Triad City Beat — July 8, 2015: Losing wild places

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com July 8 – 14, 2015

FREE PAGE 20

Redistricting

havoc PAGE 9

Black health

matters PAGE 14

PBR

district PAGE 22

Guilford County’s open space program in peril

PAGE 16

July 8 — 14, 2015

Laurelyn Dossett & Friends +

John Hofmann’s

AcousticA

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B E CA U S E T H E R AV E I S T H E H IG H

LVL2

07.11.2015 **FREE** 9PM - 2am 18 AND UP COMMUNITY THEATRE OF GREENSBORO

520 S. Elm St., DOWNTOWN

7 DJ’s (line-up below) 6000+ watts of sound!

Visual effects!

Performers/Dancers!

Clean, pure, joyful energy…no drugs or alcohol.

Refreshments, body painting, chill area, glow sticks, happy oranges, merch, memorabilia and more and more and more!

Bring your costumes, glow poi, hoops, etc.

DJ Line-up (listed alphabetically)

@RAVECLEAN

DJ Droobles (Raleigh) DJ FM (Chapel Hill) DJ Illy (Durham) Erok (Charlotte) Jekyll & Hyde (Greensboro) Kid Denning (Raleigh)

R A V E C L E A N . O R G

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July 8 — 14, 2015

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Greensboro, NC 27406

CONTENTS

Office: 336-256-9320 Publisher Allen Broach allen@triad-city-beat.com

Editorial

24 UP FRONT

ART 24 Comic sans

Art Director Jorge Maturino jorge@triad-city-beat.com

4 Editor’s Notebook 5 City Life 6 Commentariat 6 The List 6 Barometer 7 Unsolicited Endorsement 7 Triad Power Ranking 8 Heard

Sales

NEWS

GAMES

9 Redistrict this!

11 HPJ: An Andrews man 12 New Americans

29 Jonesin’ Crossword

OPINION

30 Urban lake

Art

Sales Executive Dick Gray dick@triad-city-beat.com Sales Executive Alex Klein alex@triad-city-beat.com Sales Executive Lamar Gibson lamar@triad-city-beat.com Sales Executive Cheryl Green cheryl@triad-city-beat.com

Contributors Carolyn de Berry Nicole Crews Anthony Harrison Matt Jones

13 13

Editorial: Skip v. TDBS? Citizen Green: Baseball, the Dead

14 14

I t Just Might Work: Film on Tate Fresh Eyes: Black health matters

and the Fourth

COVER 16 Losing wild places

Cover photography

by Caleb Smallwood A small foot bridge in High Point’s Rich Fork Preserve bears hand-carved treads.

FOOD 20 More Mex 21 Barstool: Fruit and booze

MUSIC 22 The rebel underground

TCB IN A FLASH DAILY @ triad-city-beat.com 4

Riding the public rails

by Brian Clarey

Business

Editor in Chief Brian Clarey brian@triad-city-beat.com Senior Editor Jordan Green jordan@triad-city-beat.com Associate Editor Eric Ginsburg eric@triad-city-beat.com Editorial Interns Sayaka Matsuoka Christ Nafekh Daniel Wirtheim intern@triad-city-beat.com Investigative Reporting Intern Nicole Zelniker Photography Interns Amanda Salter Caleb Smallwood

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

First copy is free, all additional copies are $1.00. ©2015 Beat Media Inc.

STAGE & SCREEN 26 The activist in middle age

GOOD SPORT 28 Whose broad stripes?

SHOT IN THE TRIAD ALL HE WROTE 31 Institutional memory

We picked up the light rail at Hunt Valley outside Baltimore, the end of the line. Within 45 minutes we arrived at the heart of the city, Penn Station, a more modest cousin to the one in Midtown Manhattan. From there, instead of a more expensive Amtrak ticket, we opted for a MARC train that took us to Washington DC’s Union Station in about an hour.

Cabs and the DC Metro filled in the rest.

It wasn’t cheap — there were five of us, and a commute like this makes the most sense for a single rider. But when the Clareys go on vacation, everybody gets to do what they want. And my 10-year-old daughter wanted to take public transportation.

Love that kid.

Me, all I wanted to do was spend some time in Uncle Jack’s hot tub.

But my girl knows what’s up: that transportation is key to any venture, and that public transportation in particular is the circulatory system of highly functioning cities across the country.

At Penn Station, I showed her that we could ride rails to New York City, Miami or Boston if we wished, how city bus and rail lines covered the area and integrated with the national grid.

I was a good bit older than her when I fully realized the utility of this key layer of infrastructure: that I could catch a LIRR train a couple blocks from my parents’ house and be in Philadelphia in a few hours for less than 10 bucks, that in cities like New York and DC it was in many cases more expedient to ride subways than drive or cab it and that owning a car was for suckers.

But we live in North Carolina now, and even my 10-yearold knows that we choose not to participate in this practice that can turbocharge a city’s economy better than a megasite or itinerant corporation looking for a tax break.

In North Carolina we drive our cars, and that is pretty much that.

The light rail in Baltimore runs on existing tracks, like the ones that lead along Battleground Avenue from Cornwallis all the way downtown Greensboro, or the ones that connect Greensboro to Winston-Salem through Kernersville. Every time I bring up the possibility of activating these tracks, people tell me it can’t be done. But lo and behold: They’ve done it in Baltimore.

Maybe by the time my little girl grows up we will have a proper public transportation system in the Triad, or maybe she will carry her interest into adulthood and make something like that happen here.

More likely, she’ll go to college out of state and then choose to live in a city that knows how important it is to get people from Point A to Point B. She’s a smart kid, that one, and she’s not the type to wait around for everybody else to catch up.

WEDNESDAY

Career fair @ Goodwill Industries of Central NC (GSO) Lenovo, Sodexo and Goodwill are hiring full- and part-time workers from 10 a.m. to noon at the South Elm-Eugene Street location.

SynerG on Tap @ Westerwood Tavern (GSO) What happens when you bring a group of young professionals to an actual dive bar — as opposed to a dive-themed bar — during day-drinking hours? Come to the ’Wood tonight and find out.

THURSDAY Avionics Open House @ GTCC Aviation Center II (GSO) GTCC is recruiting people to work in the field of avionics — something to do with airplanes, I think — today at 5 p.m. Email drmayers@gtcc.edu for more info.

SATURDAY

South Elm Field Day @ Elsewhere (GSO) Throughout July the Elsewherians have a field day including creative sports, team play and athletic weirdness. Saturday’s installment kicks off at the South Elm Street museum at 10 a.m.

It’s free, but bring water and sneakers.

triad-city-beat.com

CITY LIFE July 8 – 14

Crafts @ High Point Library (HP) Learn to make ink and write with a quill at 10 a.m. in this High Point artisan series.

West End Mambo @ Summer on Trade (W-S) Look for TCB Art Director Jorge Maturino and his wife at the center of the dance floor when West End Mambo hits the stage at 7 p.m. at the corner of Sixth and Trade streets.

Sideshow Saturdays @ Golden Flower Tai Chi (W-S) Art, dance, film and dreams are all part of Golden Flower’s Sideshow Saturdays project. Tonight’s episode begins at 8:30.

Raveclean @ the Community Theatre of Greensboro (GSO) No booze, no drugs, but plenty of music, visuals and dancing mark the first Triad RaveClean event in downtown Greensboro tonight. Six DJs, bodypainting, flow arts, live graffiti and food trucks add street cred. It begins at 9 p.m., and is free and open to the (sober) public.

Conversations on Creativity @ the Weatherspoon Art Museum (GSO) This series, running weekly through July, brings a creative couple to speak on art, relationships and the creative process. Tonight’s installment, featuring Mariam Stephan and Ibrahim Said, begins at 6 p.m. It’s free and open to the public, and there are snacks and drinks involved.

FRIDAY

Salvation Army Midsummer Concert @ Washington Park Corps (W-S) Students from the Salvation Army’s seven-week Summer Conservatory program perform at 6 p.m. for this free concert.

Center City Cinema: Empire Records @ Center City Park (GSO) A bunch of wacky kids try to save their record store in this day-in-the-life 1995 film starring Renéee Zellweger and Liv Tyler. Showtime begins at dusk for this free screening.

Music From Big Purple: Triangle Meets Triad @ Fisher Park (GSO) It’s a backyard concert featuring the Triad’s Molly McGinn and Sam Frazier with Triangle musicians John Shain and Wes Collins. All are welcome at 812 Olive Street. Showtime is 7:30 p.m.

Jeffrey Dean Foster @ the Garage (W-S) The Dean of Winston-Salem returns to a familiar stage tonight for a solo set with Amigo.

SUNDAY

Second Sundays @ Fourth and Cherry streets (W-S) The afternoon block party begins with vintage cartons at A/perture Cinema at 2 p.m. followed by performances from Laila Nur and Diali Cissokho.

Daddy Issues @ Westerwood Tavern (GSO) The lad and ladies of Daddy Issues bring a robust summer touring schedule back home with a set at the Westerwood, featuring scene mates Estrangers and Dad & Dad from Carrboro, better known as T0W3RS backing band. Show begins at 8 p.m.

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July 8 — 14, 2015

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art

A shakedown. A hustle. She knows how to play the game and has proven that in the past — she got $12K last year for an alleged “choking” by the city manager [“Human relations director on paid leave, concerned about safety”; by Jordan Green; July 1, 2015]. She’s taking the city and its taxpayers to the cleaners.

Frank Swatson, via triad-city-beat.com

Meatless miracles

I just discovered Cleopatra’s, an Egyptian place [“The Greensboro Vegan Dinig Guide”; by Eric Ginsburg; June 24, 2015]. They have a bunch of vegan meal and side options. But watch out because some of the sides suggested under the “vegetarian entrees” are cooked in meat broth (the stews/stuffed vegetables)!

Ms_Moneypenny, via triad-city-beat.com I would definitely add Jerusalem Market in Sedgefield to this list. Vegan-savvy staff makes the best falafel around!

Kim, via triad-city-beat.com Some more vegan friendly places: India Palace on Tate Street has the most vegan options during their lunch buffets compared to the other local Indian buffets. For pho, I (heart) Pho on High Point Road is great! The Penny Path makes delicious vegan crepes (it’s a little vegetarian place in High Point that’s worth the trek). Also, to network with other Triad vegans please go to our new Facebook page.

Maria Taylor, via triad-city-beat.com

All He Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Good Sport

Stage & Screen

Shakedown street

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9 best radio shows broadcast from the Triad

by Chris Nafekh 1. “Radio Greensboro,” 103.1 WUAG (GSO) David Row hosts the Triad’s premier live radio show on Sunday nights at 8 p.m. during the fall and spring semesters. Radio Greensboro welcomes one new local or out-of-state band every week for an interview and live set in WUAG’s headquarters on UNCG’s campus.

Often, bands promote upcoming gigs around the area; tuning in is a great way to stay informed on Greensboro’s ever-changing music scene.

“The Poetry Café” brings you live readings and interviews from local poets. The show helps young writers share their poetry while engaging listeners with spoken word.

6. Triad Arts on 88.5 WFDD (W-S) Every weekday, David Ford welcomes artists from around North Carolina for interviews and insights on their crafts. Triad Arts is the perfect way to key into the Triad’s diverse artistic culture.

2. “J’s Indie/Rock Mayhem,” 90.9 WQFS (GSO) When Josh Neas is behind the soundboard, radio is anything but boring. His show is an atypical mix of energetic and engaging rock and roll, with genres ranging from indie to post-punk and alt-country.

7. The North Carolina Show on 90.9 WQFS (GSO) Chris Roulhac’s show on WQFS features artists from North Carolina, or with roots in the state. He interviews local artists as well, most recently, Black Squares/White Island drummer Mikey Munday.

3. “Jazz On Wax,” 90.5 WSNC (W-S) WSNC Program Director Jack Bonney, who has a soft spot for vinyl records, hosts an all-vinyl hour of classic jazz from labels such as Bluenote, Impulse and Prestige. Bonney has worked with several college radio stations around the Triad, and also hosts “Midday Jazz” on 90.5 as well.

8. Real People, Real Stories on 88.5 WFDD (W-S) I feel somewhat indebted to those who have opened their hearts on air to tell us their histories. The stories you hear on “Real People, Real Stories” are reported and recorded by Triad locals, akin to TCB’s “Fresh Eyes” column. The subjects range from political and human rights to sci-fi discussions of “Dr. Who,” and it truly is an interesting listen.

4. “In The Beat of the Night,” 103.1 WUAG (GSO) If you’re within the 18-watt range UNCG’s radio station on a Wednesday night, tune into 103.1 to hear a collection of underground hip-hop. Prez Parks, a Greensboro local and longtime DJ, masterfully spins tracks to sooth your soul.

5. “The Poetry Café,” 90.1 WNAA (GSO) From NC A&T University’s own college radio station,

9. Cookin’ With Mary on 90.5 WSNC (W-S) Nobody can make you appreciate the fine pairing of food and jazz music like Mary Haglund and Sam Hicks.

Mary opened her own restaurant in 2000, and the food pictures online are mouthwatering. If the grub is as great is it looks, Mary’s show is a must-listen for foodies.

The Public Pool Edition 3. Greensboro

We’re ranking the cities by public swimming pools this week, which puts Greensboro at a disadvantage.

The city has four public pools for its 280,000 or so citizens, giving it one pool for every 70,000 people — which means it could get pretty crowded. Details on pools at Lindley, Peeler, Warnersville and Windsor are available at the city website, but there is no admission information there. The Greensboro Aquatic Center, as an indoor facility, doesn’t count in this ranking.

2. High Point

With just two city-run pools within its jurisdiction, High Point beats Greensboro with one for every 53,000 people. Bonus points for waterslides at both City Lake and Washington Terrace, with even more consideration for the splash pad on Taylor Avenue. It isn’t technically a pool, but it beats running through the sprinkler. City Lake admission runs a cool $6, while Washington Terrace is just $1.25. See the city website for more details.

