TCB Dec. 9, 2015 — The Dinner

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com December 9 – 15, 2015

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by Daniel Wirtheim PAGE 16

ICRCM v. N&R PAGE 8

Brewers coven PAGE 21

Harry Potter rockers PAGE 22

Dec. 9 — 15, 2015

2 Nut City Beat 2015 (4.75x10) .indd 1

12/1/15 1:35 PM

Kids and the arts

by Brian Clarey

24 UP FRONT

OPINION

24 Art: Get to know the citizens

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

14 Editorial: Shouting down a shouter 14 Citizen Green: Greensboro example 15 It Just Might Work: Garage Mahal 15 Fresh Eyes: Om shanti, amen

GOOD SPORT

COVER

SHOT IN THE TRIAD

16 The Dinner

28 Corner of East Lindsay and North Church streets, Greensboro

NEWS 8 Museum accidentally sues newspaper 10 Superintendent race draws cahllengers 12 HPJ: Proposed preserve sale hits the skids

CULTURE 20 Food: A guide to the mercadito 21 Barstool: A brewers guild bash 22 Music: For those about to cast spells

26 One last drag

GAMES 27 Jonesin’ Crossword

ALL SHE WROTE 30 If you like piña coladas

QUOTE OF THE WEEK God is great, God is good, and we thank him for our food. By his hands we are all fed. Thank you, Lord, for our daily bread.

– Anita, Arianna and Lonnie Cunningham, before dinner. From this week’s cover story beginning on page 16.

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

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING INTERN Nicole Zelniker

EDITORIAL EDITOR IN CHIEF Brian Clarey

jorge@triad-city-beat.com

allen@triad-city-beat.com

brian@triad-city-beat.com

SENIOR EDITOR Jordan Green jordan@triad-city-beat.com

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Eric Ginsburg eric@triad-city-beat.com

NEST EDITOR Alex Klein

alex@triad-city-beat.com

EDITORIAL INTERNS Daniel Wirtheim intern@triad-city-beat.com

ART ART DIRECTOR Jorge Maturino SALES DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING & SALES Dick Gray dick@triad-city-beat.com

SALES EXECUTIVE Lamar Gibson lamar@triad-city-beat.com

SALES EXECUTIVE Cheryl Green cheryl@triad-city-beat.com

NEST Advertise in NEST, our monthly real estate insert, the final week of every month! nest@triad-city-beat.com

CONTRIBUTORS Carolyn de Berry Nicole Crews Anthony Harrison Matt Jones Amanda Salter Caleb Smallwood

Cover photography by Daniel Wirtheim Anita Cunningham takes a 45-minute bus ride to buy a limited bag of groceries.

TCB IN A FLASH DAILY @ triad-city-beat.com First copy is free, all additional copies are $1.00. ©2015 Beat Media Inc.

It’s Friday night, and I’m careful not to let the teenage boys in my car know how much I am enjoying myself. But the truth is that a Friday night listening to classical guitar at Wake Forest University sounds pretty sweet to me.

I’m going for the “bemusedly aggravated dad” look, poking holes in their ridiculous plans, pointing out their near total lack of accumulated experience, often reminding them of the malady under which they suffer, the form of mental illness that is teenage boyhood.

Before the show, I took them to a pawn shop to kill some time. They pulled a few instruments from the wall and began playing in tune, filling the desolate space with sweet notes until one of them picked up an $800 mandolin and I shut the whole thing down.

Teenage boys are notoriously careless, you know.

They killed it later that evening at the show, the ensemble of Weaver students holding their own against other high school programs in the Triad and making a mark against college-age performers and adult groups.

It’s the closest thing these art-school kids have to a big game against the crosstown rivals, I think, and the mood in the station wagon as it rolls back towards Greensboro is one of triumph.

Move it ahead a couple days, into a large church in Fisher Park, where I’m surreptitiously checking the score of the Panthers-Saints game on my phone before the children take the risers.

This time I’m here for my little girl, who’s got a new haircut for the occasion and a long, operatic skirt that makes her look a decade older than she is.

From the church pews I watch her sing with the chorus; I see in her expression her push to From the church pews I hit the right notes, watch her sing with the her commitment to the material. chorus; I see in her expresThat, combined sion her push to hit the right with the swelling notes, her commitment to of the strings the material. and pluck of the harpsichord, is enough to move my center of gravity.

Against all my best efforts, she’s growing up. They all are, the years ticking off in miles on the road, hours in hard seats, loops of lessons and rehearsals that fill up the weekend and evening slots in the master calendar.

The bemusedly aggravated dad naturally finds much to complain about in this scenario.

But really he’s having the time of his life.

triad-city-beat.com

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

CONTENTS

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Dec. 9 — 15, 2015

WEDNESDAY

CITY LIFE December 9 – 15

by Daniel Wirtheim

Pop-up residency interest meeting @ Greenhill (GSO), 5:30 p.m.

The Greenhill shows artists of all kinds what they have to offer. They’re talking to artists interested in making and showing their work in public spaces. Make the artistic leap for yourself or let a friend know.

Visit greenhillnc.org for more information.

THURSDAY

Railroad corridor public meeting @ Action Greensboro Offices (GSO), 10:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Action Greensboro and the city want your input as they plan railroad crossings at key intersections and various “enhancement areas” along the corridor. Don’t be one to complain after the change has happened; voice your opinion now. Visit downtowngreenway.org for more information.

Trust talk @ Polo Road Recreation Center (W-S), 9 a.m.

The people talk it out with members of the Winston-Salem Police Department in this trust-building forum. Voice an opinion or just make a cop friend. This is a positively minded community-oriented meeting. Visit cityofws.org for more information.

Candle tea @ Old Salem (W-S), 1 p.m.

The sounds of caroling accompany a 1797 Tannenburg organ as participants sip Moravian coffee and nibble sugar cake. Volunteers demonstrate how the beeswax candles are made, the ones used on Christmas Eve during the Moravian lovefeasts. Experience all the joys of Christmas like it was in the 18th Century, before big-box stores put their stamp on the holiday of love. Visit oldsalem.org for more information.

FRIDAY Amplifier final release show @ New York Pizza (GSO), 8 p.m.

It’s the final print issue from maybe Greensboro’s most beloved ’zine. The Bronzed Chorus and Black Squares/ White Islands play the soundtrack to a night of farewells as the publication moves from print to online-only format.

Triad bands 1970s Film Stock and LeBaron play as well. Be sure you’re on time — only 50 print copies available. Find the Facebook page for more information.

The Shalom Project Benefit Show @ the Garage (W-S), 9 p.m.

Jeffery Dean Foster & the Yes Men are playing for the right reasons. This show is a fundraiser for the Shalom Project, a nonprofit providing food, clothes and medical services to community members in need.

The Yes Men, a Triad supergroup with members from Bandway, the Alternative Champs and Snüzz are playing. Winston-Salem’s Peter Holsapple makes a special appearance as well. Visit the-garage.ws for more details.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever @ Starr Theatre (GSO), 7:30 p.m.

This play features six terrible kids, the kind of kids who are already smoking cigarettes, drinking jug wine and shoplifting. And somehow the little hedonists were chosen for a role in the church’s production of the Christmas Story. Brace yourself for hilarity. Visit ctgso. org for more information.

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The Secret Garden @ the Crown (GSO), 8 p.m.

As artists in residence at the Crown, the Open Space Café Theatre breathes new life into the old Broadway classic The Secret Garden. It’s the story of a young girl living in British-controlled India who travels to Yorkshire where she finds a passion for gardening.

That’s just the gist of it — it sounds much more colorful when it’s done musically. Visit carolinatheatre.com for more information.

In Motion @ Weatherspoon Art Museum (GSO), noon Museumgoers move through this motion-based exhibit inspired by the Weatherspoon staff’s collaboration with the UNCG Department of Kinesiology. Optical illusions, psychological movement — all that counts.

Visit weatherspoon.uncg.edu for more information.

Shine a Light on Hunger @ corner of Doune Street and Cascade Avenue (W-S), 4:30 p.m.

Sunnyside Ministry hosts carriage rides and encourages neighbors to illuminate their houses (they even provide instructions on how to make a light-up ball) for a holiday food drive. Carolers and refreshments are on hand and cans of food pay for carriage rides. Visit washingtonparkneighbors.org for more information.

triad-city-beat.com

SATURDAY Pokez Holiday Market @ 874 N. Liberty St. (W-S), 11 a.m.

Pokez Holiday Market auctions off repurposed, vintage and handmade home furnishings. But it’s more than that. It’s a party with Hoots Roller Bar serving the drinks and an array of food trucks. If you liked Hoots Flea Market you’ll love Pokez Holiday Market — it’s the same market with a different name. The market happens all weekend so if you miss today’s event you can find it again on Sunday. Visit hootsflea. com for more information.

Foxture, AnimalWeapon and Lavier @ Delurk Gallery (W-S), 8 p.m.

Winston-Salem’s math-y indie rockers Foxture are playing with Animalweapon and Lavier at the Delurk collective space. Animalweapon is an electronically oriented band from Raleigh whose sound is as danceable as it is petrifying. And Lavier, the one-man band from Boone, think soulful trip-hop with a jazz infusion. Find the event page on Facebook for more information.

