’s first page. Bows lifted in unison again, a hush fell again and Tchaikovsky’s first symphony began, again.

The multisensory experience originally intended via projector screen of more than 250 paintings by the Titovets — a couple from El Paso, Texas via St. Petersburg, Russia — was realized in the second run. Their striking work, reminiscent of Renoir or Whistler, largely romanticized bucolic scenes of a bygone, pastoral Russian empire. Dark and deep wintry forest landscapes accompanied the symphony especially well, and the melding of art and music was an ambitious idea in concept.

In execution, however, the slideshow panned wildly, granting the audience only brief, zooming moments to contemplate each piece before zipping to the next one, like a frenetic jog through a stranger’s vacation photos.

Distractingly, there was sometimes no apparent logic in pairing a painting with the musical accompaniment.

Fantasia it was not, but the art provided a fitting complement to Tchaikovsky’s nascent melodic dramatics.

Curiously, Tchaikovsky drew lifelong inspiration from this initial opus even though it represented his most immature music; he confessed to his brother in an 1866 letter of “being unable to shake off the thought that I might soon die without even managing to complete the symphony.” One can sense a young Tchaikovsky discovering a host of concepts throughout the work, tugging at tendrils of ideas, such as an early

In the Greensboro Symphony’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s often-overlooked first symphony, “Winter Daydreams,” musicians recovered from a technical glitch with grace.

iteration of his “Waltz of the Flowers” theme from The Nutcracker in the first movement.

Beversluis’ conducting mirrored Tchaikovsky’s manic, youthful intensity — tuxedo tails flapping as he sliced the baton through the air with cartoonish energy, sweeping tai chi-esque gestures, then remaining completely frozen but for a single twitch of his finger, shoulder pads tenting his jacket behind his head. Yet the unity between Beversluis and the orchestra remained tangibly strong.

The eerie, déjà vu recapitulation of the main theme decayed into an awkward smattering of applause — for those unfamiliar, it’s trés gauche to applaud between movements, as it disrupts the flow of the piece.

In this case, the piece had already been disrupted, though not beyond repair.

Perhaps it was the perfect storm of unforeseen variables; perhaps it was the drive to recover from a faux pas over which they had no control. Either way, the orchestra had performed the first movement even better the second time.

Finally, they were allowed to continue enchanting the audience with the seldom-heard symphony.

The second movement began with a light, airy melody developing into a brassy, ominous wall of sound, bringing to mind a barren winter landscape. The scherzo featured a rhythmically intense phrase, tossed from section to section, and the final movement finished with a sumptuously Russian display of bombastic

DANIEL CRUPI

glory, complete with major-key modulation.

After all, Russians know perhaps better than any culture that winter must yield to spring.

Following intermission, the projector screen disappeared, the stage lights went up and the orchestra launched into the iconic tunes of the Sleeping Beauty Suite.

Within the first few measures, a transcendent shift in confidence was readily apparent. Two violinists in the front row shared a smile while playing the sweeping waltz, and Beversluis, turning to the cellists, revealed the gleeful grin of one achieving grace.

The mood was not broken between movements by embarrassed applause. The audience behaved them-

Pick of the Week One more shot at second chances Winter Dreams @ High Point University, 7:30 p.m.

The Greensboro Symphony pays a visit to High Point, and brings some of Tchaikovsky’s greatest music with them. Nate Beversluis conducts The 1812 Overture and Sleeping Beauty Suite along with Symphony No. 1, “Winter Dreams,” paired with a multimedia montage by Russian artists Lyuba and Aleksander Titovets. Tickets are required via highpoint.edu or calling 336.841.9209.

triad-city-beat.com Up Front

this Quaker institution, the piece lost none of its martial thrill.

The standing ovation given by the audience underscored this victorious finale — for the piece, for the program, for the orchestra and for Beversluis, who beamed with the look of one redeemed.

News Opinion

selves: Something sublime was happening.

In the tentative quiet succeeding the suite’s conclusion, Beversluis gestured at the stunned audience to applaud louder and was satisfied, beads of sweat forming on his brow. Grabbing his microphone, out of breath, he scolded the auditorium good-naturedly: “Next time you hear that, you’ll know when it’s over.”

The orchestra ended the program with the 1812 Overture. While it may seem strange to close with an overture, one this infamous might have overshadowed the rest of the night.

After Tchaikovsky’s varied quotations of Les Marseillaise got muddled in their inherent soupiness, a cellist headbanged like a heavy-metal bassist as the orchestra blasted through the familiar, triumphant theme. Though fortissimo timpani substituted for cannon fire at

Cover Story Culture

Impressionist-style paintings like “Eternity” (above) were paired with “Winter Dreams.”