1. Winston-Salem

Winston-Salem is the municipal swimming-pool capital of the Triad, with eight of them falling under the city’s purview. That’s one for every 30,000 people, which is not too shabby considering the competition, and two of them, Bolton and Kimberley Park, have spraygrounds — that’s a playground where water sprays on the kids — attached. Pushing them even further ahead of their peers, the city has declared that admission to all its pools will be just $1 all summer long.

The Skilcraft pen

by Daniel Wirtheim

Food Music Art Stage & Screen

Other

The death penalty

Affordable Care Act

All He Wrote

55% 24% 10% 7%

Shot in the Triad

Gay marriage

Games

Independent redistricting

Good Sport

New question: Should the city of Greensboro fight the city council redistricting in court? Vote at triadcity-beat.com, and we’ll publish your responses in the next print issue of Triad City Beat.

Cover Story

Eric Ginsburg: Gay marriage, or as we can call it now, regular old normal marriage. Like Jordan, the Affordable Care Act decision hits closest to home for me; I have

Opinion

Jordan Green: So hard to choose. For me and my family, the most impactful decision is undoubtedly the one about the Affordable Care Act. But in terms of historical significance, I think it’s hard to argue that the decision to strike down the prohibition against same-sex marriage isn’t the most important in a run of seriously important decisions.

private healthcare coverage, but a sizable government tax credit given my income — thanks, Obama. It’s almost like the US is joining the rest of the First World in the 21st Century! Almost.

Readers: The majority of you who participated said gay marriage, beating out the Affordable Care Act with 55 percent compared to 24. Independent redistricting (10 percent) and the death penalty (7 percent) fell far behind.

Nicole Lindahl explained why she voted for other: “The ruling against EPA efforts to curb power plant emissions may not have have attracted the most attention, but it is certainly important. It sets a precedent that will hamper future efforts to combat climate change.”

News

Most important recent Supreme Court decision?

Brian Clarey: The Supremes put out a lot of hits this summer, but none can really compare to the decision about same-sex marriage. It had the dual effect of finally bridging this gap in equality — one that fueled homophobia and outright hate — and simultaneously causing the heads of people who believe we live in a Christian nation to explode. Now who’s taking their country back?

Up Front

AMANDA SALTER Children play in a stream of bubbles blown by staff at 1618 Downtown as part of the Fun Fourth celebrations in downtown Greensboro on July 4.

Before I picked up a Skilcraft pen I didn’t think too much about what I took notes with. I would use pens from hotels and pharmaceutical companies — whatever was free.

A few months ago I was given a Skilcraft pen, the official pen of the US government, the pen our military uses in warzones and the pen that’s carried by the Postal Service.

Industries of the Blind, in Greensboro, has been making the Skilcraft pen for more than 40 years, under the Javits-Wagner-O’Day DANIEL WIRTHEIM Act, which requires that federal agencies buy The Skilcraft pen is a slick piece of machinery. a certain amount of products from nonprofits are a novelty. They disrupt the balance of a good that employ blind workers. pen, and frankly, they look tacky. What I like so much My initial thought was that the Skilcraft has that about the Skilcraft is how it was designed to be classy, timeless look that’s reserved for a restored simple, without simplifying anything.

Oldsmobile. It’s made to fit in flight jackets, so it’s The pen is built to pass 16 pages of military small and dense. Its density is what allows the Skilspecifications. It has to operate in extreme temperacraft such smooth, flowing movements. tures, from 160 to -40 degrees Fahrenheit, it has to The free pens that come in promotional bags be bleach resistant and write for one linear mile. At are made from cheap plastic that makes them light one time, the military taught soldiers how to perform and good for nothing. The Skilcraft pen is slightly tracheotomies with the pen barrel and, according to weighted by a brass ink tube, and the barrel is made company lore, the back end of the pen can stand in from heavy-duty plastic. The slight drag given by the for a two-inch fuse. pen’s weight helps get those really nice cursive letters After I lost my first Skilcraft pen, I went to amazon. that you thought were only capable with a fountain com, where I bought a pack of 12 more, which I’ll pen. probably pass onto my children.

It took me a while to realize that gel-grips on pens

triad-city-beat.com

United States of Bubbles

4%

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July 8 — 14, 2015

Up Front News Opinion

HEARD “The minutes were public information and public property. It would be a violation if they were destroyed. We know that those minutes are there and we’re still hearing that they can’t be found, which to me is pretty incredible. It kind of violates the whole spirit of freedom of information saying that you’re purging the system.”

— Marie Poteat, a member of the now disbanded Guilford County Open Space Committee, page 16

“The only council member who really remains unscathed in any shape or form is the lone Republican.”

— Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan, Greensboro news, page 9

“This is no slight to the new guy that’s coming. I think the Andrews community would like to see the same thing that High Point Central has asked for and that Dudley has got — that they get someone who is familiar with the Andrews community who said, ‘I know how to make this school great.’”

All He Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Good Sport

Stage & Screen

Art

Music

Food

Cover Story

— Andrews High School alum Mike McDowell, High Point Journal, page 11

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“Americans born in this country study this in the second grade; in Ireland, we do not. But, as someone who had observed American civilization from the outside looking in, I drew on the knowledge that I had gained from watching many John Wayne westerns in my childhood in Ireland, I was able to say, ‘Apache and Sioux?’”

— DE Lorraine Sterritt, president of Salem Academy and College, on becoming a US citizen, page 12

The roots of black health disparities are a complex tangle — and not just a black issue for black people to resolve. It involves addressing and ultimately dismantling the undercurrent of racism that pervades the economic, political, social and even religious systems that this country is built on.

— Tamara Jeffries, Fresh Eyes, page 14

“I was reading this book about the oyster wars in the area and made a note about it for later. And one thing just led to another.”

— Comic book artist Ben Towle, Art, page 24

At one time, the military taught soldiers how to perform tracheotomies with the pen barrel and, according to company lore, the back end of the pen can stand in for a two-inch fuse.

— Daniel Wirtheim, Unsolicited Endorsement, page 7

The burritos here are served in the southern California style — just rice and beans with a meat of your choice, though the addition of a crumbled Mexican cheese, almost like parmesan, is part of what makes it a fantastic lunch choice.

— Eric Ginsburg, on Winston-Salem’s Taco Riendo, page 20

Raleigh’s Motorbilly ramped up in the Jailhouse, sounding like an Irish pub band raised on bourbon and fried chicken. Their sound was almost too well suited for the room, with the thunderous bass and floor toms reverberating off the brick walls and columns, subsequently rumbling in each attendee’s chest cavity, elevating heart rates to the A-fib tempo.

— Anthony Harrison, on Heavy Rebel Weekender, page 22

“Strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hand/ Everybody’s playing in the heart of gold band, heart of gold band.”

— Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, Citizen Green, page 13

triad-city-beat.com

NEWS

With new council districts, candidates adapt plans

by Eric Ginsburg

With a radical redistricting plan approved, Greensboro City Council members and candidates are preparing for the upcoming election.

Up Front

News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen

The new, state-approved Greensboro City Council configuration eliminates at-large positions and creates eight new districts (above). The mayor is still elected citywide, but will have restricted voting powers.

All He Wrote

solutions to overcome.”

Mayor Pro Tem Yvonne Johnson and Councilman Jamal Fox, who are both black, were drawn into a new District 2 in northeast Greensboro, but Johnson said she would not seek reelection if the redistricting stands.

“I know we’re having a public hearing on Wednesday… but if we fight it in the courts I don’t know what will happen,” Johnson said. “If it holds, I won’t run.

I just don’t care to run against [Fox]. I would rather not do it. I wanted to serve one more term, but if that happens it happens and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”

Johnson was initially elected to city

Shot in the Triad

here. I’m here for everybody. Whatever transpires, I’m ready to go.”

Outling, who said he would run in the fall when council appointed him, said the demographics of a district don’t concern him.

“I’m going to run in the fall regardless of where the lines fall,” Outling said. “The city needs new leadership to provide pragmatic leadership to complex problems. I have the experience and skills to develop those solutions whether it’s in District 1, or 3 or any other district. The problems that we as a city deal with are problems that all of us share and all of us have to develop

Games

Matheny resigned to run Downtown Greensboro Inc. Wade’s initial proposal would have drawn Outling into a new District 7 that snaked through downtown, but not long after his appointment, a new map appeared that carved his precinct into a majority-minority district with black Councilwoman Sharon Hightower.

Hightower and Outling both say they will run in the new District 1 in southeast Greensboro.

“It gives me a new spectrum of people to serve but a lot of them I have already served,” Hightower said. “I will miss some of my district, but I’m still

COURTESY JON HARDISTER

Good Sport

When most of the Greensboro City Council members talk about the election this fall, they talk in terms of “if.”

Even though the state General Assembly passed a bill dramatically reorganizing how council is elected in a myriad of ways, council members point to a public forum scheduled for Wednesday and suggest the fight isn’t over yet.

Mayor Nancy Vaughan, who has been at the forefront of opposing the redistricting pushed by state Sen. Trudy Wade, said elected officials will continue discussing the issue with legal counsel and soliciting feedback from residents.

“I’m not a lawyer so I really can’t say what the next step is,” she said. “I’m really not sure what our chances are at an injunction [but] I think there are constitutional arguments to be made and I think there are voter disenfranchisement arguments to be made.”

But in the meantime, almost all council members are preparing to run.

The redistricting eliminates three at-large positions and creates eight new districts, nearly all of them radically different from the five that previously existed. Though the number of total city council seats remains the same, the new map puts most sitting council members in unfamiliar territory.

Except for Tony Wilkins, the most conservative member on council. City council elections are nonpartisan but Wilkins, a Republican, inherited his existing District 5 from Wade when she left council to serve in the state Senate.

Wade’s plan left District 5 the most intact, and Vaughan says it’s no accident.

“The only council member who really remains unscathed in any shape or form is the lone Republican,” she said.

But what concerns Vaughan and others on council more is that the four black members of council were double-bunked in District 1 and 2. Justin Outling, who is black, was recently appointed to fill out the remainder of councilman Zack Matheny’s term when

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July 8 — 14, 2015 Up Front

News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All He Wrote

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north-central part of the city, which is not where her power base lies and favors Republicans.

“I am running no matter what transpires in this, and I would run in District 8, but I am very frustrated that the demographics of that district do not reflect the demographics of Greensboro,” she said.

So far, she has no publicly known challengers. But ERIC GINSBURG State Rep. Jon Hardister looks at the new Anita Bachmann, a council map last week. Read more at triad-city-beat.com. senior vice president at Optum, a council in 1993, serving continuously division of UnitedHealth Group, who until she was elected as the city’s first was the volunteer campaign coordinator black mayor from 2007-2009. After for the unsuccessful 1/4-cent for schools losing a reelection bid in 2009, she was bond item last fall, is considering a run. reelected to council at large in 2011.

Bachmann asked to be considered to reShe also participated in the civil rights place Matheny before council appointed movement in Greensboro as a student at Outling.

Bennett College.

“I will be making a decision soon It is unclear how the new district sysabout whether I will run,” she said. “I tem, with eight districts and the mayor understand that the filing time has been elected at large, will affect overall black extended. I will be making a decision or minority representation on council. very, very soon.”

Previously two out of five districts repFiling was initially scheduled to begin resented majority-minority areas of the Monday but the state pushed it to July city, with Johnson elected citywide. But 27 under Wade’s plan. former councilwoman Dianne BellaGeorge Hartzman, a perennial my-Small, a black former police officer council critic who ran for mayor in the and gospel singer, is the only candidate last election, lives in the new District 8 to publicly announce for District 6 so as well. He said he is unsure whether he far. Bellamy-Small lost to Hightower will run for the seat. in 2013 by a dozen votes, and initially Councilman Mike Barber, who serves said she would run in District 1 again. at-large with Abuzuaiter and Johnson, The new district map approved by the now lives in a central District 3, as does state places Bellamy-Small in District 6, Councilwoman Nancy Hoffmann. Barhowever. ber could not be reached for comment.

“My desire was to return to council,” Hoffmann, who had announced her Bellamy-Small said. “My desire was not plans to run for reelection in District 4, about [Hightower] or trying to elimisays she will run no matter what. nate her, but it was about trying to get Michael Picarelli, the former chair of back on council to provide much-needthe Guilford County Republican Party ed leadership and experience.” and a city human relations commissionThe district covers several precincts er, also sought to replace Matheny, sayshe is unfamiliar with, but some she ing at the time he would run for council traversed as part of a failed run for a in the fall. He still lives in District 3, county commissioners seat last year. but could not be reached to confirm Marikay Abuzuaiter, a progressive if he will run against Hoffmann and who currently serves at large, will be possibly Barber. Tom Phillips, a former pushed into a new District 8 in the

city councilman who was considered to replace Matheny as well, said he is not interested in running for council.

There are rumors that former mayor Bill Knight, a Republican who served one term back when Wade was on council, may run. He lost a district race against Hoffmann in 2013, and would face her again if he ran in the new District 3, where he lives. He could not be reached for comment.

Former county commissioner Skip Alston, who backed Wade’s initial plan, is also rumored to be a possible candidate. He lives in the new District 6, which would pit him against Bellamy-Small. Alston, a prominent black political figure who runs the Alston Realty Group and co-founded the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, has butted heads with Bellamy-Small numerous times, and backed Hightower against Bellamy-Small last council election. He could not be reached for comment.

Guilford County School Board member Deena Hayes-Greene, who also chairs the board of the civil rights museum, said last week she wouldn’t run and would be supporting a woman who hasn’t announced her candidacy yet.

“I was going to run if I thought nobody else would run who was going to support some critical issues,” she said.

But Hayes-Greene hadn’t seen the approved map last week and was only familiar with Wade’s initial proposal.

The final redistricting plan approved by the state places Hayes-Greene in a new District 4 in the south-central part of Greensboro, an area with no incumbents and no public contenders so far.

It was also rumored that Robbie Perkins, a former mayor and councilman who backed Wade’s plan at the outset, would run for office, either challenging Vaughan who unseated him as mayor or in a new District 3. But Perkins said neither is happening.

“Life’s too good,” he said.

Perkins did appear with Bellamy-Small to back her recent campaign announcement.

Conservative Councilman Tony Wilkins, who currently represents District 5 and still lives in the redrawn district, wouldn’t explicitly say that he is not going to run for mayor.