Second Saturday @ 205 Collective (GSO), 10 a.m.

The artisan space on Lyndon Road is opening their doors to the public as part of their monthly open house. Check out what the collective has been working on behind closed doors. You can make friends with the wood and metal workers, or buy something. 205collaborative.org Saturdays with Saint Nicholas @ Old Salem (W-S), 10 a.m.

Old Saint Nick is ready for a photo shoot. The Old Salem Visitors Center is hosting a reading of “’Twas The Night Before Christmas” with a whole lot of old-timey snacks. Bring the whole family, they’re sure to find a Christmas gift or a pastry from the Winkler Bakery.

Visit oldsalem.org for more information.

Always Music Release Concert @ SECCA (W-S), 7 p.m.

Collin Allured plays his new album Always Music, an eclectic mix of styles ranging from rhythmic, harmony-driven downright classical. Allured is a UNCSA graduate and a master of classical fingerpicking. He also knows how to write a catchy song. Find more information at secca.org.

GREENSBORO

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Dec. 9 — 15, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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Humility, please, when killing animals

Hey there! I have loved Triad City Beat ever since it first came out. The Triad has needed something like this for a long time.

However, in the Dec. 2-8 issue, when I flipped through it, I noticed on page 26 a picture of a dead animal [“Good Sport: My first buck”;

by Anthony Harrison]. Under the picture was the heading: “Sorry Bambi. Sorry PETA. Hello meat.”

I do understand the idea of procuring your own food as opposed to purchasing it. I do find it very disturbing to brag about killing a being to the point of taking a picture of its dead body and putting it in a public newspaper. Even more so, the statement underneath was more or less flipping off anyone who was disturbed by it. Would it have been possible to write the article without having the picture attached?

Thank you!

Valarie Snell, via email

What happened to Jen

The fact is that no one has a clue why Jen died — and they had no clue over a year ago when her death occurred [“Medical plan for Forsyth jail ambiguous on opiate withdrawal”; by Jordan Green; Dec. 5, 2015]. Under these circumstances, it is simply incomprehensible that no autopsy — and no lab tests were performed. If anyone thinks I’m being too harsh, please advise, but to me the only explanation possible is either gross incompetence or gross malfeasance.

Dr. Robert Newman, via triadcity-beat.com Yes, the half-life for buprenorphine averages about 60 hours.

In Washington state, where I live, Snohomish County will no longer

admit persons who are going to experience withdrawal into the jail. Instead, they are taken to the local hospital due to numerous problems they’ve had with inmates detoxing in the jail. The sheriff admitted they just aren’t equipped to give adequate care to inmates in withdrawal. I applaud Snohomish County for seeing those arrested as human beings first and foremost and treating them as such.

Jiva Das, via triad-city-beat.com

LRAD, or not so rad?

So did it come with a bow on it? [“A crowd-control device flies under the radar, on purpose”; by Eric Ginsburg; Dec. 2, 2015]. On the other hand it can be used for variable tactics, unlike a surplus armored personnel carrier. It is also non-lethal and effective at subduing violent individuals (a feature demonstrated by our lethal military and special forces). Now on the other hand, is our department worried about something or just being prepared? The downplaying is concerning but maybe it is a true attempt at not stoking glowing embers in our community. I guess the only true way to tell will be how it is ultimately utilized by the department — carelessly or with extreme discretion.

Christian Yorkshire, via triad-citybeat.com

To the right of Burr

Richard Burr is completely out of touch with his constituents [“Burr plays up national security experience ahead of reelection bid”; by Jordan Green; Dec. 2, 2015]. He must be feeling pretty confident. I don’t know why. He hasn’t stood up for a single conservative principle over the past five years. I hope he gets primaried by an actual conservative and gets thrashed. breakn70, via triad-city-beat.com

Happy Hanukkah: Expand your vocabulary with these 8 great Yiddish words

by Eric Ginsburg

1. Bupkes

I didn’t grow up in a bilingual household — family members littered their lingo so sparsely with Yiddish, that I often didn’t realize the shift.

Now, a couple nights into Hanukkah 2015, I’ve got one stellar Yiddish word for each of the eight crazy nights, beginning with “bupkes.” It’s a noun, used to mean less than nothing, or a trivial amount.

2. Mishegas

Generally used in my house to refer to chaos or insanity, like a total cluster traffic jam.

Related: meshugener, or one who perpetrates craziness. (See also: Donald Trump)

3. Shmendrick

I admit to never knowing what this meant, but I definitely remember my dad using it towards me more than once. Apparently it means a jerk or idiot. See, Yiddish can be a great way to insult your kids with them being none the wiser!

4. Tokhes

You probably know a handful of Yiddish terms, like shlep, schmaltzy, and schmooze.

But how about tokhes [pronounced took-es]? It means butt. I’ve only heard it used literally rather than as an insult, but don’t let that stop you.

5. Kishka

This one’s a newbie for me, but I already love it. Kishka means guts or stomach, and I can’t wait for a the next time I see Luke Kuechly tackle someone and praise the Carolina Panthers linebacker: “Ooo! He hit ‘em right in the kishka!” It just sounds right. Also, dibs on this as the name of my forthcoming food blog.

6. Tsaytung

That thing you’re holding in your hands (or reading online)? It’s a tsaytung. Triad City Beat, the tsaytung of goys, menshes, shikses and schmucks alike! But not shmendricks, to be sure, though plenty of shayna punims (see below) are big fans.

7. Schvitz

To sweat. I prefer the English bastardization of the term, adding “ing” on the end. As in, my

girlfriend and I can’t agree on where to set the thermostat, and now I’m practically schvitzing!

8. Shayna punim

Alright, this is two words, but nobody cares.

[Oh you do? Fine, use this: “vashtimer” means bathroom. That might be useful someday.] A shayna punim is a pretty face, and I figured this list could use at least one compliment, right?

Otherwise, relying on this list might land you with bupkes for Hanukkah.

HIRING

Triad City Beat is hiring motivated full and part-time sales people for commission based advertising sales.

College degree and prior successful sales experience preferred but not required. Local travel and light lifting included in sales responsibilities.

Occasional evening and weekend work. Must be a team player.

Send resume to brian@triad-city-beat.com.

No Calls accepted.

90

70 60

40

20 10

Camel City Thruway

17%

Camel City Connector

17%

Tobacco Road

17% Other

17%

Innovation Turnpike

7%

Artsy Fartsy

All She Wrote

25%

Shot in the Triad

30

Games

50

Good Sport

80

hometown team’s game during their set.

During an instrumental break, McKaye slipped off the stage and swigged from a water bottle. He paced the corridor beside the stage in a kind of trance, almost like boxer preparing for another round. Naively, I approached, hand outstretched and greeted him: “Ian McKaye!”

“I’m in the middle of a concert,” he said, glowering. “I’ll talk to you after the show.”

Afterwards, when we sat on the edge of the stage for the interview, I decided to set the tone for the interview with what I thought was a suitably provocative gambit.

I challenged the Jose Ortega y Gasset quote on the cassette insert of Repeater: “Revolution is not the uprising against pre-existing order, but the setting up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one.”

I’m pretty sure I said something idiotic like, “I think all order needs to be destroyed so that we can be truly liberated.”

Whatever it was that I said, I won’t forget McKaye’s response: “If there was no order, I’d probably punch you in the face.”

Towards the end of the interview, my dad materialized at the end of the bar, bearded and bespectacled.

I suddenly snapped back from my fantasy that after the show I would be heading back to the squat to dumpster-dive for dinner or plan for a protest. Instead, I would be piling into my dad’s pea-green Nissan pickup packed with landscaping tools and making the 40-mile trek back to our rural farmstead.

“Who’s that?” McKaye asked.

“That’s my dad,” I said sheepishly.

“Well, tell your dad he’s a good guy,” the punk singer told me. “It’s cool that he took you to the show.”

Culture

New question: Do you support the city of Greensboro making a grant — up to $375,000 — to Natty Greene’s for a significant expansion to Revolution Mill? Vote at triad-city-beat.com.

I was 15 when Fugazi’s second fulllength album, Repeater, hit the racks at Cut Corner Records in Lexington, Ky. in the spring of 1990. My cousin had made copies of the DC hardcore band’s EP and first album, so this was a highly anticipated event.

Righteous and angry vocals matched with dissonant and explosive instrumentation — it sounded like urban America pulling apart at the seams to me and raging against the hypocrisy and greed of the Bush Sr. era. At the same time, I was attracted to the intentionality of the band’s outlook, and its disdain for both commercial success and chemical excess. It seemed built to last — an antidote to the depressive indulgence and self-destruction of the grunge wave just over the horizon.

I put out a ’zine in those days called Blackmail. Ian McKaye, initially the band’s principal songwriter and vocalist, was my hero, so it was a given that when Fugazi booked a show at the Wrocklage, a dingy club in Lexington, I was going to be there with recorder in hand.

Meeting McKaye in person disrupted my utopian misconception of the punk scene and also in some small way cut through the bratty fogginess of my immature viewpoint.