PHOTO CREDIT: ALEKSANDER AND LYUBA TITOVETS

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March 2 — 8, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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Spartans stay frosty

partans fans peppered first-baseman Skidmore. Agresti stole home. the navy seats behind A short mound visit led to a change in staff after the home plate of UNCG the side restarted. Sophomore right-hander Andrew Baseball Stadium. Some Wantz took over pitching duties. munched popcorn as the PA But changing horses midstream helped nothing. system pumped generic hard After senior leftfielder Eddie Posavec walked, Rufo rock. The boys in white and shot a single to left field, batting in two more runs. dark-blue pinstripes warmed By the time the Spartans threw out freshman rightby Anthony Harrison up by throwing from base to fielder Chris McGee at first, Binghamton had demolbase. ished any memory of UNCG’s lead. The score stood at a But while the Spartans wore the same, familiar seemingly insurmountable 8-2. uniform, the seated faithful sported different garb: “After the fifth inning, I got the guys together,” Hoodies, knit caps and boots subbed in for the familiar Spartans head coach Link Barrett said after the game. jerseys, baseball hats and sneakers of a summer game.

“I told them, ‘Half the game’s over, but we got half a Because it was chilly. It’s February, after all. game left to play.’”

The visiting Binghamton University Bearcats — of When freshman left-hander Zach Kuchmaner took Vestal, NY, near the Pennsylvania border — may have the mound for the Spartans, he slowed Binghamton’s been more acclimated to playing in the weather on tempo, striking out the third batter to retire the side.

Feb. 26, but on paper, they weren’t ready for a team of “Yeah, Cooch!” a fan yelled. “There you go, take it to UNCG’s caliber. Statistically, UNCG had the game in ’em!” the bag.

As the sun set, the Spartans fought back with their The first inning reinforced that prediction. namesakes’ vigor.

In the top, the Spartans defense shuffled out the Senior third baseman Collin Woody slammed a comfirst three Bearcat batters without breaking a sweat. fy double just inside the centerfield wall. He was driven The hometown offense busted confidently out of the home after a Spitznagel hit bounced off Rufo’s glove. gate as well. Junior catcher Jake Kusz drove a Texas When UNCG’s junior designated hitter Dillon Stewart leaguer into shallow right field, batting in sophomore got beaned at the plate, three men were on base, and shortstop Tripp Shelton and freshman first-baseman Binghamton replaced Bunal with sophomore rightMichael Goss after both simultaneously stole third and hander Dylan Stock. second off a strike. Their speed caught Binghamton’s Freshman centerfielder Andrew Moritz next stepped sophomore catcher Jason Agresti off guard. up for the Spartans. Boy, did he ever step up.

But after Binghamton found themselves on the Stock’s first pitch saw Moritz float a double directboard, they also found some momentum. ly between left and center, and three UNCG runners UNCG had some nice at-bats over the next two incrossed home. nings, but couldn’t get much going as Bearcats fielding The rookie had put his team back in the game. The halted any opportunities to pad their lead. The Spartan Spartans didn’t let up on the aggression with their defense kept up their end of the bargain, as well, even second lease on life. recording a clutch 4-6-3 double play in the top of the Senior rightfielder LJ Kalawaia batted in another run third.

But they had no idea of the coming storm.

At the start of the fifth, UNCG junior right-hander Hunter Smith’s throwing became scattered. He walked sophomore shortstop Paul Rufo. After a wild pitch, Rufo stole second. Then Spartan junior second-baseman Ben Spitznagel muffed a play, allowing what could have been a routine out at first to turn into an RBI single, with Rufo the tying run.

The floodgates opened.

Bearcats senior third-baseman David Schanz hit an RBI single two batters later. Next, senior second-baseman Reed Gamache Freshman outfielder Andrew Moritz stepped up big time in COURTESY PHOTO drove in another run. So did junior this early-season Spartans win.

with a single, then demonstrated a base-running clinic, stealing second and third, positioning himself as the tying run.

Woody stepped up to two outs. The new Bearcats pitcher, right-handed junior Nicholas Liegi, looked to strike him out. He kept Woody at home for a full count.

But Woody showed him that Greensboro is Sparta, slamming a two-RBI single.

Like that, the Spartans led 9-8.

Stewart padded UNCG’s lead with an RBI off a sacrifice fly after the seventh-inning stretch.

At the top of the ninth, the Spartans still held a tworun lead.