“Although I haven’t made a final decision, I am certainly leaning toward

running for re-election in District 5,” he said.

With the elimination of at-large seats, his only other option for running would be for mayor. He dodged the question about whether he would challenge Vaughan.

“The No. 1 requirement to run for mayor, in my mind, is that you have to want to be mayor,” he said vaguely. “My political ego currently extends to the borders of District 5. Being considered by nearly everyone as the most conservative council member would naturally cause some conservatives to request that I consider running for mayor.”

But to an explicit request to clarify if that meant he would not run for mayor, Wilkins said simply: “I didn’t say that.”

Visit triad-city-beat.com to read about Republican state Rep. Jon Hardister’s reasoning for supporting, and then opposing, Wade’s redistricting plan. Pick up next week’s issue of Triad City Beat for a comprehensive guide about what changes for you — and how to vote — under the new plan.

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Transition highlights existential anxiety at Andrews High School

by Jordan Green

The loss of a popular principal underscores the anxiety supporters of Andrews High School feel about their school’s declining enrollment and increasingly segregated student body.

Up Front

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A mural at Andrews High School pays homage to JY Bell, the school’s director of bands from 1969 to 1980.

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while his wife and three children attended Andrews.

Bob Christina was a popular principal at Central, Price said, and many parents want the district to find a way to bring him back.

“He was the second lowest paid principal of our normal high schools,” Price said. “It was just a matter of time before someone was going to hire him away. He was excellent. I’ve been telling administration for months that he’s going to leave. It’s frustrating.”

Price met with parents at Central on June 30, along with Mayor Bill Bencini, Guilford County Commission Chair Hank Henning and school board member Keith McCullough, who represents District 1. Price said Bencini and Henning attended the meeting at his request.

“I wanted them to reassure the parents that everything’s a go as far as the $12 million in renovations,” he said.

“The school is getting a new cafeteria, a new library and media center, and there are major renovations on that beautiful auditorium.”

On Tuesday, it was Andrews’ turn.

A public forum hosted by the school district was scheduled for that evening in response to concerns raised by alumni and other members of the school community.

Like their counterparts at Central, the parents and boosters at Andrews are

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1,199 in the 2004-2005 school year. In the school year that just ended, he said there were 642 black students and 90 white students out of a total enrollment of 867. Many of the white students have transferred out of Andrews to attend the Penn-Griffith School for the Arts, the international baccalaureate program at Central or Southwest High School, Murphey said.

“There’s a lot of diversity in the Andrews zone,” Murphey said. “If you’ve gone from 291 to 90 white students, then where are they? The numbers would tell you they’ve been reassigned.”

Recent turnover in school leadership in High Point has exposed the longstanding rivalry between Andrews and Central, with parents, boosters and alumni from both schools experiencing vulnerability. Principals at both high schools have recently left, along with top administrators at Scale School, Southwest Middle School, Johnson Street Elementary and Montlieu Elementary, said Guilford County School Board member Ed Price, who represents District 2 in High Point.

“Better jobs within the system and better jobs outside the system is the simplest way to put it,” Price said, by way of explanation for the defections.

He said he had been fielding phone calls from concerned parents all day on Monday, mainly from parents at Central and Andrews. Price attended Central,

JORDAN GREEN

Cover Story

Andrews High School is a story of integration in North Carolina, and its disintegration.

Built in 1968, Andrews High School was among the first high schools to be designed as a fully integrated facility in the state.

Split roughly 50-50 between black and white students when it opened, Andrews was the city’s middle-class high school. It absorbed most of the African-American students from William Penn High School, the all-black school that had recently closed. The High Point School Board — school districts across Guilford County would not merge until decades later — had initially favored a white candidate for principal, recalled Mike McDowell, who played on the school’s state championship football team in 1972, but the parents rallied behind Samuel Burford, who had served as principal at William Penn High School.

“He united the black and white community,” McDowell said.

Many of the white students chose to attend High Point Central High School because of its status as the established school, McDowell said, including most of the top-echelon white athletes.

Central also absorbed some of the city’s poorest residents from the southwest quadrant, resulting in a student body polarized between the very wealthy and very poor. The two schools’ football teams were not allowed to compete until 1971.

Andrews won that game.

“There were 10,000 people there,” McDowell recalled. “I was a junior on the team and remember it like it was yesterday. Central had a phenomenal team. My senior year the two High Point schools almost played each other in the 4A state championship, but Central missed it by just one play. That shows the caliber of the teams. That was a blip for Central. They had a few more good years. Andrews won it again

in ’76, and they were playing deep into the playoffs every year. That went on through the 1990s.”

The school’s early history supports the nearly fanatical pride of its alumni, who call themselves Red Raiders.

“Andrews was a great school the first 15 years,” McDowell said. “They probably won more state championships than any other school in North Carolina. It wasn’t just athletics. The debate team went to national championships. The band was phenomenal.

They were in the Cotton Bowl parade.

They went to the Macy’s Day parade.

They entertained at Appalachian State.

The era that we were in they excelled at everything.”

From McDowell’s perspective, Central’s boosters have been eager to poach Andrew’s best students since they realized the initial plan to split Central’s student body between rich and poor.

They finally accomplished their goal in 2000 when the consolidated school board redrew attendance lines, shifting students in the middle-class neighborhoods of Oak View and Shadybrook from Andrews to Central. Meanwhile, McDowell said, the plan moved most of the students from the city’s public housing community to Andrews, along with two wealthy neighborhoods in the Skeet Club Road area that had previously been assigned to Southwest High School. The decision caused an uproar among parents in the Skeet Club Road, who recoiled at the notion of their children being bused across town to a poorer school.

“At Andrews we don’t look at black and white; we look at it as Red Raiders,” said Murphey, the Class of ’98 alum who announces basketball games.

“When I was there it was 55 percent black and 45 percent white. Now, it’s turned into a segregated school, and that’s healthy for nobody.”

Andrews’ student population has become less diverse while overall enrollment has dropped over the past 10 years. Referring to stats provided by the school district, Murphey said the school had 811 black students and 291 white students out of a total enrollment of

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HIGH POINT JOURNAL

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12

chafing at the loss of a highly regarded school leader. Their former principal, Rodney Wilds, was reassigned to Dudley High School in Greensboro.

Wilds led Andrews for six years, following a succession of four principals at the school from 2003 to 2009.

“Mr. Wilds brought stability, but he’s taken out and sent to Dudley,” said Murphey, the basketball announcer. “Dudley was in the same position as us. They were worried about instability at Dudley, so they took our strong leader and gave him to Dudley. Mr. Wilds graduated from Dudley, so they felt like he could bring a real vision to the school.”

Many Andrews parents, alumni and boosters would have preferred a new principal with preexisting ties to the school, although Murphey acknowledged that Wilds himself came to the school as an outsider.

“I think the reason right now is that it would have helped to have someone with Andrews ties because of the struggles with the school,” Murphey said. “If you don’t extremely love the school, then it’s going to be very difficult in its current condition to stay very long.”

On May 29, the district announced the appointment of David Miller, formerly the principal at the Academy at Smith High School in Greensboro, to fill the top job at Andrews. Given the school’s current challenges, many boosters are reflexively turning to tradition.

While parents and boosters were expected to vent their frustration at school officials on Tuesday, many have already come to terms with the decision and are backing Miller to give him every opportunity to succeed.

Murphey said despite initial hopes that the new principal would be a person with pre-existing ties to the community, alumni are now fully supporting Miller and appreciate that he has reached out to them.

“This is no slight to the new guy that’s coming,” McDowell said. “I think the Andrews community would like to see the same thing that High Point Central has asked for and that Dudley has got — that they get someone who is familiar with the Andrews community who said, ‘I know how to make this school great.’”

New Americans take citizenship oath at Old Salem

by Jordan Green

Thirty-three people from 21 countries took the oath of citizenship on July 4 at Old Salem Museum & Gardens, where the first Fourth of July celebration in US history took place in 1783.

Agnes Beya came with her family from the Democratic Republic of the Congo on a family visa, and settled in Greensboro. Jeify Martinez came to High Point from the Dominican Republic to join her husband. Piers Clarkson, a native of the United Kingdom who lives in Winston-Salem, decided it was time to become a US citizen now that he has a 16-month-old son and his English parents live here.

They were three of the 33 immigrants from 21 countries who took the oath of allegiance to become citizens of the United States on July 4 at Old Salem Museum & Gardens in Winston-Salem, the site of the first Fourth of July celebration in 1783. It was the fifth year that the naturalization ceremony has been held at Old Salem on July 4.

Repeating after Leander Holston, a field office director for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, they declared that they would “absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty of whom or which” they had previously been a subject or citizen. They pledged to support and defend the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law.”

Stopping with her family to get a cup of punch and cookies served by the Daughters of the American Revolution, Beya easily explained the appeal of becoming a US citizen.

“The freedom, liberty and opportunity that it gives you when you come to this country,” she said. “We don’t have that where we are from. The name of the country says ‘democratic,’ but it’s not really.”

Beya’s brother blazed a trail for the family, arriving in 2003. He urged the family to join him. Beya’s father won a visa lottery, allowing the entire family to immigrate to Greensboro about five years ago. They like living here, Beya said. Although the Democratic Republic

Agnes Beya (foreground), of Greensboro, takes the oath of citizenship at Old Salem on July 4.

of the Congo has its challenges, that wasn’t the deciding factor in their decision to leave.

“It wasn’t really us running from something,” she said.

The process of becoming a citizen took place quickly, Beya said. She applied in February, and in March she appeared at the Citizenship and Immigration Services field office in Charlotte to have her fingerprints taken and her photo made — a process known as the biometric test. Six days before the naturalization ceremony, she returned to the federal office for her citizenship exam. After correctly answering about six questions, including the name of the first American president, Beya said the examiner went ahead and passed her.

The test was “not at all” difficult, she said. “They give you this book to study.”

DE Lorraine Sterritt, president of Salem Academy and College, could relate to the new citizens’ experience. She immigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1985, and took the oath of citizenship in Roanoke, Va. in 1990.

“You and I are here today because we learned American history from the bottom up and as outsiders looking in,” Sterritt said during the keynote speech.

“If you are like me, you studied for a long time that book the INS gave you to prepare for the citizenship exam. I memorized the whole book, and when I showed up for the exam dressed in a business suit, I was prepared to recite the name of every US president in order because I had memorized them in order.”

JORDAN GREEN

Sterritt said she struggled when the examiner asked her to name two Indian tribes.

“Americans born in this country study this in the second grade; in Ireland, we do not,” she said. “But, as someone who had observed American civilization from the outside looking in, I drew on the knowledge that I had gained from watching many John Wayne westerns in my childhood in Ireland, I was able to say, ‘Apache and Sioux?’”

Sterritt quoted from Letters from an American Farmer, a 1782 manuscript by the writer J. Hector St. John de Crevecouer: “Americans are that great race of Western pilgrims who are carrying along with them the great mass of arts, sciences, vigor and industry which began long since in the east. They finish the great circle.”

The 33 new citizens seated before her continue that tradition, she suggested, albeit in ways the author might not have imagined.

“The 18th-Century American whom Crevecouer described, like the author himself, was a settler who had left Europe in order to establish his independence in North America,” Sterritt said. “Unlike Crevecouer’s ‘new man’ who began who began his life on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean, today’s new American men and women have come to this country not only from Europe, but also from Asia, [Central] and South America, Canada, Africa and the Middle East.”

CITIZEN GREEN

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The law and unintended consequences

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Leaving Texas/ Fourth day of July/ Sun so hot, clouds so low/ The eagles fill the sky Catch the Detroit Lightning/ Out of Santa Fe/ Great Northern out of Cheyenne/ From sea to shining sea.

All He Wrote

It was never so much about the scene at the concerts for me as the songs and what each member of the band invested in them to make a whole greater than the sum of each individual contribution. By the time I was old enough to go out without adult chaperones I had embraced the dissonance and angst of the punk era as a rebuttal against ’60s idealism. I had to reject the music of my parents’ generation to carve out my own identity.

After all, my dad turned me on to this band by playing Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty on vinyl for me when I was 6, and he showed me a snapshot he found of Jerry Garcia and Janis Joplin in the Haight-Ashbury apartment he inherited from Big Brother & the Holding Company during the Summer of Love. I went to my first Dead concert in Cincinnati at the age of 10 in 1985. “He’s Gone” from Europe ’72 was the soundtrack of my

Opinion

Strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hand/ Everybody’s playing in the heart of gold band, heart of gold band.

tears when my dog, Star, was hit by a car and killed.

But by the time I was old enough to cultivate my own tastes, the drug-fueled communion of the concerts struck me as an illusory copout. And yet much as I wanted to deny this band, over the years my immersion in their music has been like a rising flood.

I really love that Bob Weir, the band’s surviving guitarist, told Alec Wilkinson for a June 8 article in the New Yorker that with the Dead “the playing was done in the service of the songs.”

The quote continues: “We all inhabited the stories. If we weren’t singing, then we were telling the story with our hands. If I was singing, then I wasn’t even there. I stepped out of my body and let the character own it. There’s a lot of playing being done, but it was the drama of the event, the parade of characters that came out and told their stories, that held people’s attention.”

Weir, forever the kid in the band, has now assumed the grandfatherly gravitas of Garcia, taking lead vocals in at least two of his late bandmate’s songs during the three-night run in Chicago, including an affecting encore of “Ripple” on the first night and a creaky rendition of “Stella Blue” on July 4.

How perfect that the band opened the first night with “Box of Rain,” sung by Phil Lesh, the band’s bass player and third vocalist. Its first line is an invitation — “Look out of any window” — serving as a reminder that the Dead was more or less a band of co-equals, needing no star or frontman.

Fittingly for the holiday weekend, they followed with “Jack Straw,” a song rich in American iconography — outlaws and desperadoes, freight trains and dusty, Western towns. One of the most sublime songs in the band’s vast repertoire, it slyly slips in two verses sung by Garcia as a wry counterpoint to Weir’s rallying bravado. No one can ever fill Garcia’s shoes, but Trey Anastasio admirably stepped into the role with modesty and natural facility, playing Garcia’s lead guitar parts and singing his verses.