The show was awesome. The band raged and caterwauled onstage, fusing fierce head-on punk, taut funk and a sound that was starting to stretch into jammy, experimental territory. I also remember that they were funny. McKaye pointed to the mounted TV at the end of the bar and exhorted, “Go Bullets!” When the bartender hastily switched off the television, McKaye seemed genuinely disappointed that the band wouldn’t get to catch their

Cover Story

Readers: Our readers didn’t deliver a decisive victory to any of the names we tossed up, but Camel City Thruway came out narrowly on top (25 percent) of a four-way tie for second (17 percent): Camel City Connector, Tobacco Road, Other and Innovation Turnpike. Poor Artsy Fartsy Freeway barely made a showing.

by Jordan Green

Opinion

Jordan Green: I don’t know who said it, but I love Foothills Freeway, referencing the hilly terrain of the city. Geography is what really sets Winston-Salem apart from Greensboro — also a great city, by the way — whose terrain is

Eric Ginsburg: Jordan Green, changing the game on us. I was ready to pull the lever for Artsy Fartsy Freeway, a goofy reference to the city’s moniker. I’m the one that included it as an option in the poll just so that I could vote for it. But at the last minute, here comes Jordan with “Foothills Freeway,” and I am obliged to agree.

Fugazi

News

Brian Clarey: It’s not so important to me what we call Business 40 in the future so much as we call it anything but “Business 40.” Real cities name their stuff: the Pulaski Skyway, the Santa Monica Freeway, the Durham Freeway.

A city that’s supposedly loaded with creators and innovators should be able to come up with something better than the absolute basic. I’m casting my vote for the Camel City Connector, which has a nice alliteration to it and a reference to the coolest city nickname in the state. We can call it “the C” for short.

more like an industrial plain. And it can’t hurt tourism for the freeway name to reference the city’s flagship craft brewer.

Up Front

Business 40 leading to and from downtown Winston-Salem will be dubbed with a new name, so we decided to poll our readers on their preferences. Nobody submitted their own, but we threw up a couple concepts: Camel City Thruway, Camel City Connector, Tobacco Road, Innovation Turnpike and Artsy Fartsy Freeway.

triad-city-beat.com

New name for Business 40?

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Dec. 9 — 15, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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NEWS

Museum accidentally sues newspaper, working on deal

by Eric Ginsburg

The International Civil Rights Center & Museum filed a lawsuit “in error” against the Greensboro News & Record for libel, but sought a dismissal the next day. Now the two organizations are trying to reach a deal, the museum’s lawyer said.

Just one day after being filed in Guilford County Superior Court, a lawsuit alleging multiple instances of libel in Greensboro’s daily newspaper was promptly dismissed. But that’s only a fraction of the story.

Doug Harris, the lawyer for the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, said that the museum and four of its board members filed the lawsuit “in error” against the News & Record and opinion page Editor Allen Johnson.

“There was an agreement worked out for it not to be filed, and something zigged when it should’ve zagged, and it was filed,” Harris said.

Harris declined to elaborate on how exactly someone filed the lawsuit by mistake, adding only that it was a “misunderstanding.”

The next day, Dec. 1, the suit was dismissed without prejudice, according to the case file. Harris said the museum is “talking about it now” with the News & Record and is trying to work out a deal, though he wouldn’t comment on the content of the discussions. Because the libel lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice, the museum could elect to refile it if an agreement can’t be reached with the newspaper, Harris said.

News & Record Publisher Jeff Gauger declined to comment but directed questions to the newspaper’s legal counsel Amanda Martin, who confirmed parts of what Harris said.

“Doug Harris, who represents the museum, said that he filed that lawsuit in error and therefore he took a dismissal,” Martin said. “That’s all at this point that I can share with you.”

She would not confirm that there is any sort of negotiation or deal being worked out.

“I don’t mean to be problematic for you, but the fact that he filed the lawsuit and then took a dismissal is all that we

Four board members of the civil rights museum joined the organization in a lawsuit against the Greensboro News & Record that was filed and then dismissed last week.

are at liberty to say right now,” Martin added.

The suit was filed on behalf of Sit-In Movement Inc., Civil Rights Museum LLC and four board members including cofounders Melvin “Skip” Alston and Earl Jones, along with Hurley Derrickson and labor activist Richard Koritz.

It named the Greensboro News & Record LLC, BH Media Group Holdings Inc, BH Media Group Inc. and specifically Allen Johnson as defendants.

The lawsuit, which may resurface, alleged that the News & Record knowingly and purposefully distorted reporting about the museum to create a false perception of the organization and its leadership in furtherance of the newspaper’s agenda. “Throughout the preservation and construction effort the defendants conducted a public campaign in the newspaper against the museum and its board of directors in which the defendants persistently forecast that the museum and its board of directors efforts would fail (which they did not) without a change in the management and leadership,” the complaint reads.

“All of the preceding articles, however,

although obnoxious and objectionable at least had the saving grace of being constitutionally protected free speech and free press. After the museum’s firing of Lacy Ward, the then-director of the museum (in October 2014), the defendants’ criticism reached a tipping point in which it was no longer merely critical and opinionated, but actually libel.”

The complaint walked through various specific instances where the plaintiffs claim the News & Record published information that was “completely false,” particularly with regard to the museum’s finances. In particular, the suit honed in on a front page headline, printed above the fold on Nov. 20, 2014 that read, “Museum debt close to $26M,” a claim repeated three days later in a Sunday editorial by Johnson and accompanied by a cartoon of museum co-founder and former state representative Earl Jones in a sinking ship.

The lawsuit alleged that museum representatives, including Jones, repeatedly explained to the News & Record how federal tax credits that the museum obtained function. Before the articles ran, it alleged, museum reps articulated in

ERIC GINSBURG

recorded interviews that the tax credits “were not debt by any normal understanding of debt, but instead, the money was essentially free and neither principle nor interest were repaid.”

The articles lacked any “qualifying language whatsoever” the complaint reads, and falsely portrayed that the museum “was hopelessly mired in debt and could never climb out” and that the board/museum leadership was “hopelessly inept and had cast the museum into an impossible hole” when actually no such unpaid debt existed.

The civil lawsuit, which can be found as a public record in the county clerk of court’s office, also alleged that the News & Record later made false claims about decreasing museum attendance in January 2015 and “published more falsehoods” on July 29, 2015 regarding the museum’s reserve funds and the rules that governed it. The July article “deliberately [left] out a qualifying statement” from the museum auditor and “deliberately left a false impression” with readers, the suit claimed.

The lawsuit outlines what plaintiffs argued was a willful pattern of misinfor-

G r a ha m H o lt ATTORNEY

C r im in a l • Tra f f ic • DW I

3 3 6 . 501 . 2 0 01 P.O. Box 10602 Greensboro, NC 27404

ghol tpl l c@gmai l .c o m

Up Front

gre e n s b o roat t o rn e ygrah amhol t .com

Help Brian Clarey, editor of Triad City Beat, choose his next pair of glasses and you may win a pair yourself!

Opinion

Everyone who votes will be entered into a drawing for a free pair of glasses from Oscar Oglethorpe! December 30th, we will award Brian his new specs (that the readers picked) and also announce the three winners of new glasses. Voting will be on our website, or can be done in person at the store.

Cover Story

READER’S CHOICE ON HIS NEXT PAIR!

News

The lawsuit said that the plaintiffs sought a retraction and an apology on Dec. 29, 2014 and Nov. 6, 2015 to no avail, though a Jan. 17, 2015 did acknowledge that no debt near $26 million existed but argued that it didn’t amount to a retraction or apology and claims none has been issued since.

The lawsuit asked “that the plaintiffs be granted damages, joint and severally, from each of the defendants, for actual damages and/or for damages from libel per se in an amount in excess of $25,000,” and that for libel per quod, that the plaintiffs “be granted punitive damages, joint and severally, from each of the defendants, in an amount in excess of $25,000.”

The claim concluded by asking that the defendants be “taxed with the costs” and asks for “other and further relief as the court deems just and proper.”

triad-city-beat.com

mation.

“At the time the defendants published these statements, the defendants knew and maliciously intended that readers throughout the area served by the News & Record would believe these libelous statements and that belief would serve these defendants stated purpose of replacing the board and replacing the leadership of the museum,” it reads.

As a result of the newspaper’s coverage, the plaintiffs allegedly suffered damages “in the form of ridicule, humiliation, public contempt, loss of reputation, public hatred,” and under a “libel per quod” allegation in the suit, it continues by stating that the plaintiffs experienced “out-of-pocket expenses” in an effort to mitigate damages, “loss of past and future income from diminished revenue,” as well as a “loss of earning capacity in their business.”

Culture

WEEK THREE...

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by Jordan Green

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Good Sport

Culture

Cover Story

Opinion

News

Up Front

Dec. 9 — 15, 2015

Superintendent of public instruction race draws challengers

10

Dr. Jill Stein

June Atkinson

An entrenched incumbent at the state Department of Public Instruction draws three challengers, including a 32-year-old corporate lawyer from Winston-Salem.

year, indicated she actually agrees with succeed.

Johnson in many respects.