Binghamton senior third-baseman David Schanz secured a grounder single off Spitznagel’s glove.

Sophomore right-handed reliever Chad Sykes walked Gamache. Then Agresti put Schanz in scoring position with a sacrifice bunt.

The entire infield joined Jarrett at the mound for a conference. I couldn’t read Sykes’ lips, but his coach gave him an encouraging butt pat, and Sykes didn’t leave his post.

There was no conversation after Skidmore hit a sacrifice fly to centerfield, giving Schanz time to cross home. No one in the dugout flinched when a wild pitch put Gamache on third as the tying run.

Instead, Sykes stared down the Bearcats DH, sophomore Pat Britt.

Swinging strike. A close ball drew boos from the crowd. Another swinging strike, one that Britt wanted to see fly over the wall.

Britt swung hard again — strikeout.

The tiny crowd erupted. Final score: 10-9, Spartans.

UNCG faced this formidable foe for the next two days, both victories: 5-2 on Saturday and a decisive 19-4 Sunday win.

“It’ll be more of the same,” Barrett said on Friday night. “We’re gonna have to pitch. We’re gonna tighten things up defensively to keep damage to a minimum.

“But we were down 3-0 the other day [against Elon University],” he added. “Two games in a row, to come back from behind? That’s a unique trait for a team to have.”

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ALL SHE WROTE

J

ules: Did you watch the Oscars?

Me: Not really. I was too embarrassed for Hollywood.

by Nicole Crews Actually, I dipped in and out. I was over the fashion as soon as I saw Olivia Wilde festooned with coffee filters. And Sofia Vergara looked like she was going to a goth quinceañera.

Jules: Ha. I wondered. You are usually all over it with social media. Did you see all of the movies?

Me: Some. The genre of various forms of child abuse is not my favorite.

Jules: Well I’m glad DiCaprio won Best Actor. I think he was due.

Me: Good lawd though. A little preachy and speech-y. Channeling his inner Brando I see. Though I guess it’s good to see him get behind something other than a super model.

Jules: Ha. He kind of is our generation’s Brando. Speaking of super models. Did you see Miranda Kerr’s dress at the Vanity Fair after party?

Me: Red satin? With the cutouts? She looked great but she looked like she had been fileted. And Gwen Stefani used what fell to the cutting room floor to assemble her dress.

Jules: What did you think of Jennifer Lawrence in Dior?

Me: I love Dior but that dress looked like the slip that Mary Todd Lincoln wore under her theater clothes. Charlize Theron in the deep V red Dior was stunning though.

Jules: There was a lot of black.

Oscar the Grouch

Me: Just not in the nominees.

Jules: Ouch. Not that we needed reminding. Chris Rock made sure of that.

Me: Yeah the only thing whiter than the crowd was Lady Gaga’s jumpsuit.

Jules: Ethnic diversity provided by Amy Poehler’s dress.

Me: Ha. And then there is Kerry Washington — who looked like she raided the Mad Max: Fury Road costume department. It was all one armed Charlize leather on top and virgin siren gauze on the bottom.

Jules: Explain to me Pharrell’s rolled up tux pants?

Me: I think he was protesting Adventures of Huckleberry Finn maybe?

Jules: Cate Blanchett in Armani — love or hate?

Me: I think she has impeccable taste but sometimes she errs on the side of the English rose. Charlotte Rampling’s Armani is my Armani.

Jules: Is it a thorn in your side? Ha! Me: It’s not nearly as irritating as that mushroom hair cap on The Weeknd’s head. ‘Hey The! I think we found that missing E. It’s on your head.’

Jules: I was impressed with Sarah Silverman in Zac Posen.

Me: She’s come a long way from the sweatshirt era. Like the rest of the comedians who are now ‘actors.’

Jules: It is kind of a chicken or egg thing though isn’t it?

Me: It’s a little disturbing sometimes in both directions. Like seeing Meryl Streep in comedic roles. Then Kristen Wiig as the earnest NASA PR wonk in The Martian.

Jules: Speaking of Martians, did you see Jared Leto?

Me: Flamenco Gucci. I don’t care. He’s still hot.

Jules: I can’t even talk about Heidi Klum’s purple people eater.

Me: She was a walking, talking Summer’s Eve commercial. I also did not like Alicia Vikander in that yellow Louis Vuitton. She looked like something I hacked up in Mexico City once.

Jules: Ha. Whole lot of opinions there coming from someone who ‘didn’t watch the Oscars.’

Me: That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. At least it doesn’t involve child abuse or Martians.

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