The band’s music is a gift to the ages; the song belongs to whoever commits to it.

News

It’s like a bad telenovela.

This Fourth of July weekend, the Grateful Dead is the music and mythology that I cannot shake.

I love this band to a point that feels like self-indulgence, much

by Jordan Green as, while playing live, the band could be self-indulgent with meandering and unfocused jams as they collectively felt their way through to moments of shared inspiration. But then I can say in the same breath that the band’s approach is the antithesis of self-indulgence, as a disciplined and authentic channel for a life force, both in the concise Americana format of their first sets and the dark, psychedelic explorations of their second acts.

The chance to see the Grateful Dead’s final three concerts from Soldier Field in Chicago on streaming video for free at a bar was more than I could resist. This is like the World Series for me. I watched the first show from start to finish, communing with chance friends and losing myself in the ecstasy of the electronic maelstrom. Then I paced myself the next two nights, limiting myself to first sets to maintain some semblance of familial obligation while also meeting professional responsibilities.

Up Front

The plan by Trudy Wade, the state Senate and at least one prominent Greensboro businessman to rearrange city council to their liking was pulled off with all the grace and subtlety of a monkey flinging poop.

What was once a city of five districts now has eight, with boundaries drawn, it seems, more to settle personal scores than to achieve any long-term conservative goals.

The at-large seats are gone, leaving the mayor as the only official elected citywide, though without a vote except in some personnel decisions and as a tiebreaker.

It was likely sold as a way to bring more conservatives into this nonpartisan body, an attempt, perhaps, to bring what local right-wingers remember as a golden age on Greensboro City Council, when Bill Knight, Danny Thompson, Mary Rakestraw and, yep, Trudy Wade made a power move to reopen the White Street Landfill.

Maybe it’s easy, through the gauze of nostalgia, to forget that this was a failed council.

The landfill ordinance was killed when Nancy Vaughan, an atlarge rep at the time, was able to vote against it after her conflict of interest was lifted. In 2011, Rakestraw lost her bid for re-election to Nancy Hoffmann. Robbie Perkins took out Bill Knight. Danny Thompson was never heard from again.

The only one from the cabal to move upwards and onwards was…

Trudy Wade, who won the Senate District 27 seat formerly held by Don Vaughan, Nancy’s husband, after a brutal round of redistricting in 2011.

It’s like a bad telenovela.

And while there’s nothing to suggest that these new districts will do much to advance the conservative cause in this blue city, it’s an eternal truth that when the deck gets reshuffled, there are always unintended consequences.

Among the most delicious of the potential sideshows is a possible face-off in District 6 between former Guilford County Commissioner Skip Alston and former Councilmember Dianne Bellamy-Small, who lost her 2013 bid for District 1 to Sharon Hightower by just a dozen votes.

Alston backed Wade’s bill, saying that it could lead to more African Americans on council. Bellamy-Small needs the work. Their distaste for each other is palpable, especially after he backed Hightower last go-round. And former Mayor Robbie Perkins, who teamed with Alston for his last re-election bid in 2013, when he lost to Vaughan, but was front and center at Bellamy-Small’s campaign announcement last week… well, his head just might explode.

A showdown like that might make this monkeypoop sandwich we’ve been forced to eat go down just a little easier.

Baseball, the Dead and the Fourth of July

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14

IT JUST MIGHT WORK

Art-house on Tate Street Addam’s University Bookstore closed in March of last year, after a 25-year run.

To anyone who remembers Maya or Design Archives (maybe even Fridays), the blank marquee sign stands as sort of an unmarked grave

by Daniel Wirtheim for a golden era of Tate Street, before such bland corporate chains as Chipotle or East Coast Wings moved in. Tate Street could use another cultural renaissance, and that’s why I propose that someone turn the failed art-supply and bookstore back into a cinema.

326 Tate Street, where Addam’s once operated, debuted as the Victory Theatre in 1942. By the mid-1980s, when it finally closed as House of Pizza-Cinema, the property had gone through several names and owners.

What I gathered from this is that there’s not a lot of profit to be made in art-house cinemas.

This would be a job for a group of young investors and dreamers who are ready to go up against the odds.

What these intrepid investors need to know is that the property is there, the market is probably there and 326 Tate Street is still for sale.

To set themselves apart from the online-streaming industry, they would have to pitch their venue as a multiuse facility, incorporating theater or music. It would be a community space, and why couldn’t they get some of their funding through the community?

Today, crowdsourcing is as popular as zombie films or quinoa. With a built-in audience of nearby college students and recent grads, garnering at least some community funding shouldn’t be a problem. The spirit of any cinema on Tate Street would have to be community-oriented.

Professors would give extra credit to students who attended a New German Cinema Week; students of media and art would have a venue to screen their projects for the public; theater kids would have a space to perform and direct the work of B-listed playwrights that are too avant-garde for the University’s theatre.

Making an art-house cinema sustainable would be the hardest part. The most viable option for getting the cinema running would be to get a third party involved, someone who has experience doing this type of thing — preferably with some capital.

What we can’t forget is that, in this particular decade, cinema goes beyond novelty. Like vinyl records, an art-house cinema has a timeless charm that moviegoers are beginning to notice missing from big-time cinemas and home entertainment systems. There’s a market for this stuff, and there’s an empty building just waiting to be transformed back into a cinema.

FRESH EYES

Black health matters When my editor asked me to write something for this paper, I jumped at the chance to write about health in the age of “Black Lives Matter.”

It was timely —right after the Baltimore protests, which were right after Charleston police

by Tamara Y. Jeffries shot Walter Scott in the back.

But I couldn’t do it immediately and asked for time to clear my plate. “Black lives and black health will still matter,” I said. And somehow I knew there’d be another incident that would provide a news hook.

Sadly, I was right. Since that time, an unarmed black girl was thrown to the ground and sat on by a gun-brandishing police officer at a pool party in Texas. Then nine people were gunned down at their prayer meeting at a black church in Charleston.

Black lives continue to be threatened and lost.

To say that excessive force by police is a health issue for black people is to state the obvious. Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Walter Scott and that Cleveland couple shot at 137 times are dead as a result of police action. Then there are those who have died at the hands of random citizens — Renisha McBride, Trayvon Martin and the nine people at the Mother Emmanuel prayer service. When public-health experts talk abut what increases mortality rates for African Americans, they have to acknowledge this: Being black can be fatal.

And it’s not just the brothers (and sisters) catching bullets who are dying. People who are witness to and live in fear of racial assaults are facing slower, less-obvious deaths.

Health experts know that feelings of anxiety, anger and grief in response to physical or emotional violence — experienced or witnessed — release stress hormones in the body. They know that eventually stress begins to take a toll on a person’s mental and physical health.

Now, they are beginning to see the link between poor health and the racialized violence that is specific to and pervasive in black communities. Case in point: A study conducted at the University of Maryland School of Public Health found a connection between racism in a given community and incidences of heart disease, cancer and stroke in that community’s black population.

Research confirms that steady streams of stress can contribute to arthritis, diabetes and a host of other health problems. More significantly, the heart, the immune system and reproductive system are all compromised by unabated stress. And being black in America is stressful — has been for 400 years. Sociologists like Monnica Williams and Joy DeGuy say that experiencing racial stress and trauma — personally and vicariously, repeatedly over time — results in a form of post-trau-

matic stress.

“Is it plausible that [African Americans] escaped stress-related illness?” DeGruy asks in a video circulating on social media. “Not plausible.”

So, how do we fix a community that is literally sick and tired?

Black Americans continue to rely on a history of resilience; we’ve survived worse and we shall overcome.

We turn to our spirituality to salve emotional wounds.

We turn inward for support from our communities. But others are taking proactive as well as self-protective measures. Public health experts like Elon University’s Stephanie Baker-White are looking at how “community activism can be an effective strategy to promote health and wellness.” Civic activity may help people channel their stress and frustration out of their bodies and into action.

“If you look at it from a public-health perspective, it becomes a community problem: less about the violence and more about the root causes,” Baker-White says.

“The bigger challenge is figuring out how to address those root causes.”

The roots of black health disparities are a complex tangle — and not just a black issue for black people to resolve. It involves addressing and ultimately dismantling the undercurrent of racism that pervades the economic, political, social and even religious systems that this country is built on. It means acknowledging that, however fervently we may wish to live in a post-racial world, we do not. Race still seeps into how people of color are portrayed in the media, how we are treated in the streets, how we are seen by the people who are sworn to serve and protect, heal and help. And all of that has an impact on black health. It’s a larger conversation — one that invites and involves us all. But we need to talk — fast and deep. Because black people are dying.

Tamara Jeffries (@tamjeffries) is a writer, editor and assistant professor of journalism at Bennett College in Greensboro.

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Last year, the Guilford County Commission abruptly dismissed a citizen committee appointed to guide the county’s program to preserve open space. Now, the committee’s minutes are missing, threatening to erase the program’s history. With the slate cleaned, the county is considering opening preserves for mountain biking, horseback riding and primitive camping, even selling off at least one parcel and selectively logging another.

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by Jordan Green

16

When Bill Phillips, the president of the High Point Historical Society, and Buddy Lee, an 85-year-old retired schoolteacher, drive the backstreets along the city’s west-central spine, they encounter a parallel ghost world of older communities, former schools and shuttered factories overlaying the new city.

They talk about a tangle of family lines with obscure offshoots, people like the Hedgecocks and Cridlebaughs, whose settlement in the area dates back to the 1750s. Where newcomers might orient themselves to landmarks like the Starbucks on Westchester Drive near North Main Street, Phillips and Lee are liable to take a cut-through along the backstreets, noting a baptismal fount at a primitive Baptist church here or a cemetery there.

Reminiscing about the little house where he grew up on Fisher Street on a recent Thursday morning, Lee said, “My daddy had a garden and my mother canned all summer long.”

The area flanking North Main Street from Lexington Avenue to Westchester Drive was known as Mechanicsville when Lee was growing up in the 1930s. Lee remembers a shirt factory operating at the present-day site of the High Point Chamber of Commerce.

Musing on a recent effort to rebrand the area as part of a push to revitalize the city, Phillips zestfully recalled a comment he once made to Aaron Clinard and Wendy Fuscoe, respectively the former chairman and former executive director of City Project.

“Aaron, Wendy, this ain’t Uptowne,” Phillips had said, only half joking. “It’s Mechanicsville. I’m gonna put up a memorial in front of the chamber of commerce. Just give me a little more time to get some

contributions together to raise the funds.”

A watershed flows to the west from North Main Street, beginning with a spring on Sherbrook Drive. The stream crosses Westchester Drive, a relatively recent development in Lee’s lifetime, and feeds into one of three tributaries to Rich Fork.

The stream network, so named because it’s a fork of Abbotts Creek, is the only part of Guilford County that feeds into the Yadkin River watershed; the Deep River and the Haw River, which drain the vast majority of the county, ultimately flow into the Cape Fear watershed before emptying into the Atlantic.

Lee has been coming down to the creek since he was a child. He describes it as his favorite place, one where he spent “a lot of joyful times.”

Lee worked in furniture factories and hosiery mills before he caught the teaching bug when he met his future wife. But long before he entered education, he experienced Rich Fork as an outdoor classroom to study the flora and fauna of the North Carolina Piedmont.

You can still see the letters of his name “Buddy” where he carved them in a tree at the age of 8 or 10. He waded in the shallow pools and drank the water. Then, as now, the stream was strewn with small boulders — a residual of a rock quarry that closed down long before Lee was born.

A photograph of the quarry shows a cartful of rock descending from the bluff on a crude track, soon to be loaded onto a mule-drawn cart. The photograph is undated, but one of Lee’s friends told him it was taken in the early 20th Century.

“This is pretty neat,” he said on a recent visit, as he ducked under a fallen tree blocking the path. He pointed out May apple and wild ginger. Of the latter, he remarked,

Bill Phillips (left) and Buddy Lee pore over a map of the Rich Fork Preserve. The two oppose a County to allow mountain biking in the preserve.

“That is native, but it’s very rare in these parts.”

Speaking during a public meeting at the High Point Public Library on June 25, Lee pleaded with local officials from Guilford County to prohibit mountain biking along the creek. Known as Conner Trail, the parcel was donated by Lib and Bob Conner.

Together with six other tracts, it comprises a 116-acre parcel stretching along the Davidson County line from Hartley Drive down to Lexington Avenue in High Point.

The larger tract also includes the Hedgecock homeplace, a working farm dating back to the 1880s.

“Recently someone who is unfamiliar with the project started a Facebook barrage to skew a poll in in favor of the bicycle enthusiasts who want to turn [the preserve] into a recreational park,” Lee told the county officials at the library. “People who lack the background, research, investment and understanding of the original purposes of the project in the first place, which is to preserve a natural scene for visitors to enjoy and learn about the flora and fauna, and

to explore what life was like living on a farm in that area in the late 1800s. Let’s remain true to the original project and not bend to a special-interest group that is looking out for their own special gains.”

Mountain bikers from around the Triad also cherish Rich Fork. For many of them, the landmark for the trail network is Northwood Elementary, accessed from Lexington Avenue.

“If anybody has questions about mountain biking out there, the buck probably stops with me,” said Bo Colbert, a Randolph County resident with a trimmed, saltand-pepper beard, publicly acknowledging that he developed the trail system. “I know more about that place than probably anybody in this room when it comes to mountain biking. I share Buddy Lee’s passion greatly for Northwood.”

Lee posed a simple question during the meeting.

“If we have bike trails here,” he asked, “who is going to be able to walk that beautiful creek, which is laden with rock from the rock quarry?”

CALEB SMALLWOOD

To that, Colbert emphasized that many mountain bikers are respectful of other trail users, including hikers and horseback riders, and hold just as much appreciation for nature as anyone else.

“Mountain bikers can coexist over here,” he said. “There’s no reason everybody can’t have something special out there. I see more owls, turkeys, deer, wildlife, turtles, copperheads when I’m mountain biking as I have ever done hiking.”

For an active cohort of citizens who have championed the preservation of undeveloped land across the county for open space, wildlife habitat, watershed protection and agricultural use, the introduction of active recreational uses like mountain biking and horseback riding represents a betrayal.