“We’re feeding children informa“Our integrated end-of-course tests tion at developmentally inappropriate are 20th Century artifacts,” the 67-yeartimes,” she said. “The curriculum is old official said. “Through technology requiring that children analyze before we have another way and a better way they have knowledge. You can’t build a of assessing what students learn. With puzzle without puzzle pieces.”

Proof of Concept, we’re piloting a Stein takes a critical stance against different way of assessing children. I feel the Common Core State Standards, and very confident that will yield some great said if elected to lead the NC Departimprovements. My big goal is that this ment of Public Instruction she would assessment is integrated into instruction. work with the state Board of Education It’s like playing a video game: You go to revise them. from one level to another, Last year, the General but you’re not really thinkAssembly appointed a ing of it as an assessment; commission to recommend ‘Our integrated it’s just that to get to the changes in the standard end-of-course next level you have to go course of study. tests are through the assessment.”

“We are very open to th The race has also drawn their recommendations,” 20 -Century two other challengers: Dr. Atkinson said. “As an artifacts.’

Rosemary Stein, a pediaexample of the kind of – June Atkinson trician with a practice in changes we’re looking Burlington who is running at, the Common Core in the Republican primastandards might talk about ry, and Henry J. Pankey, a retired high ‘information text’; in hindsight, maybe school principal from Durham whose it should have said ‘nonfiction.’ We are name will appear on the Democratic open to seeing what will be recommendballot. ed, but in the end we want the best for As a pediatrician, Dr. Stein said she each child.” has observed an increasing number of Stein said she wants to promote enchildren who are suffering from dyslexia gaging parents in her campaign. and are not able to read at grade level.

“Right now I don’t think the eduAn American citizen of Dominican cational system is doing a good job to heritage from a family of educators, the engage parents,” she said. “Parents 51-year-old Stein argues that the clasare instrumental to the success of the sical education method in place when child. We used to have very strong parshe was young is what children need to ent-teacher associations. They’ve been

Mark Johnson has only served on the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School Board for a year, but the 32-year-old Republican feels a calling to serve as superintendent of public instruction — the highest elected position for education policy in the state.

Johnson, who serves as corporate council for Inmar, worked as a teacher at West Charlotte High School before winning an open seat on the school board in 2014. In the year since, he has worked with fellow school board members to design a bond referendum that will likely go before local voters next year.

“I’m seeing frustration about what’s coming from the department of public instruction,” Johnson said. “This frustration in many cases isn’t partisan.

The frustration is about looking for new leadership.”

In particular, Johnson said he wants to focus on reforming high-stakes testing.

“We need to reform the system; the pendulum has swung to where we have too many tests,” he said. “We need to reform the system to take the emphasis away from high-stakes and end-of-theyear testing.”

June Atkinson, the Democrat who has held the position since 2004 and is seeking reelection to a fourth term next

Mark Johnson

County commission and city council races on ballot in 2016 Filing for public office remains open across the state through Dec. 21.

Forsyth County Commissioners Dave Plyler, Gloria Whisenhunt and Richard Linville — all Republicans — have filed for reelection in suburban-rural District B. Bill Whiteheart, a Republican who lost his at-large race last year, has also filed in the District B race.

Due to changes imposed by the state General Assembly, this is the first time Winston-Salem City Council races will be on the ballot for an evenyear election.

Mayor Allen Joines has filed for reelection. JoAnne Allen has previously announced plans to challenge Joines in the Democratic primary, but had not filed as of press time.

John Larson, a vice president at Old Salem Museum and Gardens, has filed to run as a Democrat in the South Ward, where longtime representative Molly Leight is retiring.

Democrat Jeff MacIntosh has filed for reelection in the Northwest Ward, drawing Republican Eric Henderson as a challenger.

Incumbents Derwin Montgomery, Denise D. Adams, James Taylor, Dan Besse and Robert Clark have also filed for reelection.

Dale Folwell, a former member of the NC House who serves as assistant secretary of employment security, has filed for state treasurer. Folwell, a Republican, lives in Winston-Salem.

Democrat Ron Elmer of Cary has also filed for the position.

Republican Joyce Krawiec of Kernersville and Democrat Paul Lowe Jr. of Winston-Salem have filed for reelection in state Senate districts 31 and 32, along with Democrats Evelyn Terry and Edward Hanes Jr. in state House districts 71 and 72, and Republicans Debra Conrad and Julia Howard in House districts 74 and 79. The incumbent lawmakers have yet to draw challengers. Republican Donny Lambeth had not filed for reelection in House District 75 as of press time.

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funding of schools and increased pay for educators — all under the control of the Republican-majority General Assembly.

His campaign also emphasizes character education, parent involvement and computer technology.

Johnson, the Republican challenger from Winston-Salem, said new leadership is needed at the Department of Public Instruction as the state reassesses high-stakes testing.

“All tests need to be up for consideration on reevaluating and reforming how we measure students,” he said.

“I’m going to make it my main priority.

Asking the current leadership to solve this problem they created doesn’t make sense.”

Atkinson said she would be the first to acknowledge that North Carolina has more work to do in improving education, but she touted the improvement of graduation rates from 68 percent to 86 percent under her leadership.

“I’m not interested in another elected position,” she said. “I’m not distracted by other issues, other than what’s best for each child.”

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weakened.”

Acknowledging the growing gap in economic inequality, Stein said she believes parents can overcome adversity to effectively support their children’s educational development.

“I’ll cite a presidential candidate who I admire — Ben Carson,” she said.

“His mom had two jobs. He in essence grew up without a father and his mother engaged those two boys. We find a way. We look for time on the weekend.

Sometimes you have to get up early to spend time working with the child. It’s not just teaching classroom material at home; it’s developing character at home.

When we do that, their minds are more able to develop through good learning habits.”

Henry J. Pankey, who is challenging Atkinson in the Democratic primary, could not be reached for comment for this story. The candidate’s website noted that Southern High School in Durham moved from low-performing to exemplary status under his leadership as principal. An active member of the NC Association of Educators, Pankey supports teacher tenure, adequate

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HIGH POINT JOURNAL

Guilford commission backs away from idea of selling preserve to Y

by Jordan Green

The Guilford County Commission backs away from giving the Rich Fork Preserve to the YMCA of High Point, but a controversy over mountain biking on the property rages on.

Guilford County leaders pulled back from the idea of transferring the Rich Fork Preserve to the YMCA of High Point on Dec. 3 amidst strong opposition from open-space advocates across the county and concern about mountain biking on land purchased through a 2004 bond.

Commissioner Alan Branson, a Republican who has butted heads with open-space advocates, went on record as saying he would not vote in favor of transferring the property to the YMCA, joining Commissioner Kay Cashion, a Democrat on the board.

Republican Chairman Hank Henning, who initiated the discussion with the YMCA leadership, distanced himself from the idea after Branson signaled his opposition at the end of the three-hour meeting.

“There was never a discussion about we’re going to definitely do this — we’re going to push this through and give it to the Y,” Henning said.

Branson pointedly asked Dot Kearns, a former county commissioner and current chair of the Rich Fork Preserve Committee, where she heard that the property might be transferred, while Henning skirted the issue in his comments, yet acknowledged that he had approached the YMCA about a potential partnership.

Comments from Jay Wagner, who chairs the board of directors at the YMCA, made it clear during comments at the beginning of the meeting that the concept of transferring the property was on the table during the discussion.

Wagner is also a High Point city councilman, who represents Ward 4, where the property is located.

“I want to assure you of several things in the event that the property is transferred to us in some way,” he said. “First of all, we will honor the commitment made by the county to its citizens that this property will remain open space.”

Underpinning the strong feelings about the fate of the 116-acre preserve on the west side of High Point were heated differences among two contingents about whether mountain biking should be allowed on the property.

Opponents of mountain biking at Rich Fork Preserve also feel betrayed that the Republican-controlled county commission dismantled the Guilford County Open Space Committee, which enlisted Kearns and other High Point residents to come up with a plan for the preserve.

Open-space advocates have insisted that the Rich Fork Preserve and 13 other properties purchased through a 2004 bond should be reserved for conservation and low-impact recreational purposes.

Statements from the commissioners indicating they either opposed transferring the property to the YMCA or were backing away from the idea came after a legal salvo at the Dec. 3 meeting.

Bo Rodenbough, a lawyer with Brooks Pierce, told commissioners that he represents Dr. Donald Douglass, a property owner who sold one of the properties that comprises the Rich Fork Preserve to the county, along with a newly formed group called Guilford Citizens for the Preservation of Open Space. After the meeting, Rodenbough indicated that he would anticipate taking legal action to block any potential transfer of the property to the YMCA. Rodenbough said Douglass sold his property to the county at a price below market value, and received conservation tax credits for the discounted value of the land. The terms of the sale puts the property under a conservation easement, and Rodenbough said that under state law it can only be transferred to a “qualified conservation entity,” which could include a governmental subdivision or a charitable organization that has land conservation or open-space preservation as part of its core mission.

Considering that neither is true for the YMCA, Rodenbough said the county cannot transfer the Douglass property to the agency.

Sharisse Fuller, then the county

Dot Kearns, chair of the Rich Fork Committee, makes a point as Commissioner Alan Branson listens.

manager, signed a document in March 2013 confirming that the county had accepted the property as a donation under the conservation tax credit program and confirming that the county would “conserve in perpetuity the property’s conservation values,” including “public access to public waters and trails, fish and wildlife conservation, forestland and farmland conservation, watershed protection, and conservation of natural areas.” The notice is on file with the Guilford County Register of Deeds.

“There’s been much talk about mountain biking being a trail use of the property or passive recreation use of the property,” Rodenbough told the commissioners. “Mountain biking, as opposed to trail biking, is an active sport. It requires a course that is laid out, the trees are cut and is designed to maximize the thrill of riding a bike over hills and so forth.”

When Rodenbough mentioned cutting trees, a chorus of “No, no, no” erupted from a row of mountain bikers who are members of the Greensboro Fat Tire Society.

Mark Gatehouse, a member of the group, said after the meeting that many people have misconceptions about the sport based on Mountain Dew or

JORDAN GREEN

Red Bull commercials showing people flying over wooden ramps. Some of the group’s members, such as geologist Jason Millington, bring professional expertise to their volunteer work with the organization to develop and maintain trails across the county.

“There’s about 45 miles of hiking or biking trails in the watershed areas of Guilford County,” said David Phlegar, who is employed as the stormwater manager for the city of Greensboro and volunteers with the Fat Tire Society as a recreational cyclist. “Many of those trails, especially the new ones, are built with sustainable methods that incorporate the contour of the trail around the contours of the land, building wooden bridges over streams in low-lying areas, minimizing steep slopes and so forth. As a result, there are really no water-quality or erosion concerns on many of the trails in Guilford County today.”

Open space advocates have pointedly mentioned that mountain bikers use “complexes” or “courses” to argue that their activity constitutes an active sport as opposed to a “passive use,” and that the trail function contemplated in the open space program refers to linear connections. Gatehouse and other mountain bikers counter that they have

over mountain biking is all but certain to continue. But Kearns greeted the commissioners’ statements about the potential transfer of the property with relief.

“Mr. Chairman, that’s the only quarrel that I know of that any of these folks that have worked with me or have worked with the open-space group has had,” she said. “We do not feel that public land that the citizens voted to put in place should be deeded over to a private entity, no matter how respectable they are.”

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been prohibited from using the linear trails and that the dedicated mountain biking courses are a concession to hikers who don’t want to share the trails with them.

Guilford County Facilities, Parks & Property Management Director Robert McNiece told commissioners that a public open house will be held in High Point in January to get input on the master plan for Rich Fork Preserve before the plan comes before the county commission for approval. The plan in its current draft sets aside 15 acres for mountain biking. The current plan also provides 11 access points to the park, which Henning said, “We are quite frankly not going to do.”

The residents from across the county who filled the meeting room on Dec. 3 were almost evenly divided between open-space advocates and those who favor more active recreational uses like mountain biking. And when Henning asked residents of High Point to stand, they were placed in both camps.

Regardless of whether the YMCA plays a role in the stewardship of the Rich Fork Preserve, the controversy

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OPINION EDITORIAL

CITIZEN GREEN

example Shouting down a shouter The Greensboro Greensboro residents, large-

North Carolina has rarely come off looking good when the national press has taken notice in recent years.

Recent stories include pieces in the New York Times about the Greensboro Police Department’s proclivity for pulling over black people — which, to be fair, was followed up with a piece detailing Chief Wayne Scott’s laudable reaction to the story, which included an order to stop pulling people for minor vehicle infractions — and a litany of handwringing about our backwards General Assembly or the reactionary infection spreading through our once glorious state university system.

But last week the voices that, through gerrymandering and voter suppression, our own state government has been able to disregard made themselves heard at no less an auspicious occasion than the debut of the national frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president of the United States.

Talkin’ about Trump, whose visit to Raleigh last week was marked as much by at least seven separate protest actions, maybe 10, inside the Dorton Arena as it was by gas-guzzling vehicles with offensive bumper stickers and truck nuts in the parking lot during the event.

Credit the man with finding the fault line of the American electorate today and fracking it with the politics of fear and resentment, and for revealing the filthy dark ichor that bubbled up from the rending.

But he’s also created an opposing movement, perhaps even greater in strength than the Trumpers.

Here in North Carolina, it’s comprised of voters who have been shut out of our state political system, refused access to the economy or otherwise marginalized — a coalition of Black Lives Matter, refugee supporters and Occupy veterans.

This moment in the zeitgeist, brought to us by Trump, seems a final stand against the creep of reactionary-wing talking points that have come to define reality for the lowest information voters: Guns keep us safe; companies create jobs by not paying taxes; there’s a war on Christmas; Muslims want to kill most of us and impose Sharia law on the rest.

A body can’t begin to fight an infection until the body knows it’s there — that’s when the immune system kicks in and the white blood cells come out.

From the national news desk, it looks like North Carolina is starting to fight back. Perhaps it’s too late for this movement to have any effect on our state government, which has been gerrymandered into submission by the majority party. But at least we can still monkeywrench a Trump party.

For now, it’s enough.

ly white, black and Latino, and representing a fairly wide range of incomes, have filled the pews at Congregational United Church of Christ for a series of teach-ins about systemic racism since June, only

by Jordan Green five days after the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC. Prompted by a tense community meeting at Bennett College in the wake of the appointment of police Chief Wayne Scott in the spring, Mayor Nancy Vaughan and the Rev. Nelson Johnson began meeting every Monday morning. Out of that awkward yet earnest relationship grew the Community-City Working Group, which is hosting the monthly Doing Our Work teach-ins.

In this turbulent year of increasingly frayed race relations, with unrest in Baltimore in April after the death in custody of Freddie Gray just one of several tension points across the nation, Greensboro of all places has seen a thoughtful and deliberate dialogue about racism. The group spearheaded by the mayor and the Rev. Johnson, including among others Guilford County Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen and International Civil Rights Center & Museum Chief Operating Officer Bay Love, was meeting several months before the New York Times published an exposé on racial disparities in traffic enforcement.

In the wake of the revelations in the Times, Mayor Vaughan quickly went on record as opposing resisting arrest as a standalone charge, while also expressing concern about minor vehicle infractions, which also disproportionately affect black drivers. And last month, with the mayor present, the Community-City Working Group voted to submit a comprehensive slate of recommendations to reform police practices to city council. In the meantime, Chief Scott has ordered officers to suspend traffic stops based on minor vehicle equipment infractions.

Without being there, it’s difficult to know whether this kind of searching collective inquest is going on in, say, Richmond, Va., Dayton, Ohio or Wichita, Kans., but it seems extraordinary to have 175 people show up on a Monday evening, as they did earlier this week at Congregational United Church of Christ in Greensboro, to hear two economics professors give a presentation on race and wealth. It seems within the realm of possibility that Greensboro might one day be considered a model of reconciliation and equitable growth — a truly progressive city.

Contrast the present with the studious avoidance of responsibility by Greensboro officials who framed the carnage inflicted by the Klan and Nazis in Morningside Homes 36 years ago.

“I think all of us realize the thing that scares us the most is that it really could have happened anywhere,” Vaughan said during the initial gathering of Doing Our Work in late June, in the aftermath of the massacre at the Charleston church. “Charleston is no different than Greensboro or any other city. And what happened in Charleston is really just symptomatic of what is happening across our country. It is obvious that race relations in our country are in a free fall.”

While Greensboro’s halting steps toward justice can be maddeningly slow and incomplete, Guilford County’s other city seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

In High Point, the human relations commission initiated a series of forums on police-community relations at the request of residents who were concerned about the high-profile, officer-involved deaths of young, black men in Ferguson, Mo. and New York City last year. The police walked out of sensitivity training and city council members raised objections to a flier issued by the human relations department that used the term “dismantling white supremacy.” As thanks for her work, Human Relations Director Al Heggins was put on paid leave and then fired.

While Greensboro leaders have come to acknowledge that racial disparities are real and tensions always hold the potential to boil over, High Point officials seem to want to punish any suggestion that their community is less than completely harmonious. How sad.

In Greensboro on Monday night, economists Larry Morse and Robert Williams walked through an American history of inequality, from the Fugitive Slave Act, Indian Removal Act and Homestead Act in the 19th Century through the Social Security Act, National Labor Relations Act, Fair Labor Standards Act and GI bill of the 20th Century that have systematically disadvantaged people of color while privileging whites. Bringing the history up to date, with tax policies designed to advantage the wealthy, they presented the results of this accumulated history: The average white household has 20 times more wealth than its black counterpart.

Williams drew a parallel between black people’s experience with the police today and the criminalization of ordinary activities of free black people simply trying to find better work under the Fugitive Slave Act. “We came into this conversation through police-community relations,” Morse said. “We’ve realized that it’s a very complex issue embedded in a system of systems that involves things like tax policy and land-use decisions.”

One teach-in on the history of white privilege in wealth accumulation was never going to solve the problem of racism in Greensboro, and the 175 people in the church pews on Monday night seemed to recognize this is tough work that requires commitment for the long haul.

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Author PL Byrd is an animal-loving, tree-hugging work in progress in Winston-Salem. Read more of her writing at humanwords. com.