What became known as the Guilford County Open Space Program dates back to 1997, when a group of citizens began meeting to discuss how to address the rapid disappearance of natural areas in the

shown at the June 25 meeting at the library that indicates that the south-central area of the Rich Fork Preserve will be set aside for mountain biking, the cyclists appear to have found a receptive audience with elected officials and county staff.

While county officials and staff have signaled a willingness to allow active recreational uses like mountain biking on properties purchased through the open space program, the very term “open space” has been systematically scrubbed out of official recognition, to the extent that county officials don’t even acknowledge the existence of minutes that the open space committee scrupulously maintained for 15 years.

The first hint that the county’s commitment to open space was wavering came with the April 2014 resignation of Alex Ashton, the county’s open space coordinator. Ashton, who now works as a leasing manager for UNC-Chapel Hill’s property office, declined to comment about his departure.

Jack Jezorek, who chaired the open space committee during the 2004 bond referendum and continued to serve on the committee through its sudden demise at the end of 2014, praises Ashton for his competency and dedication, as do many volunteer members of the now defunct committee.

“He could see that he wasn’t going to be promoted or get an advanced position commensurate with his experience or education,” Jezorek said. “Towards the end of his tenure he was only working three days.

He decided to leave and find something better.”

County government has undergone extensive change, not the least of which involved Republicans taking control of the commission in 2012, following a redistricting plan imposed by the NC General Assembly. A new crop of elected representatives came into office that year, and they took a critical look at the open space program. The county’s administrative leadership was also in transition; the new commissioners had scarcely been seated for two months when County Manager Brenda Jones Fox retired in February 2013.

“We’ve had some things brought before the board — the parks and recreation board along with the board of commissioners — as to how to move these open space properties forward,” Commissioner Alan Branson, a Republican elected in 2012, told his fellow commissioners during a January 2014 meeting. “I feel like we have failed

somewhat in the design application as to where we’re gonna go and what we’re gonna do with these parcels and properties over the next eight to 10 years, or two years, whatever the case may be.”

The county commission quietly undercut the open space committee’s influence through a unanimous vote to amend the bylaws of county’s parks and recreation commission in January 2014.

“We’ve made some changes in the bylaws to incorporate open space and more clearly delineate the role of the open space subcommittee under the parks and recs commission,” Facilities, Parks and Property Management Director Rob McNiece told commissioners at the time.

No commissioners took the opportunity to question McNiece about the amendment or made any comments on the item.

Video of the meeting reveals chatter from the dais carrying over from a previous item in which the commission had approved federal housing funds.

“We love you,” Democratic Commissioner Carolyn Coleman can be heard telling the Republican members. “I want you to love Obama, too.”

One unidentified commissioner can be heard complaining of being distracted.

The amended bylaws essentially folded the functions of the open space committee into the parks and recreation commission, including making recommendations for master plans for open space properties.

The decision also appeared to pass without notice by members of the open space committee.

“There were no hints that we were going to be disbanded,” Jezorek said. “The only way we got notified was a letter in December from Bill Bencini, saying, ‘Thanks, but we don’t need you anymore.’”

At the time, Bill Bencini was chairing the county commission in his final term. He had not sought reelection to the county commission, and instead ran for mayor of High Point. His final meeting as a county commissioner took place on Dec. 1, 2014 and seven days later he took the oath of office as mayor.

“Sort of his last official act was to axe the open space committee,” Jezorek said. “No one ever talked to the committee from the county staff about their ideas for a change of direction for the program or a change of vision. There were some hints about where things might go. We were just sent on our way and summarily given a dismissal letter. It would have been nice if they had

triad-city-beat.com

plan by Guilford

county.

The Guilford County Commission officially instituted the open space committee as a subcommittee of the parks and recreation commission in 2000, and county voters approved a $10 million bond referendum to purchase properties for preservation in 2004. In the late 2000s, members of the open space committee identified and walked prospective properties. They found property owners who were willing to donate land to the program or sell below market value. Since 2004, the county has purchased 14 open-space preserves and spent virtually all of the $10 million bond.

“I believe [the county commissioners] are proceeding in a way that contradicts the program’s established mission,” Janice Siebert, co-president of the League of Women Voters of the Piedmont Triad, told county officials during the June 25 meeting. “I believe the taxpayers are being misled and that landowners are being betrayed. Voters approved a $20 million bond referendum in 2004 to provide $10 million to be spent for parks and $10 million for open space preserves. There’s a difference between a park, passive or not, and a preserve. The purpose of open space preservation as stated at the time of the referendum is keeping natural land in perpetuity… to protect water quality, provide flood control, allow groundwater to recharge, provide noise and additional buffers, preserve wildlife and plant habitats.”

Mark Gatehouse, a mountain biker who has supported the open space program since its inception in 1997, said that definition doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s true that the purpose of the open space program is to protect natural land in perpetuity, he said, but it’s also true that the program was pitched to voters as providing “trails for non-motorized vehicles.”

“The recent claim that mountain biking is not compatible with the preserve and that taxpayers are bending the rules is false,” Gatehouse said at the meeting. “The taxpayers who are being betrayed are the cyclists. The mountain-biking community, again, was a major supporter of the bond issue. We’re not a narrow special interest.”

Identifying himself as someone who works for a Fortune 250 company in Guilford County and hires for “the type of high-paying jobs which Guilford County aspires to capture,” Gatehouse publicly urged county commissioners to lift a prohibition on mountain biking in the county’s open space preserves. Judging by a map,

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July 8 — 14, 2015

Cover Story

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sat down in person and said, ‘Thank you for your service; we just have ideas about where we want to take this program.’”

It’s unclear whether the dismissal letter from Bencini arose from a formal vote, or the chairman privately polled the members to determine he had the support of the majority. Commissioner Kay Cashion, a Democrat, said that to the best of her recollection the commissioners took a formal vote, but a review of minutes from the 12 months by Triad City Beat preceding Bencini’s retirement turned up no official action on the matter.

“That vote was made on the spur of the moment,” Cashion said. “I questioned it at that time, but it was pretty much a done deal.”

Cashion said open space wasn’t one of her areas of focus on the commission, so she can’t speak directly to why the committee was disbanded.

Commissioner Alan Branson said the county commission decided as a whole to disband the open space committee because all the bond money had been spent, and as the commissioners see it, the committee had fulfilled its purpose by helping the county identify and obtain properties.

In early 2015, members of the defunct open space committee received a shock when they met with three county commissioners and members of county staff.

Members of a High Point committee convened to provide local input on the Rich Fork Preserve, including chairperson Dot Kearns, sought the meeting with county

officials because they felt their wishes were falling on deaf ears. Marie Poteat and Alice Patterson, two former members of the defunct open space committee, accompanied them.

Representing the county were county commissioners Cashion and Branson, along with Hank Henning, the board’s chair. McNiece, the director of facilities, parks and property management, and Robin Keller, the clerk to the board, also attended the meeting.

“I think my chin literally hit the table,” Poteat said, when Keller remarked that the county didn’t have the open space committee’s minutes.

“Those minutes were like every other group,” Poteat said. “They would be kept virtually in perpetuity. I’m wondering: Are the parks and rec committee minutes and other group’s minutes missing, or was it only open space? I find it perplexing. I don’t believe in conspiracies. We were disbanded. The county website has been wiped clean of ‘open space.’ [Keller] even said in the meeting that it’s like open space never existed.”

Keller said in a recent interview that the county was still trying to locate the minutes in response to a number of public records requests, including one from Triad City Beat on June 12.

There’s no doubt that the Guilford County Open Space Committee maintained complete minutes from the time of its appointment in 2000 through its dissolution in 2014 and that Ashton, as the county staff member assigned to the

An undated photo shows a rock quarry in the present-day Rich Fork Preserve in the early 20th Century.

COURTESY BUDDY LEE

committee, was responsible for maintaining custody of the records. What happened to the minutes after Ashton left his job with the county in April 2014 remains a mystery.

Jezorek said the county staff member assigned to open space — there were three over the course of the committee’s history, with Ashton capping off the sequence — took the minutes.

“We were quite rigorous in maintaining the minutes,” Jezorek said. “Staff people were always very careful to make sure we had signed minutes and that they were filed electronically and in hard copy.

“Notes were always taken, and drafts were sent out to the committee,” Jezorek added. “Every month I signed the official copy, and they were signed by the secretary. And they were filed electronically with the county. I never did that; that’s what staff told me. And a paper copy was put in a binder in the staff person’s office.”

Alice Patterson, the committee’s final chair, echoed Jezorek’s comments, adding that many committee members have held on to unofficial and uncorrected draft minutes, but the finalized minutes bearing the chair’s signature always went to the county.

Ashton said he and Roger Bardsley, a former parks planner for the county, established a shared computer hard drive where they filed an electronic copy of the minutes. Ashton said he and Bardsley made the drive available to the rest of staff and the department director before leaving. The only signed copies of the minutes are in the official minutes book, which he left on a shelf in his office, he said.

Ashton’s tenure overlapped by about a month with Rob McNiece, director of the reconfigured facilities, parks and property management department. Ashton said he informed McNiece immediately of his plans to resign, but he doesn’t remember if he actually handed the physical copy of the minutes over to him. Matt Wallace, who succeeded Ashton as open space coordinator — the position is now called “passive parks program manager” — should know where to locate the minutes, Ashton said, because Wallace interned under him and helped maintain the minutes.

“Those things have got to still be in there,” Ashton said. “I don’t think anyone would have trashed them.”

Keller said that as clerk to the board

she’s only responsible for maintaining the minutes of county commissioners, adding that “it’s not uncommon for subcommittees to not submit their minutes to the clerk.”

Keller said that under the NC Department of Cultural Resources records retention and disposition schedule, the minutes are “not considered a permanent record.

Usually, when the purpose of the group has expired, they can be disposed…. I was not here when they created that group.

My understanding was that it was for the acquisition of open space.”

The Records Retention and Disposition Schedule issued by the NC Department of Cultural Resources for county management does say that minutes of subcommittees may be destroyed when their administrative value ends, but only on one condition — that the minutes of the subcommittee are officially entered as part of the minutes of the parent board. If that doesn’t happen, the guidance manual says, “the State Archives reserves the right to designate the minutes as permanent.”

A review of the minutes of the Guilford County Commission over the past two years reveals no official action to incorporate the minutes of the open space committee into the board’s official record.

State law makes it a Class 3 misdemeanor for any public official to unlawfully remove, alter, deface, mutilate or destroy a public record, punishable by a fine from $10 to $500 upon conviction.

“The minutes were public information and public property,” said Marie Poteat, one of the former members of the open space committee. “It would be a violation if they were destroyed. We know that those minutes are there and we’re still hearing that they can’t be found, which to me is pretty incredible. It kind of violates the whole spirit of freedom of information saying that you’re purging the system.”

Whether the administrative purpose of the open space committee was, in fact, limited to the acquisition of open space lands is a matter of contention — one that might be illuminated, ironically, by the opportunity to review the missing minutes.

Members of the dismantled open space committee, including former chair John D. Young, like to point out that the county commission approved a document called the 2009 Guilford County Open Space

triad-city-beat.com

Report, which lays out a roadmap for developing an effective stewardship system for the open-space properties.

“A land management system is needed to responsibly care for the open space property owned by Guilford County through the efforts of the open space program,” the report states. “An effective system would be guided by an overarching management and stewardship policy and more detailed policies tailored to individual properties. Each plan would seek to balance protection of natural resources with appropriate public access.”

Typical perhaps of the county commission’s level of engagement with the open space program, the commission approved the 2009 open space report as part of a consent agenda — a legislative mechanism in which noncontroversial items are rolled in together and approved as a package — without a staff presentation and without comment from a single commissioner.

The county commission is also on record as supporting the aims of the open space program through its adoption of the county’s 2006 comprehensive plan, which notes that “the open space committee recommends the county employ strategies to ensure open space properties are preserved in perpetuity as natural areas.”

Considering that many of the former members of the open space committee are retired and that proponents of keeping active recreation out of places like the Rich Fork Preserve skew elderly, it’s easy to view preservation as an exercise in nostalgia. Who’s to say that cherished memories of playing in a creek and carving one’s name in a tree 75 years ago should outweigh the creation of new memories by middle-aged men romping through the woods on mountain bikes who might also value the land and care just as much about protecting it?

Brian Crean joined the open space committee as an adjunct member after donating $1,000 to the program from the proceeds of a photography exhibit at the Green Bean. Now 47, Crean was the youngest member of the committee at the time it was disbanded. As someone who had always complained about suburban sprawl, Crean said he saw an opportunity to do something instead of just talking.

“I was happy there was a group protecting land from overdevelopment,” he said.

An avid runner who lives in the College Hill neighborhood of Greensboro, he also

Janice Siebert of the League of Women Voters of the Piedmont Triad addresses county offiicials.

enjoys riding his bike on up to Bur-Mil Park on the Atlantic & Yadkin Greenway.

Like many open space advocates, he said he has nothing against mountain biking.

“My emphasis was always on the conservation end and wildlife protection as opposed to recreation,” Crean said.

“They’re giant outdoor classrooms. We had university students studying salamanders. I think it’s great to have nature walks instead of people zipping through on mountain bikes or clearing land for parking lots.”

With the dismantling of the open space committee, disappearance of the minutes and replacement of the term “open space” with “passive parks” on the county website, open space advocates have become increasingly suspicious of the county commission’s agenda. With the conservative shift on the governing board, they worry about a push to monetize the properties while overlooking the value of protecting watershed and wildlife, and enhancing the value of adjacent properties.

“Land is seen as a means of production and profit,” John D. Young said in an email to Jack Jezorek.

“What we, many voters and the [open space program] envisioned as land preservation and simple nature preserves is now being viewed at best as active recreation and heavy-use parking space,” he continued. “Selling tracts for development is also an option for some on the [county commission].”

Commissioner Alan Branson acknowledged that elected officials have discussed selling off one parcel.

JORDAN GREEN

A small cluster blackberries in the Rich Fork Preserve.