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And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

Look — we can’t put on white coats, drape stethoscopes around our necks and, presto chango, call ourselves doctors. So enough already with announcing to the world that we’re spiritual healers or sherpas or, for the love of Pete, shamans when we haven’t done the work, when our concentration is on blatant self-promotion rather than meaningful, compassionate action. At this point in our collective history, we’re pretty close to the spiritual equivalent of a McDonald’s cheeseburger, regardless of our ability to use the term “hold space” in a sentence.

There. I said it.

It’s a judgmental, petty and graceless rant; it makes me sad for myself.

Why am I so out of sorts? Then, I remembered. I double-checked the December 2013 calendar to confirm. Two years ago today, I saw my precious mother for the last time.

She was lying in a hospice bed, close to transitioning. She looked exquisitely beautiful.

The last words she said to me were, “We go deep.” Mom flew 32 hours later.

I am mourning my mama, my one true beacon of authenticity. Holy or unholy, aware or unaware, ego-driven or burned down to ashes and regenerated, she accepted us all at her table. She dished up super-sized servings of unconditional love to everyone she met.

And I’m mourning the passing of my dad, one dear friend, two fine old horses and the world’s best dog. There’s been a lot of letting go in the last two years.

That kind of loss can make a person cranky. I’m feeling its weight today.

So, do me a solid, will you? Take a walk outside. You may feel your head tingle when you inhale the sun. When you exhale love, extend your breath as far out as you can. Send that love to the ground you walk on, then through the neighborhood, then through the United States and into the big wide world, all the way to Syria and beyond.

Chant if you feel so moved. If om feels funny to you, a simple ah will do. Hold the note like you would if you were a kid in church singing the first syllable of the word amen.

You know what I mean.

The world needs you. I need you. We need each other.

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I rarely ask that question anymore because my Magic 8 Ball broke years ago and all the

by PL Byrd shamans I know are animals, not people. When in the rare instance an answer reveals itself, it is not because I paid someone to tell me; it is because I confided in my dog or spoke with a trusted friend — some of whom are gifted healers — or cleared my head, sat still and listened.

You’ve heard of it. Meditation: It’s free.

I dig walking meditations the most. Some days it takes awhile, but eventually I stop thinking about the bone I’ve been gnawing and start noticing the magic of the woods or, like my favorite guru John Prine said, the diamonds in the sidewalk. Sometimes I chant and make up songs for the trees. I open my throat and set my voice free and, as far as I know, my soul-sound hasn’t killed any birds or small children.

Inhaling light from the sun and exhaling love to the earth feels crazy cool, especially when I track how far my exhale of love extends. When I’m cranky, my breath barely reaches my toes. I adjust my attitude, breathe deeply into the sun and consciously send more love through the exhale. Eventually, my breath moves through the world on the back of a neutrino and, for that moment, I am one with everything.

Straight-tripping. Give it a go. Anyone can do it, I promise.

I pray, too. But for me, praying is different from meditation. When I pray, I talk. When I meditate, I listen. Sometimes I’m so softened up by meditating that my heart radiates love and gratitude for a long, long time. Sometimes I spread goodness like butter.

But not always.

Today I am having a crisis of kindness directed toward the healing community at large. The way I see it, healing is a calling and many people are being dialed up every day, which is a really, really good thing. If we’re paying attention, we know our whole world is in crisis and we need healers of every stripe to join hands. But it takes years or, depending on the discipline, a lifetime of practice and a major ego overhaul (as in deconstruction) to fly that flag.

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I’m not one of those guys who spends his weekends under the hood of a car, but I can do some basic maintenance — replacing fluids and bulbs, mostly, but I can change brake pads and spark plugs, too, and I’m betting that there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that I could probably manage if I had the tools and the space.

But I don’t. My driveway is on a slope, as is the

by Brian Clarey street in front of it, so I can’t jack up my vehicle to work underneath. I don’t put new oil in my car because I’ve got nowhere to dump the old oil unless you count the creek that runs through my neighborhood.

That’s a joke.

Even my modest tool set can barely handle some of the simple engine work I’ve undertaken. I’ve fantasized more than once about how quickly the right power tool can remove and reattach a tire-and-wheel assembly, and what I might be able to accomplish with a torque wrench.

My idea, which builds upon Jordan Green’s suggestion a couple months ago about a neighborhood toolshare, is to have a well equipped automotive garage with lifts, tools and everything else the wannabe mechanic might need to maintain his ride.

Unlike Green’s initiative, which is more of a communal effort, my garage is designed to make money through memberships, storage-space rental and hourly rates. A smart businessman might want to sell some basic parts like fuel filters, bulbs, wiper blades and fluids, maybe slap a self-service carwash on the side.

A facility like this would appeal to a consumer like me, who wants to save a little money by doing my own basic car repairs, and also to the hardcore gearhead who could, with a long-term membership, conceivably build her own cars there, or drop in a new transmission or whatever.

I could see myself spending a few weekends a year in a place like that, and I bet there’s a bunch of other guys who drive old cars who feel the same way.

Om shanti, amen

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Dec. 9 — 15, 2015 Cover Story

by Daniel Wirtheim

16

For the Cunningham family, who are all legally blind, getting groceries often means taking a 45-minute bus ride to the nearest Walmart.

Village in far northeast Greensboro. When Lonnie shops on Sunday, the bus runs a direct route to Walmart but on every other day a connector is necessary. If she misses the No. 12 bus, there’s also the No. 13 that passes the Cunningham house. All routes convene on the depot and one of the two arrives at Anita’s bus stop every 30 minutes. As a member of the GTA board, Anita says it’s the best bus system in the state.

Before working with the GTA Anita used to teach in the compensatory program at GTCC, until a serious back injury left her unable to work. While she collects disability and Lonnie continues to work at the factory, Anita fills her time with volunteer work. She meets weekly with the GTA board, she volunteers with her church the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church and the Mobile Oasis Farmers Market. She takes Arianna to orchestra recitals, sings in the church choir and goes bowling with a blind league once a week.

So much of Anita’s life is built around the bus schedule and five minutes after its scheduled arrival time, the No. 12 arrives.

The No. 12 passes the Greensboro NCWorks Career Center office on Elm-Eugene Street, meaning that it’s often a full bus. But this morning Anita has no problem finding a seat in the front section.

Most passengers stare straight ahead at Elm-Eugene Street passing through the front windshield. That image, obscured on both sides by rows of seats and the bus’ interior is not unlike how Anita sees the world.

She was born with cataracts, a genetic trait that could have been fixed by a standard surgical procedure had the German Measles not further complicated her eyesight and led to secondary glaucoma.

With the help of an extremely magnified pair of glasses, Anita’s blindness is reduced to near-sightedness with a mild tunnel vision.

Arianna was also born with cataracts but she had to have her corneas taken out.

Doctors thought her body might reject new corneas, causing more harm to her eyes. But with no other alternative, they went forward with the surgery and so far her body has accepted the foreign parts.

She’s extremely near-sighted and learning Braille but she can see to a certain extent.

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DANIEL WIRTHEIM

It’s the first of December and a heavy overcast sky stirs above Anita Cunningham as she waits for the No. 12 bus that will take her to the nearest Walmart Supercenter.

Her purple rain jacket is unzipped. A Greensboro Transit Authority pass hangs across her chest. Her hair, dyed a fire-engine red, matches her dangly Santa hat earrings. And her glasses amplify a pair of blue eyes to the edge of the frame as she scans the street for the No. 12.

She’s brought a black collapsible bag along with wheels and a long handle designed to make lugging groceries easy while using public transportation.

The bus stop is just a sign on a quiet corner of Greensboro’s Warnersville neighborhood, just south of downtown.

Behind the stop is a white picket fence that belongs to the single-story home where the three Cunninghams live.

There’s Arianna, Anita’s granddaughter and adopted daughter, who is 14 and a student at Kiser Middle School. Arianna is autistic and legally blind but thrives musically, she’s a violinist in the Greensboro Youth Symphony Orchestra. Arianna has what the Cunninghams and her instructors call “perfect pitch.” She often learns instrumental parts without reading the music. In concerts she has absolutely no way of reading the music, so she memorizes everything. Getting Arianna to her orchestra recitals is one of the few instances that the Cunninghams use SCAT, Greensboro’s paratransit program.

There’s also Lonnie Cunningham, Anita’s husband, who is 74 and has been legally blind since birth. Lonnie was born in Roxboro, to a poor family that didn’t have the means to buy the young, mostly-blind and albino boy a pair of glasses.

Lonnie worked in tobacco fields as a boy and went to Governor Morehead School of the Blind in Raleigh before moving to Greensboro to work at the Industries of the Blind.

The Cunninghams bought their house specifically because of its proximity to the bus station — since being legally blind means no one in the household drives.

Typically Lonnie gets groceries on a Sunday, when the factory is closed. But today Anita needs a few things so she’s waiting for the No. 12.

The No. 12 will take Anita to J. Douglas Galyon Depot, where she’ll switch to a connector that takes her the rest of the way to Walmart at the Pyramid Shopping

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Dec. 9 — 15, 2015 Cover Story

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Lonnie was born extremely nearsighted on part of his albinism, although it didn’t stop him from playing basketball at the Governor Morehead School in Raleigh, a school for the blind and deaf. As he grew into adulthood, his blindness worsened until finally he could see only a speck of light.

In 2003 Lonnie had eye surgery that reshaped his cornea and left him far-sighted, which comes in handy when he bowls with the Gate City Blind Bowlers on Thursday nights.

At the depot, Anita finds the No. 6 bus that will take her directly to the Walmart Supercenter. The bus leaves at the top of the hour, which gives Anita about five minutes to transition.

The pungent smell of burnt tobacco fills the bus as a passenger enters carrying a half-smoked cigarette. A woman next to Anita has three full Walmart bags, one of which she carries on her lap and the other two on the floor.’

By the time the No. 15 leaves the depot, three men are left standing and holding the railing directly behind the driver. They seem content with their position as they converse and laugh.

“You can meet a lot of interesting characters here,” Anita says, smiling slightly as the standing passengers discuss the source of a foul smell that seems to have worked its way to the front. When the No. 6 stops at the Department of Social Services nearly half of the passengers exit and the standing men find seats in the front seating section.

As the bus approaches the Pyramid Village Shopping Center, the driver announces that that the “stop request” line is broken and that passengers will have to shout when they want to get off.

“I’m getting off here,” Anita shouts as the bus pulls into the Wal-Mart Supercenter parking lot.

In mid-November Anita was making cookies in her kitchen for the Mobile Oasis Farmers Market as the first Christmas music of the season music played softly on a radio.

The Mobile Market is a farmers market that makes weekly visits to food deserts, Warnersville being one of them. Anita’s chocolate and zucchini cookies were for the last market of the year that was held at Warnersville Recreation Center.

Anita offers her cookies to customers along with recipes that can be made with produce from the market. The recipes, Anita says, are meant to offer healthy recipes to her neighbors. Her eccentric recipes include cheesy apple quesadillas, butternut-apple lasagna and the chocolate zucchini cookies.

Projects like the mobile market are great, Anita says.

But as it is the majority of her neighbors aren’t concerned with eating healthy but with food-security.

It seems like there is always someone crossing Elm-Eugene Street to shop at a convenience store that accepts food stamps, Anita says. There’s also a Food Lion on Randleman Road, but it’s only two miles closer and

Anita’s granddaughter, Arianna Cunningham, reads The Wizard of Oz in braille.

doesn’t offer all that Walmart does.

She finds a cart next to a Salvation Army bell-ringer and shuffles through the automatic doors with a dozen others from the No. 6.

She wheels her cart first to the pharmacy, maneuvering around a group of 10 or so waiting in the prescription pickup line. She places a toothbrush and a large handful of Kind snack bars into her cart before heading to the produce section.

Since her collapsible cart measures about a foot wide by a foot and-a-half tall, she shops strategically. She knows that Lonnie will be able to go again at the end of the week, and that they will eat at the bowling alley on Thursday night. So Anita only needs to get a few items for her Christmas cookies, some vegetables and ingredients for a tuna casserole for later in the week.

She pays a little more for frozen broccoli and carrots than Lonnie does. He just buys the generic, name brand stuff as he searches for deals rather than quality, Anita says.

She moves from the frozen section to the dry food and produce towards the front of the store. The Walmart at Pyramid Village Shopping Center recently underwent reorganization, says an employee packing cans onto a shelf. The tuna that she was looking for on a previous aisle wasn’t where it used to be.

With her sight-impairment Anita needs to be close to

DANIEL WIRTHEIM

a product to tell exactly what it is. She stops her cart at a wall of pasta and crouches low. She reads the label and then moves to the next one, using a magnifying glass to see each item as she marks it off her shopping list. She does this with every product: frozen shrimp, mushrooms, spinach, coconut flakes, pecans, chocolate chips. Her entire shopping trip takes about 45 minutes.

Anita places her Smart Cart on the checkout counter along with her groceries.

“Everything will fit if you pack it in there correctly,” she says to the cashier, who has a placid, bored look on her face.

The cashier puts almost everything in the Smart Cart besides a bag of spinach and a Styrofoam container of mushrooms, which she puts into a gray plastic bag.

The two bags together weigh around 20 pounds as Anita carries them out of the Walmart, stopping to place some change in the Salvation Army charity bucket and taking off across the parking lot. She passes the area where she was dropped off and wheels her bag across the entire Pyramid Village Shopping Center to wait at the No. 15, the next bus that will arrive in about 15 minutes.

The stop sits in a lonely space between an open field and a cheesesteak joint on the outskirts of the shopping

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Anita Cunningham waits for the No. 15.

DANIEL WIRTHEIM

center. As Anita talks about the pain resonating from her back to her fingertips a throaty, low voice cries out from behind the stop.

“A little help,” the voice is pleading. It’s a woman struggling to get a bag like Anita’s out of a Walmart shopping cart. Once she has it free, she nests her cart into two others and moves to the bus stop in great lunging steps that swing her body wildly.

Anita says quietly that she’s seen the woman before and she might have cerebral palsy. It’s clear that the woman’s motor skills have been handicapped.

“You’re just gonna shop until you drop, huh?” Anita says to the woman, who takes a deep breath and shakes her head.

“I don’t know why I didn’t buy the gallon of milk the other day when I had a ride,” the woman says, in an exasperated whisper. The bus arrives just as she is catching her breath.

As the bus drives towards the depot, Anita and the woman carry on a conversation. She tells Anita that she became disabled in a car accident in the late 1970s.

“God’s keeping me alive for some reason,” she proclaims loudly as moves to get off at the first stop. The bus driver tells a young woman who’s getting on to please step out while a handicapped person exits. The young woman does not, but only presses her body against the ticket dispenser while the woman lurches off the bus.

Arianna plays piano. She also plays violin in the Greensboro Youth Symphony Orchestra.

“See, that woman could easily apply for disability,” Anita says. “She just wants to be independent.”

By the time the No. 12 has dropped Anita off at the house with the picket fence, more than two-and-a-half hours have elapsed since she stood on the corner with an empty bag.

Arianna will be home from school in the next two hours.

Recently, Arianna came home with a coupon to play laser tag and bowl over the holidays, a problematic situation for a child who has difficulty seeing. Lonnie and Anita wonder if someone will be there to guide her. It’s difficult for Arianna to make friends as it is, so this might be a good opportunity.

Next year she’ll be enrolled at Grimsley High School and Anita is slightly worried about the change. At Kiser Middle School Arianna is segregated from the general student body and placed into special education classrooms. It’s difficult for her to make friends when she spends so much time in isolation, Anita says.

At school Arianna shares lunch time with another autistic boy who she knows from a class she took last year. Anita says that between the two, there’s not much dialogue.

The other kids sit on the opposite end of the table.

DANIEL WIRTHEIM

“She had silent lunch today because she got in trouble,” Anita says. “I’m like, what’s the deal with silent lunch, she has silent lunch everyday. No one sits and talks with her.”

When Arianna comes home, she works on homework while Anita begins to cook. It’s about an hour later, at 4:45 p.m. that a chicken potpie comes out of the oven and Lonnie is home from the factory.

The Cunninghams sit at the kitchen’s island counter, even though they have a dining room table. Lonnie closes his eyes, while Anita and Arianna fold their hands in prayer.

“God is great, God is good, and we thank him for our food,” they pray, with Arianna’s voice carrying over the others. “By his hands we are all fed. Thank you, Lord, for our daily bread.”

Arianna eats quickly and places her empty plate in the sink. Soon the sound of “Ukrainian Bell Carol” is coming from the living room, where the young girl’s fingers move across the piano keys with fluid precision.

The adults move to the living room. Lonnie is beaming, his hands behind his back as he sways back and forth with Anita, her Santa hat earrings swinging with the rhythm.

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Dec. 9 — 15, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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CULTURE A beginner’s guide to the mercadito, and how to order a torta

by Eric Ginsburg

f you don’t speak Spanish, El Mercadito No. 2 might be a little intimidating, and it doesn’t help that the setup is slightly disorienting.

When you walk in the front door to the Greensboro market and café during a lunch rush, it’s almost like you’re cutting the line to order, with the cash register immediately to the left of the doors and people waiting to order somewhat blocking the entrance. It’s a little easier to navigate, now that the menu is more visibly posted near the register, and while speaking Spanish isn’t necessary, it certainly helps.

Especially when they call out your order, calling out in Spanish the number you were handed, similarly to a butcher’s counter. If it’s busy, pay attention to the two people who order ahead of you, as the dishes generally come out sequentially, or use your phone to look up the pronunciation of the figure you were given.

For those less confident consumers, the meat market, baked goods and grocery areas of the Mercadito No. 2 can provide a chance to peruse, scoping the lay of the land on your initial visit. And for anyone, including longtime regulars, it’s always worth walking past the ERIC GINSBURG Gaze into the mouth of the chicken torta from Mercadito #2. fresh baked goods for the aroma alone. Don’t let the cookies, Mexican treats, cakes and pastries distract you too much — cheap as they are, the best approach is to making your way over to the produce, which includes cookies colored to look like a watermelon and some snag a few for later, because the lunch entrees here are cactus. Inhale deeply near the cases of baked goods horchata mix from the other parts of the mercadito more than enough to fill you up on their own. before making your way past the cuts of meat at one instead of lunch.