“The parcel that was purchased that adjoins the Randleman Reservoir, it’s undevelopable,” he said. “There’s not a huge amount of good trail use that can come out of it.”

Branson also said commissioners have discussed selectively logging some of the properties.

“We’re meeting with the Forest Service,” he said. “It’s not anything where we’re going to clear-cut. It’s to deal with beetles and other infestation. It would be a selective cut.”

Acknowledging differences of public opinion, Commissioner Kay Cashion said she and her colleagues need to have a conversation about how to manage the properties purchased through the open space program, adding that some properties might be appropriate for mountain biking, while others might need to more strictly preserved.

Branson said when county commissioners held their last retreat, they instructed staff to come up with a plan to open the preserves for the community’s use.

“What the community as a whole voted on needs to be open to the whole community,” he said, “not just four or five people.”

Conservationists comprised about two thirds of the crowd at the June 25 public input meeting on the Rich Fork Preserve at High Point Public Library, revealing themselves through angry outbursts to clumsy attempts by county staff to answer questions and loud cheering in response to rhetorical points by members of their cohort. The mountain bikers, mainly

CALEB SMALLWOOD

middle-aged men, stuck out by their defensive body language — wide-eyed vigilance, tensed shoulders and furtive glances around the room. Judging by the mountain bikers’ relatively low turnout, many of the conservationists concluded that their opponents are confident they already have the decision in the bag.

The ambiguity of terms like “passive parks” and lack of documentation opens the process up for abuse, suggested Julien McCarthy of Browns Summit.

McCarthy asked Parks Division Director Thomas Marshburn how the county defines “passive recreation.”

“The commissioners have passed the definition of passive recreation, but off the top of my head I don’t know it,” Marshburn said, promising to get back with McCarthy.

“We needed that before the meeting,” McCarthy protested. “So that’s another piece of information that’s ambiguous.

That leaves room for misinterpretation and some problems for property owners who were promised these would be preserves.”

Marshburn knew better than to answer when McCarthy asked him how the county defines “preserve.”

“I’m concerned about something changing because of all these ambiguities in this meeting,” McCarthy said. “People need to understand what these things mean before they decide whether they’re pro or against certain aspects of the use of the preserve. In my case, I want it to be a traditional preserve where ‘passive’ means walking through.”

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July 8 — 14, 2015 Up Front News Opinion

FOOD

by Daniel Wirtheim

High noon Dueling Chefs Wine Dinner @ Undercurrent (GSO), Saturday Chef Noah Sheets takes on Chef De Cuisine Mike Harkenreader in this duel of farm-fresh-ingredients-slinging masters.

Six different courses will be featured with ingredients from the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market. The bout will begin at 6:30 p.m. Make your reservation by noon on Thursday by calling 336.370.1266. Dinner is served at 6:30 p.m.

Drink like a professional SynerG On Tap @ Westerwood Tavern (GSO), Wednesday Better put on a nice shirt, ’cause a couple of young professionals from SynerG, are meeting up at the ’Wood. They’ll have $1 jello shots and $1 off all other drinks.

There’s always billiards and darts to be had, as well.

Music

Food

Cover Story

Banquet

All He Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Good Sport

Stage & Screen

Art

The chorizo torta comes loaded with jalapeño peppers, and is sort of like the Mexican equivalent to a sloppy Joe.

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ERIC GINSBUR

A sausage sandwich and the right kind of burrito

by Eric Ginsburg

should’ve just let Molly Davis write this article.

To hear Davis, the assistant general manager at 88.5 FM WFDD, talk about the food at Taco Riendo 3 is to be transported to the small Mexican restaurant. The location near the radio station’s office on Wake Forest’s campus is connected to a Citgo gas station on Reynolda Road, and when Davis goes for the chicken burrito or chorizo torta, she’s likely the only white person in the joint.

Hand-held burritos aren’t easy to find here — most Mexican restaurants serve the kind that comes plated and slathered with sauce, to be consumed with a fork and knife. And even though Taco Riendo provides plastic cutlery, this one is best eaten with your hands.

Though the Triad is teeming with excellent Mexican food options, many

I

ed, though like Davis I recommend the of them small storefronts somehow pulled chicken, or add other toppings hidden from view on main strips like this one, a solid burrito is enough of like my friend Emily, who asked for jalapeños in hers. It’s not the style that a rarity that I initially doubted Davis’ assessment. But her mouth-watering I, or many other gringos, have become used to, partial to the San Francisdescription of the food made it hard to co-style with all sorts of fillings. The resist finding out firsthand. kind that come so The burritos here full, ingredients are served in the Visit Taco Riendo 3 at 3619 southern California are often bursting out, especially if style — just rice Reynolda Road, Suite 100 and beans with (W-S) or find it on Facebook. it’s a burrito from Chipotle. But to a meat of your plenty of people, choice, though this style of burrito is home. It’s not the addition of a crumbled Mexican basic, at least not here — the cheese is cheese, almost like parmesan, is part of what makes it a fantastic lunch choice. killer, the beans and meat receive proper preparation attention, and it’s a more Lettuce comes on the side with a slice of appropriate amount of food. tomato, one piece of onion and a lime The caldo, or soup, was the most wedge, as well as an impressive red hot popular item among other patrons — all sauce worth adding to the mix. of them Latino — when I stopped in last An assortment of meats can be add-

In taste and vibe, Taco Riendo 3 is reminiscent of El Rancho Taqueria, arguably the other best Mexican restaurant in Winston-Salem and located clear across town. I’ve heard people talk about it the same way Davis describes Riendo, and understandably so. But after that burrito, TR3 may be at the top of my Camel City list.

Up Front

But pricewise, the burrito may be the best deal on the menu at $5.25, about $2 more than the gorditos but less than a flight of four tacos. Taco Riendo has everything you’d expect — enchiladas, quesadillas, platillos with a handful of choices, taquitos and more. As I waited for my food at the “Mexican fast-food” restaurant, other patrons ordered an al pastor torta and six carne asada tacos.

That, and the assortment of other dishes around the room, particularly the caldo, suggests that pretty much anything is a safe bet.

triad-city-beat.com

week, but with Davis’ words ringing in my ears, I couldn’t rightly leave without trying the chorizo torta.

If there is a Mexican version of a Sloppy Joe, this is it. The ground chorizo, or sausage, is bound to spill over the sides of the sandwich and stain the soft bread, making it best when consumed quickly rather than taken home for later. Topped with large jalapeño slices — almost too many — onion, tomato, a little lettuce and a piece of avocado or two, Taco Riendo’s torta is everything you’d hope for, and then some.

News

Food Music Art Stage & Screen

ERIC GINSBURG Sangria with peach, blueberry and strawberry (left) and limoncello cocktail (right) are excellent for July 4 or any summer affair.

Shot in the Triad All He Wrote

limited release of the Happy Hour in Karachi, which is its Deep River Wheat beer with the addition of hibiscus flowers and Pakistani rose buds, and a Sunday evening outing to Fat Dog’s — the first local bar I frequented after turning 21 — to watch the US women trounce Japan in the World Cup finale.

But it’s hard to match that homemade sangria with local ingredients, or the fruit smoothie-esque limoncello show-stealer, both of which will see an encore performance before long.

Games

one who used to be a liquor rep.

This, like the sangria, proved to be a smashing hit, and best when ladled into the cup through the top of the container so that the boozy berries could be part of the experience.

The next day, I added a dash Seagram’s ginger ale — the only storebought kind worth messing with — to Ruth’s tart and tasty elixir, an easy way to put a little pep in its step.

There were plenty of other drink highlights to my weekend: a date-night stop at Liberty for the High Point brewery’s

Good Sport

It was the first of several on-the-fly decisions for the sangria; I still can’t believe the ABC board is stupid enough to close on the Fourth of July — last-minute party-planners like me would more than cover the cost of overtime. With my bottle of Tito’s vodka running low, we added the remaining half-cup to four bottles of dry white wine (we chose sauvignon blanc) and poured in a half-cup of Sutler’s Spirit gin.

We compromised on the simple syrup too, more due to a lack of time than anything else, stirring half a cup of sugar directly into the mixture that also included a cup of lemon juice and about three cans of Fresca. We only had two hours to chill our creation and let the ingredients commingle before serving, but it was still a roaring success and tasted about the same the following afternoon.

As expected, friends arrived with six-packs of all sorts of beer, from Duck Rabbit to Victory, so much so that the PBR I bought as a reserve in case we ran out remained untouched. But the other star of the party — food and Grasshoppers’ fireworks aside — was a limoncello fruit cocktail.

When my friend Ruth showed up and poured mango juice, blueberry lemonade, limoncello, blueberries and strawberries into a drink dispenser, I was beyond the point of paying attention to proportions, instead drunkenly remarking to someone standing nearby that this is a tertiary reason to be friends with some-

Cover Story

It seems fitting that, though I’ve intended to make it there for months, what finally brought me back to the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market was the pursuit of fresh fruit. And not just any fresh fruit, but berries and wedges to dump into a multi-gallon tank of sangria.

After an exhausting week at work, jumping out of bed on a Saturday morning to pack into a crowded room full of neighbors and vendors is about the last thing I want to do. I’m more inclined to pick a brunch venue in part based on the lack of a wait, or take the morning to regenerate alone.

The crowd had thinned considerably in the last hour of the curb market on the Fourth of July, making it easier to compare blueberry prices and mull over which tomatoes to add to a pasta salad for that evening.

I rarely work off a recipe, but creating enough sangria for a party requires more forethought than throwing random vegetables in a stir-fry. But the nice thing about making drinks, especially when working in large quantities, is the ability to improvise.

That’s how we ended up substituting eight peaches for the pineapple Kacie and I had planned to cut into star shapes, preferring the more flavorful and local alternative. We hadn’t considered that strawberries would already be out of season, but the recipe called for two cartons full and we zipped to a grocery store rather than compromise.

Opinion

by Eric Ginsburg

Boozy fruit and homemade heroes

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July 8 — 14, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food

Music Art Stage & Screen Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All He Wrote

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Setlist

MUSIC

by Jordan Green

Dirty technicolor Jonas Sees in Color @ the Blind Tiger (GSO), Friday Jonas Sees in Color is one of the rare bands from the Greensboro school of midoughts emo-pop-punk that has survived a general change in tastes toward indie-rock that more or less coincided with the beginning of the Obama administration.

They’ve managed to hang on with a stint on the Warped tour and evolving with a gritty rock-and-roll sound. With Bear With me, the Head, Sunbox and Easy on the I’s.

Show starts at 9 p.m.

Rock and roll Dean Jeffrey Dean Foster @ the Garage (W-S), Saturday Jeffrey Dean Foster, whom were naming the dean of Winston-Salem rock and roll, appears at the Garage for a rare solo show, part of a string of local shows in support of his critically acclaimed 2014 album The Arrow. Foster’s friends, Amigo, from the Charlotte, kick up a storm of country-inspired punk rock in support.

Show starts at 9 p.m.

You either get it or you don’t Rich Homie Quan @ Ziggy’s (W-S), Saturday Triad City Beat Associate Editor Eric Ginsburg and Jeff Laughlin, our former sports columnist, are big fans of Rich Homie Quan. They love his music in an ironic way that borders on actual admiration. If you’re into new, commercial hip hop, you probably are already going to this show. If you not, maybe you don’t care.

Show starts at 10:30 p.m.

Strange fathers Daddy Issues, Estrangers and Dad & Dad @ Westerwood Tavern (GSO), July 12 Daddy Issues keeps it real with an appearance at one of Greensboro’s diviest bars, a place where a late-night birthday party can turn into a punch-out and a roll on the floor. In addition to a love for trashy ’60s garage rock, Daddy Issues shares with Estrangers a buoyant beachy sensibility. Representing Greensboro and Winston-Salem respectively, the two bands have made a definite splash on the state music scene. Carrboro-based Dad & Dad, who recorded last November at the Fidelitorium in Kernersville, returns the favor to the Triad by showing up for the gig. Show starts at 8 p.m.

Motorbilly drove the crowd wild in the Millennium Center’s Jailhouse.

ANTHONY HARRISON

The rebel underground

by Anthony Harrison

shirts. Hot rods. MuttonBlack chops. Upright basses. A sea of ink. Chicken-pickin’ Telecasters. Raven hair pulled back in buns, pinned with flowers. Elvis.

The tide driving it all: Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Starting Friday, July 3, the 15th annual Heavy Rebel Weekender festival flooded Winston-Salem’s Millennium Center with PBR and associated memorabilia.

An enormous, inflatable can of Pabst Blue Ribbon sat on the main stage’s left side. Flag-sized posters of rebellious icons from Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis to Debbie Harry and Duke Ellington lined the walls, but at the bottom of the banners was that familiar blue ribbon.

And everywhere you looked, everyone drank PBR. Winston-Salem’s own country fa-

vorites, the bo-stevens, took the main stage around 6:30 p.m., fronted by Richard Boyd II playing mid-tempo rhythm on an acoustic-electric Taylor guitar.

Jeff Shu accompanied dreamily on pedal steel, and Greg Bell played some hot guitar licks on an emerald Tele.

Later on, the Silverhounds from New Jersey seemed the love child of Rush, rockabilly and Slayer, with the lead vocalist/bassist screeching high-pitched melodies while slapping his jet-black upright with ferocious intensity, running the dog instead of walking it.

The party wasn’t only rolling upstairs, though.

Taking a right from the main room, a rusty car hood dripping with pink paint pointed downstairs towards the advertised venue: “Underground.”

The first room of the Underground, appropriately named the Wiggle Room,

featured burlesque dancers flaunting their wiles in black latex lingerie and holding giant feathered fans like peacocks’ tails to swanky, muted trumpet and twinkling piano.

As one of the Wiggle Room’s main attractions, Greensboro’s scarlet-haired, buxom beauty Ruby Red slinked onstage to Van Halen’s cover of “Louie, Louie,” switching her hips back and forth, removing her black elbow-length gloves finger by finger with a teasing air.

Nearly everything else was discarded with the same coy attitude, all the way down to her swinging tassels.

Unfortunately, only pre-approved photography was allowed. Sorry, readers.

Moving further into the chemic-smelling depths of the Underground, one came across the middle room of the labyrinth — the Jailhouse.

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All it seemed anyone could do was marvel at a journeyman at work, playing a road-worn, black Silvertone with spanking-clean tone while his voice alternated between Johnny Cash croon and growling yips and shouts.

Though he played solo, Romweber knew how to work his guitar, playing chord-based solos and churning out riffs and choppy lines while letting open strings ring to fill out the sound. And Romweber could shift on a dime from rollicking rockabilly to jazzy ballad or trashy surf to country blues — sometimes within the same song.

One of the highlights was the penultimate number, an extended guitar improvisation that alternated between a rolling surf-punk progression to a Texas shuffle.

That’s how it started, anyway.

He worked the guitar masterfully, using the lower strings as percussion, forming a harmonic backdrop with the middle strings and playing lead lines on top. At times, the chord voicings got so dense they practically became just noise.

“Good night, folks,” Romweber said to the thunderous applause. “I’ll leave y’all with a positive song.”

It was almost la-di-da when Romweber sang, “You’ll find that life’s worthwhile/ If you just smile.”

But his attitude reflected the point of Heavy Rebel Weekender: Just have some damn fun.

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Raleigh’s Motorbilly ramped up in the Jailhouse, sounding like an Irish pub band raised on bourbon and fried chicken. Their sound was almost too well suited for the room, with the thunderous bass and floor toms reverberating off the brick walls and columns, subsequently rumbling in each attendee’s chest cavity, elevating heart rates to the A-fib tempo. A cherry-sunburst Les Paul spat out crunching riffs and blinding-quick, virtuosic solos, and the man behind the guitar snarled songs like “Pretty F***ed Up.” The frontman and drummer often sang together and interacted theatrically.

“How about a fast one?” the frontman asked.

“Not too f***in’ fast!” the drummer shouted back.

The pounding, 100-mph country rhythm they served up made the prior conversation almost a cruel joke.

“We’re so happy to see your shining, happy faces here on Friday,” the drummer said later, “’cause y’all won’t look like this on Sunday.”

The very depths of the basement led to the Underground proper. This deepest stage already smelled like the sting of Marlboros and the malty sweetness of — what else? — Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Here, the Wet Boys from Virginia Beach performed sludgy dirges led by Tomahawk Brock, a scrawny dude with a voice like a belching Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

Of all the frontmen, he might have engaged the audience the most. He would stumble into the crowd while wailing about life in the mines, typifying a boisterous, drunken rocker to a T. “Let’s all get drunk together and see what happens,” Brock said.

And he would be pelted with empty beer cans.

“This is our last song,” Brock said.

“It’s called ‘Swamp Dingus,’ and it is definitely about the devil. Welcome to hell.”

More cans launched at him as he railed the chorus, “The devil wants a man with blood on his soles.”

No matter how much the crowd appreciated the Wet Boys, Dex Romweber drew the biggest following into the Underground.

Chapel Hill-based Romweber is a living legend. Even if the cans thrown at other acts were signs of appreciation, everyone knew not to do the same to Dex.

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July 8 — 14, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music

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Palette

ART

by Chris Nafekh

Frankly, that art is impressive Pop-up Art Show @ Theatre Art Galleries (HP), Wednesday On the evening of the 15th, Blair and Laurie Fox Pessemier will travel from their home in Italy to visit High Point. The two have traveled through France and Italy together, recording the beauty of European countryside on their canvases. Together, they practice painting en plein air, which means painting outdoors. The fine-art painters are known for their abstract impressionist takes on the city of Paris. The two can often be seen in France’s capital parks, painting side by side. Blair, who is an architect by trade, won the Piedmont Paint Out in 2014. The event includes dinner and an open bar, which should be plenty of motivation for an art appreciator to attend. There is no charge to attend the art showing, and reservations are accepted.

For more information, visit tagart.org.

Is this fruit real?

The Stilled Lives of Objects @ Weatherspoon Art Museum (GSO), Saturday The Weatherspoon opens a new exhibit focused on still-life painting. The image of a focused painter re-creating a bowl of fruit comes to mind. But this exhibition will remind visitors of the extensive possibilities of still-life artistry. The subjects of each painting are man-made objects which the artists imaginatively interpret from life onto canvas. For more information, visit weatherspoon.uncg.edu.

Time to talk Artist Talks @ Elsewhere (GSO), Thursday Southern Constellation Fellows Iman Pearson and Regina Agu, beside resident Kayla Anderson, hold a free artist talk to discuss their past work and creative processes. Together, these three women cover a wide range of artistic expertise, including film, sculpture, media and other visual arts.

Elsewhere is Greensboro’s hippest art collective; the resident artists are constantly tackling complicated, often controversial subjects and turning them into palpable and emotive exhibitions. If you’re lucky, you might get a glimpse into the future and current projects at elsewhere.

Local comic artist anticipates novel debut

by Sayaka Matsuoka Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards are like the Oscars of the comics world, and Winston-Salem native Ben Towle has been nominated three times.

Towle, who is currently working on his fourth graphic novel, Oyster War, didn’t always know he wanted to be a comic-book artist. His résumé ranges from studying philosophy at Davidson College to playing in an indie-rock band and teaching art classes at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art. But for the past 10 years, Towle’s been working as a freelance artist in Winston-Salem after taking graduate art classes at the Savannah College of Art and Design. “[My wife and I] made a short list of cities we liked and would want to live in,” Towle said, describing the couple’s move to the City of Arts & Innovation after school. “I got a summer job teaching at the Governor’s School and we’ve been here for the past 12 years.”

His first full-length solo comic book, Farewell Georgia, came out around the time he and his wife made the move to the Triad; since then he has created three complete works, including his newest novel Oyster War, scheduled to come out in September.

The Eisner-nominated work is being published by the Portland, OR based Oni Press, the company that printed the Scott Pilgrim series. His inspiration for the novel came years ago when he was visiting his grandfather near the Chesapeake Bay. “I was reading this book about the COURTESY PHOTO Ben Towle, a Winston-Salem native, working on sketches for oyster wars in the area and made a note his comics. about it for later,” Towle said. “And one done in full color and his favorite of his thing just led to another.” images of the cover and inside pages work so far.

The wars refer of Oyster War adorn the walls. Other “I’m always movto the disputes works including local commissions like For more info on Towle’s ing ahead,” Towle between Maryland his Star Trek poster for A/perture Cinsaid. “I never want and Virginia oyster emas in Winston-Salem also decorate work, visit benzilla.com. to do the same thing pirates and authorthe space.

Towle will be doing book twice.” ities in the ChesaHand-drawn and painted images on signings of Oyster War at To promote the peake region in the vast sheets of paper with speech bubSsalefish Comics and Toys release of his new mid-19thth Century bles and scene boxes prompt viewers to graphic novel, Towle just after the Civil appreciate the craftsmanship of the art.

(W-S) on Sept. 23 and at put on an ongoing War. Towle takes In a form where the final product comes Acme Comics (GSO) on exhibition at the the lesser-known in a processed book rather than on a Sept. 26.

Theatre Art Galleries historical event and gallery wall, Towle’s exhibition showin High Point. Tucked gives it a colorful cases the detailed handiwork of comic away in the upper spin — one with pirates, a commander artists and graphic novelists alike. gallery of the theater, crisp, blown-up and a magical artifact. It’s his first book Light-blue pencil sketches where

The

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Towle’s made edits and scribbled notes on the side show his thorough thought process and contrast strongly to final digital prints from Oyster War that also hang on the walls.

The novel will debut at the Small Press Expo in Washington, DC on Sept. 19 and will be out in stores on the Sept. 23.

Towle will also be doing a signing that day at Ssalefish Comics and Toys in Winston-Salem and one three days later at Acme Comics in Greensboro.

While Oyster War has a couple of months to make its debut, Towle already has several plans in the works for future novels. He’s working on a short story for the publication “Creepy Comics” and is planning an all-ages science-fiction book. And while he has yet to create a book based in North COURTESY PHOTO Oyster War, Towle’s fourth Carolina, Towle says it’s on his graphic novel, comes out in September. bucket list. He’s already made references to the area in some “The community has been really of his other books; he says that readers supportive,” Towle said. “There’s strong may recognize some of the buildings in support for the arts in general.”

Midnight Sun, like the Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem.

All He Wrote

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July 8 — 14, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art

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Episodes

STAGE & SCREEN

by Daneil Wirtheim

Selling music, but not selling out Empire Records @ Center City Park (GSO), Friday Downtown Greensboro’s Center City Park is screening Empire Records. That’s the 1995 cult classic starring Liv Tyler and featuring one of the greatest soundtracks of the ’90s. It’s a coming-of-age story about a group of teens that fight “the man,” who wants to buy their quirky record shop and turn it into the lame Music Town.

The showing is free to the public and starts at 8:30 p.m., Friday.

Always positive answers The Yes Men Are Revolting @ A/perture Cinema (W-S), beginning Friday The beloved political pranksters known for holding fake press conferences disguised as huge corporations, such as BP and Dow, are here to save the world from climate change. In The Yes Men Are Revolting, the duo takes on the Chamber of Commerce, the Department of Homeland Security and Canada. (See review at right) A significant caper The Asphalt Jungle @ SECCA (W-S), Thursday As well as being deemed by the Library of Congress to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” The Asphalt Jungle was one of Marilyn Monroe’s first acting roles. Set in post-depression America, The Asphalt Jungle follows a criminal mastermind whose jewelry heist goes awry.

The Asphalt Jungle is a part of SECCA’s Going Dark film noir screening series. The film starts at 8 p.m.

Chaplin days City Lights @ Geeksboro Coffeehouse Cinema (GSO), Friday Made after the rise of sound films, Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights has exceeded critics’ expectations for years — some even consider it the best film ever made. City Lights will be just one of eight Chaplin film matinees hosted weekly by Geeksboro.

The show starts at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $4 each for adults, $2 for kids 11 and under.

In their third film, the Yes Men, aka Mike Bonnano (left) and Andy Bichlbaum, reconcile their mischevious activist urges with the pressures of growing older.

COURTESY PHOTO

The activist in middle age

by Brian Clarey

a love story of sorts, a buddy pic, a documentary and a call to action. And it’s way funnier than An Inconvenient Truth.

As the Yes Men, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnano managed some of the most outrageous and socially conscious pranks ever perpetrated on unsuspecting corporations.

The film documents the guys sending a flotilla of “survivaballs” — giant, inflatable suits that will protect humans against the effects of global warming — underneath the Manhattan Bridge towards a climate change conference at the United Nations. Posing as a member of the US Chamber of Commerce, one of their actors endorses President Obama’s renewable energy bill, closing the announcement with, “Mother Nature means business, and so do we.”

The announcement got picked up as breaking news by three major television networks before it was revealed as a hoax. At the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009, they staged a fake press conference calling on developed nations to pay off their “climate debt.”

That one didn’t go so well.

It’s

moves to Scotland with his family, and “It’s not the way most people proBichlbaum stays in New York, where he test,” Bichlbaum says. hooks up with a crew from Greenpeace Much of the team’s pranktivist antics to pull a caper against Shell Oil, which were covered in the first two Yes Men had teamed with Russian oil giant Gazfilms, The Yes Men from back in 2003 prom to exploit resources in the Arctic and 2009’s The Yes Men Save the World.

Circle.

But this effort, five years later, find the That prank, involving a life-size men older, with more responsibilities polar-bear suit, a marching band and and less time for their activities, the effectiveness of which they are starting a Russian actor with very little English, was also a giant bust. to question.

Here is where the story veers towards Their target this time around is climate change, with a few short primers the relationship between the men, their on what’s causing it and how it will play decades of friendship strained by familout. A visit with a ial responsibilities and lifestyles.

Ugandan activEach grew up as ist exposes the The Yes Men Are Revolting children of Holoeffects of climate begins its run at A/perture caust survivors; change on a Cinema on Friday. See apertu- both played in people who face recinema.com for showtimes, starvation if the industrial ruins crop fails. Closer as children. And or theyesmenarerevolting. as they age they to home, a sludge com for more on the film. pile on Native note that though each prank escaAmerican land in lates in scale and Oakland grows from the residue of tar-sand oil refining. scope, nothing has ever really changed.

“I would think, This is gonna be the When the Copenhagen hoax fails, the one that changes everything,” Bichlmen go their separate ways. Bonnano

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Sans music Little Women @ Mountcastle Theatre (W-S), Friday This non-musical rendition of Little Women is based on the charactors created by Louisa May Alcott, but differs from the widely popular musical composed by Jason Howland. The key differences: this play has no music, and might, for that reason, be closer to Alcott’s original telling of the story. For more information, visit springtheatre. org.

Stage & Screen

Food and funk throwback Groovin’ In The Summertime @ The Barn Dinner Theatre (GSO), Saturday Saturday night is the final performance of Groovin’ In The Summertime. If you’re into all-you-can-eat Southern grub and classic 1960s hits, this show could be worthwhile.

The only time I’ve seen an Elvis impersonator was at the Barn Dinner Theatre. He was impressive, the show was cool and I ate plates of food. To find out more, visit barndinner.com.

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A big, Grimm performance Into The Woods @ Weaver Academy (GSO), Friday It seems as if everyone’s favorite Sondheim musical is always showing somewhere.

The Drama Center presents a production of Into The Woods for its annual BIG (Broadway in Greensboro) summer musical. The musical, in which any and all Grimm fairy tales are relevant, has won more than 15 awards and has been nominated more than 30 times. For show times and information, visit greensboro-nc.gov or check out City Arts Drama Center on Facebook.

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Musical about a musical Tick, Tick… Boom! @ Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance (W-S), Wednesday This autobiographical musical was written and composed by Jonathan Larson, the award-winning composer of Rent. The play is terribly relatable; it tells the tale of a young starving artist who, after moving to Manhattan, struggles to find success and questions his career choice. Managing a career and a girlfriend is a balancing act, and this play touches on that. For more information, visit wstheatrealliance.org.

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For children, by children The Little Mermaid Jr. @ Starr Theatre (GSO), Friday Disney Jr. is a series of plays written for younger audiences played by young performers. This week, the Greensboro Community Theatre presents one of a few upcoming Jr. plays featuring students from Guilford County Schools. The Little Mermaid Jr. maintains the same award-winning score from the Disney classic and remains faithful to the story of the original film. For more information, visit ctgso.org.

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Dancing rats, anyone?

Take One Step @ Hanesbrand Theatre (W-S), Friday This week brings us plenty of children’s theater. One of the most fast-paced and interesting plays of this week premiers this Friday afternoon. A modern-day retelling of the Pied Piper, Take One Step is an hour of kid-friendly humor lined with rock and roll.

The play hits on moral issues like greed and corruption, so the kids can walk away with life lessons. This play is a chance to see dancing rats on stage, a rare sight indeed. For more information and a list of show times, visit peppercorntheatre.org.

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came in to give aid after Hurricane Sandy, which had just decimated the New York and New Jersey coast. And in Bichlbaum’s 19th floor apartment during the blackout that ensued, the old friends have a real moment of reconciliation, and also an epiphany that leads them to their next plot.

This one involves Colin Powell, an awful silver wig and a roomful of defense contractors wearing headbands and dancing in a circle around a room. This one is meant to unite rather than to shame, and it may be their most subversive yet.

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baum says.

Arab Spring and the Occupy movement provide the deus ex machine for the plot here, re-energizing the Yes Men’s efforts as they join the fray in Zucotti Park.

At one point they lure a crew of policemen to follow them in a march on Wall Street, and when they get near the cameras, Bonnano and Bichlbaum flip their signs, exposing the message: “Brokers and police for the occupation.”

That one got picked up by the Daily News.

After the police crackdown on Zucotti Park, they note that the Occupy people

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Got a show coming up? Send your theatre info to brian@triad-city-beat.com.

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July 8 — 14, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen

by Anthony Harrison

The hot five West Virginia Power @ Greensboro Grasshoppers (GSO), Wednesday It’s déjà vu all over again. Back when I watched them two months ago, the West Virginia Power were going strong, and now they’re leading the Northern Division of the South Atlantic League with a dominant 9-3 record. The Grasshoppers, unfortunately, have seen different fortunes this half of the season — their 3-10 record lands them solidly at the bottom of the league.

But they’ve beaten the Power before; they can do it again, and they have five games this week to prove it. Find game times and tickets at milb.com.

The national pastime Potomac Nationals @ Winston-Salem Dash (W-S), Friday The Dash may have lost their past two games — I blame myself for not being there; I think I’m a good-luck charm for MiLB teams — but they’ve started the second half of the season strong with a 6-5 record, leading the Carolina League Southern Division. For four games starting this Friday, they’ll be taking on the Potomac Nationals (7-4, 40-41 overall) who lead the league in the Northern Division in this half of the season. For tickets and game times, visit milb.com.

Neo-sportism Field Day New Sports Camp @ Elsewhere (GSO), Saturday Elsewhere’s field days began on July 4, but I didn’t hear about it until this weekend, so I’m sorry for not jumping on these events while the iron was hot. You still have plenty of time to join in the fun, though.

Tom Russotti will be designing new sports for anyone to play at public fields all through July. What kind of fun you have to expect, I’m not sure. All you’re required to bring is sneakers, water and an open mind.

The next field day begins at 10 a.m.

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Three young women — Christianna, Morgan and Graeson — opened the Fourth of July game between

by Anthony Harrison the Frederick Keys and Winston-Salem Dash by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” complete with twangy, three-part a cappella harmony reminiscent of the Dixie Chicks, while standing in front of the Dash’s dugout at BB&T Park.

There was one hiccup, though: They forgot the beginning of the third verse.

Still, they recovered well, simply starting from the top.

Despite its ubiquity, sung before every baseball game, I’ll be first to admit it’s a challenging song to sing, from its kickoff descending triad and octave-and-afifth range to the lyrics’ sprawling, 19th century syntax.

The Dash’s opponents are named not for what unlocks doors, but for the man responsible for writing the lyrics to our anthem: Francis Scott Key. The Keys possess a genuine claim to the name — Key spent part of his early legal career in Frederick, Md. before writing his immortal words.

Strangely enough, the song has a longer history with baseball than it does as the national anthem.

It was first performed during a baseball game on May 16, 1862 in Brooklyn, NY. It was played more regularly during opening-day ceremonies at the Polo Grounds, the bygone home of the New York Giants, beginning in 1898. Twenty years later, it was played at every game of the World Series between Babe Ruth’s Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs. Guess who won.

The tradition of opening every game with “The Star-Spangled Banner” began during World War II; by that time, the song had been signed into law in 1931 by President Calvin Coolidge as the official anthem of the United States.

I’m not necessarily one for grand patriotic gestures, but “The Star-Spangled

In the top of the seventh, Keys desigBanner” will put me on my feet. I might nated hitter Chance Sisco smacked an even sing along. I won’t cross my heart, RBI single, but following the seventh-inthough, and if I wore hats regularly, I ning stretch, the Dash loaded the bases, probably wouldn’t doff mine. scoring after Keys pitcher Jimmy YacaColor me un-American. bonis struck Barnum. Catcher Omar But I still love baseball.

Narvaez had a chance to drive in more After the trio’s stuttering start, the runs, but a 1-2-3 double play effectively Keys took to the plate. halted the rally.

At the top of the first, Adrian Marin By this time, the rockets’ red glare landed on base safely due to an error on from fireworks displays elsewhere first, but they couldn’t capitalize. flashed outside the field.

The Dash — currently the Carolina The game was still tied at the botLeague’s Southern Division leaders for tom of the ninth. Impressive fielding, the season’s second half — got off to a including quick snags of high line drives, better start, scoring two runs off a soardefined the prior two innings. With ing double slammed by first baseman Dash center fielder Adam Engel on third Keon Barnum, redeeming himself for his and third baseman Trey Michalczewski early error.

— a Top-10 White Sox But the Keys anprospect — on first, swered in kind, scoring Narvaez again had a three runs in the second chance to end the game inning, including a At the top of the with a single RBI. daring sprint by first th The audience sat baseman Wynston 11 , pitcher Brad silent with rapt attenSawyer towards home Goldberg smashed tion. off a bunt. Sawyer But he struck out earlier drove in the first any chance of the swinging, leading to two runs with a strong Keys scoring. extra innings. triple.

At the top of the 11th, In the bottom of the second, Dash designated hitter Toby pitcher Brad Goldberg smashed any Thomas established an antsy lead for chance of the Keys scoring. himself on third base. His risk paid off It seemed the same would happen after a wild pitch by Luis Gonzalez. when the Dash stepped up after a flyThomas jumped at the chance and scurout and strikeout. But second baseman ried down the line, stealing home and Jake Peter’s line drive to center found tying the game. him safe on first. A wild pitch sent him The Keys and Dash traded runs in to second. Michalczewski was walked, the fourth inning; the former off a line as was Barnum. drive from catcher Austin Wynns, and Then, déjà vu all over again: Narvaez the latter off a ground-rule double took the plate. hit by right fielder Nolan Earley which The pressure was on, and I mean on. bounced off the field in Earley’s corner.

But, you know what they say: Third For the next three innings, the game time’s a charm. slowed into the doldrums. It was no Narvaez smacked a Texas leaguer to perilous fight at this point. Those center field, driving in Peter for the wininnings were accented only when Bolt ning run, the crowd roaring like bombs — the Dash’s Phanatic-esque mascot — bursting in air. danced with first-base umpire Randy Winston-Salem reigned as the home Rosenberg to Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take of the brave.

My Eyes Off of You” in the middle of the sixth. Bolt grabbed the official’s butt with both red, fuzzy mitts right before the chorus.

Rosenberg seemed unamused.

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GAMES ‘Enter the Dragon’ I sea what you did there.

by Matt Jones

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Stage & Screen

Answers from last issue.

Art Good Sport

1 Arts acronym 2 Curly-haired Marx brother 3 Hardly in hiding 4 “I approve the motion!”

5 Aural “shift” named for physicist Christian 6 ___ Dei (“The Da Vinci Code” group) 7 Strongboxes 8 North Pole laborer 9 Let it out 10 Film spool 11 “___ Crazy Summer” (Cusack/Moore rom-com) 12 MS-___ 13 Reverse of WSW 18 Hawaii’s ___ Kea 19 Boss 24 Hip-hop trio with Lauryn Hill 26 “Get ___ My Cloud” (Rolling Stones hit) 27 Like some siblings 28 Changed the decor of 29 ___ Mawr, PA 32 Empire builders 33 Make a point 34 Without a hitch?

35 “Oooh, you said a swear!” type 36 “Weird Al” Yankovic cult movie 37 Calendar entry, for short 41 Hammerstein’s musical collaborator 42 Practitioner, as of a trade 43 Sheer fabric 44 In a riled state 49 Ask a tough trivia question 51 Not just some 52 They hold kicks together 53 Armada 54 Lepton’s locale 56 “You want a piece ___?”

58 EMT’s special skill 59 Palindromic poetry preposition 60 “Boyz N the Hood” actress Long 61 Kung ___ shrimp 62 Watson’s creator

Up Front

1 “Hey, sailor!”

5 Ambien amount, e.g.

9 Wear away 14 Command represented by an outdated floppy disk 15 Milky gem 16 Radio tube gas 17 Dairy product used to fill a pastry?

20 Car ad fig.

21 Abbey recess 22 “2001” hardware 23 Gold amount 25 Agrologist’s study 27 Round figure?

30 One, in Verdun 31 Not as vigorous 33 Sweet statue of Sean Combs in the late ‘90s?

37 It may be Photoshopped out in school photos 38 17th Greek letter 39 Strap on a stallion 40 Part of the theme song for Blossom, Bubbles, or Buttercup?

45 Like reserved seats 46 Whence farm fresh eggs 47 Name in “Talks” 48 Goes pfft 50 In a class by ___ 54 Improve, in the wine cellar 55 Brick in the organics section 57 He played Jim in “The Doors” 58 Frivolous article in the middle of the page?

63 Previous conviction, informally 64 Peas, for a pea shooter 65 “Desperate Housewives” character Van de Kamp 66 Lots of paper 67 Like 7-Eleven, right now 68 1990s puzzle game set in an island world

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prophetic, as it hypothesized that some of the progressive voters in District 4 offloaded in the redistricting by Rakestraw — an arch conservative who aligned with Wade and apparently had made friends with a stork —would come back to bite her. They did that very fall, by about 350 votes. That can’t have made Wade and her cohort too happy.

But the conclusion to the same article that is most worth revisiting amid the current iteration of partisan tinkering.

“Do us a favor,” it said. “Let the city’s excellent staff draw up a rational plan designed to serve the voters’ representational needs rather than to protect politicians’ high-performing voting blocs or coveted real estate such as the Greensboro Coliseum. Redistricting must be the people’s business.”

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some of the attempted changes have been far more calculated and politically motivated than housekeeping redistricting.

Before Wade’s kamikaze attack on council’s format as a state senator, she was part of a redistricting gaffe in April 2011, voting alongside none other than her current foe and the current Mayor Nancy Vaughan, who was mayor pro tem at the time.

Our editors, and likely our readers, remember the debacle, but here’s a piece of it as chronicled by our editorial team — which wrote for Yes Weekly at the time — when it all went down. After council hurriedly approved an unnecessary redistricting plan, the editorial said: “None of the four members who voted for the plan — [Mary] Rakestraw, Mayor Bill Knight, Mayor Pro Tem Nancy Vaughan and District 5 Councilwoman Trudy Wade — offered any explanation after the vote, treating the matter as if it were no more controversial than approving a federal grant for street maintenance. Rakestraw’s subsequent claim that the plan appeared on her doorstep in the middle of the night has become the butt of many jokes.”

But Vaughan quickly turned around, saying that “initially she believed the now-discredited plan evolved from an earlier one initiated by [Zack] Matheny based on citizen input.” After she talked to Matheny — who this year resigned from council to lead Downtown Greensboro Inc.— Vaughan admitted her mistake, and Knight soon joined her, it said.

The editorial then proved somewhat

News

“On Dec. 14, 1968, the 12-1 plan was rejected by more than a two-to-one margin,” former journalist Howard Covington, Jr. wrote in his book Once Upon a City: Greensboro, North Carolina’s Second Century. “The first round was over, but the contest would continue for the next 14 years, with voters returning to the polls five more times.”

It wasn’t until almost exactly 14 years later, as Covington wrote, on Dec. 16, 1982, that the city council adopted an ordinance to create five city council districts, leaving three at-large positions as well as the mayor citywide. The decision wasn’t technically final until two months later, in early 1983, current City Attorney Tom Carruthers wrote in a memo a few months back.

Maybe the overlap in language is intentional, especially given the support Wade, who is white, pulled for the plan from former county commissioner Skip Alston. The former key player in black political life in Greensboro, Alston has long been involved in the Simkins PAC, a black political-action committee that takes its name from George Simkins.

Wade’s plan, approved by the NC General Assembly last week, creates a council with eight districts and only the mayor elected at large — not a far cry from Simkins’ suggestion, but is there a gulf between Wade’s use of the language and her true intentions?

Even after the standing 5-3-1 structure was adopted in ’83, the district maps have been redrawn. That makes sense considering growing populations and annexations that create a need for balancing the size of the five areas, but

Up Front

It’s hard to say whether it is ironic or intentional cooptation. But some of the language used by state Sen.

by Eric Ginsburg Trudy Wade to justify city council redistricting originated decades before the staunch conservative came to power — it initially arose thanks to some of the city’s black leadership.

Before Wade, who previously served on Greensboro City Council, ever talked about additional districts and shrinking the number of at-large seats, a strong push for a similar outcome came from the opposite direction beginning in the late 1960s.

At the time, every member of city council was elected at large, a system that meant white people in the northwestern part of the city maintained control thanks to advantageous demographics. Though a few black people were elected to council under the atlarge model, including civil rights leader Vance Chavis, grassroots activists and the city’s black leaders wanted districts as a way to better ensure representation.

George Simkins, a black civil rights pioneer, put forward the first of several proposals to modify the election process that went before voters. His idea: scrap at-large representation altogether, expanding the number of seats on council to create 12 districts and a mayor elected at large.

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