Greensboro is home to countless little Mexican tiencounter and up to the register at the front entrance In a region with few California-style, hand-held das like this one, and restaurants with similar fare dot (there’s another door at the side if you’d prefer). Order burrito purveyors, I’m often inclined to order a chicken the city’s major and minor thoroughfares. My favorite the chicken torta, or sandwich, and grab an open table torta (though you can catch me with vegetarian queof all — Villa del Mar, thanks to its phenomenal chicken if one’s available while you wait. sadillas, tostadas and loaded nachos on occasion). The burrito — is just across the street from Mercadito No. Here’s the key to unlocking one of the best meals torta, while not as common here as enchiladas or arroz 2, and other places like Carniceria El Rey Mercadito and in Greensboro, in case you don’t already possess it: con pollo, is in many ways a standard-bearer of taste San Luis Mexican restaurant are a few blocks away.

You say, “Una torta de pollo [pronounced poy-yo] por with minimal glitz and cheese that can sometimes hide This stretch of High Point Road — excuse me, Gate favor.” insufficiencies in other dishes.

City Boulevard — is overrun with remarkable internaIt really is that easy. That, and somewhere around Like pizza, the chicken torta is kinda hard to mess tional cuisine, including Van Loi II practically next door, $6. up, and most places do a solid job with it. But — I was Banh Mi Saigon across the street and until recently, Los The chicken torta comes with shredded lettuce, onreminded a few nights ago while chowing down on one Gordos not to far away. ion, strips of jalapeño, tomato, mayo and top-of-thefrom another Mexican restaurant in Greensboro — it For those familiar with some of the city’s Latin line avocados. The massive pieces of chicken are freshly isn’t easy to make one great. cuisine, this particular café and cooked, and make the sandwich And that’s why El Mercadito No. 2 deserves an ode market is reminiscent of Carnicformidable enough that some of its own. ería El Mercadito at the interVisit Mercadito #2 at 3821 Gate people will want to share it or section of Muirs Chapel Road take a portion home, though it City Blvd. (GSO) across the and West Market Street, though Pick of the Week street from Banh Mi Saigon and tastes best while it’s still warm. based on several visits to the I’ve been known to pull out The good neighbor latter, I prefer the former, even basically next to Van Loi II. about half the jalapeño peppers Shine a Light on Hunger @ corner of Doune Street if I can’t quite put my finger on – they’re good but plentiful and Cascade Avenue (W-S), Friday, 4:30 p.m. why the food tastes better. and I feel like they distract a Consider families living with food insecurity this El Mercadito No. 2 began serving a burrito, my go-to little from the rest of the taste – but try the sandwich week. Sunnyside Ministry is taking food donations Mexican food order, relatively recently, but that isn’t unaltered at first. like pasta or canned meats in exchange for carriage its selling point. Though quite tasty, mine came poorly Order something else, such as the daily special, rides and a night of music and lights. It’s a neighwrapped with the tin foil tucked into the tortilla, soup, a gordita, and other standard Mexican options or borly event and they’ve been thoughtful enough forcing me to pull it out before eating and making for a try the torta with a different meat, but remember that to provide instructions for making your own balls messier meal.

I’ve already led you to the holy grail. of light for you to show off. Find more details at Instead, here’s the move: Inspect the Spiderman and Vegetarians, I’m sorry, but this just isn’t the place washingtonparkneighbors.org.

Cinderella piñatas first if it will lower your stress level, for you, unless you’re here for some Honduran cheese,

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so that as the head brewers from Wicked Weed and Mystery Brewing — joined by a Virginia interloper from Strangeways in Richmond — talked about their sour-beer programs, people could try their Fille de Ferme, Melioxos and Rot In Hell Pumpkin Sour beers respectively.

Up-and-comers were given blue lanyards, and the guild hosted an event a day early this year aimed at upstarts.

Sam Victory of Wise Man Brewing, which will open just a few blocks north of where the conference was held, wore his deep-blue nametag carrier while listening to the sour presentation with the guys from Four Saints in Asheboro.

A few tables up, at the front, Todd Isbell of Liberty in High Point listened intently, as did folks from Gibb’s Hundred in Greensboro at the back of the room.

Jamie Bartholomaus — the head ERIC Wise Man Brewing co-owner Sam Victory (left) listens to a presentation on brewer and president at Foothills Brewkettle souring with some of the guys from Four Saints Brewing in Asheboro. GINSBURG ing who would host the afterparty at his nearby brewpub that night — was also ucational component and the variety of walkable, and everyone can drive over in in the house, though at the moment experiences available apparently made a couple of hours or less. he’d found a beer and some friends the allure of this year’s conference diffiand was chatting across the expansive cult to ignore. room.

Let’s hope that next year the NC Craft Therein lies the appeal Brewers Conference of the annual conferreturns to the Triad — ence, started promptly they’re surveying memLearn more about

by Metzger after she bebers and will announce the North Carolina came the organization’s a city in the coming Craft Brewers Guild months, though there’s first full-time employee about two years ago. at ncbeer.org. some interest in hopping Beer industry folks are around, if you’ll pardon afforded the opportunithe pun. In fact, come ty to congregate, to swap stories and altervapes.com back to the same location, where Small tips, to relax without the distraction of Batch is next door, two more breweries (336) 938-0070 customers lined up to help kick the keg (with the addition of Wise Man) will be 602-A S Elm St • Greensboro at a beer festival. The freedom, the ed-

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Save for the name, the North Carolina Craft Brewers Conference held in downtown Winston-Salem last week didn’t bear much resemblance to the gathering held a year prior in Greensboro.

Sure, the attendees were still overwhelmingly white and male — welcome to an unfortunate reality of craft brewing in America. But in several respects, the daytime portion of the second annual statewide conference felt considerably different from last go ’round.

For one, the attendance jumped dramatically, up from about 275 to somewhere in the neighborhood of 475, NC Craft Brewers Guild Executive Director Margo Knight Metzger said when it was all over. People apparently enjoyed themselves enough last year at the conference, then headquartered at Greensboro’s impressive Proximity Hotel, and craft brewing is taking off enough in the Old North State to compel a spike in attendance from brewers and vendors alike.

All About Beer magazine showed up for the 2014 version; this year, the publication set up a promotional table. And they weren’t alone — dozens of affiliate guild members who hold non-voting roles in the group set up shop in the entry area at Twin City Quarter in downtown Winston-Salem last week.

With room to spread out, the brewers and their friends gathered at what felt like a fusion between a party and an educational seminar, with guest speakers addressing things like hiring tips to kettle souring. It helped that this year, pitchers were astutely placed on tables,

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by Eric Ginsburg

A brewers guild bash

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CULTURE Harry Potter-inspired band receives hearty welcome in nerd haven

by Jordan Green

he twentysomethings dressed in capes and witch hats for a couple hundred feet along the shopping center strip on Lawndale Drive who were waiting to get into Geeksboro at 10 p.m. on Dec. 5 were the first clue that this wasn’t your ordinary rock concert.

Dressed in a black graduation gown, owner Joe Scott approached a knot of devotees at the end of the line.

“You have to volunteer or pay,” Scott told one them.

“I’ll volunteer,” the guy responded.

“Follow me,” Scott said, as if he had selected them for a most sensitive and crucial mission.

Inside, librarians and college writing instructors, among other enthusiasts, filled the spacious storefront coffeehouse for the second night of the annual Harry Potter Holiday Yule Ball. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban played silently on a screen at the back of the hall as festive green, red and blue lights bathed the space, and patrons formed a line for house-made butter beer (a combination of cream soda and butterscotch syrup) and other beverages. A table in the back stocked trays of shepherd’s pie, chocolate pudding and white-chocolate frogs.

No one seemed to mind that it was about 11:30 when the band, aptly named Harry & the Potters, readied to perform. The anticipatory mood among the hundred-plus people in the hall approached collective delirium with a fervor that would be expected at, well, a rock concert.

“The whole reason we built Geeksboro was to make a place for people to get excited about things that you’re not normally supposed to get excited about,” Scott said. “For people who love Duke basketball, there’s a bar where you can go to be with other people who love Duke basketball, and that’s fine. I wanted a place where you could get excited about videogames, TV shows with zombies and… books!”

Joe DeGeorge, dressed identically to his brother Paul in a light gray cardigan sweater over a dress shirt and tie welcomed the audience. He gave an incantation of sorts, that gospel-cum-rock testimonial that is the stock and trade of the genre that evolved into an AC/ DC-style pledge to rock and roll.

“Say it after me: ‘I will do my duty to rock and roll,” DeGeorge charged. “‘And I will use my voice to make change because I am Harry Potter and I am magic.’”

They opened with a song called “Baby Wiz” that everyone in the audience found hilarious, and then moved to “Christmas at Hogwarts,” a song with a catchy sing-along chorus.

Billing themselves as “the first wizard rock band,” Harry & the Potters have released several albums and have played hundreds of live shows since they launched in Massachusetts in 2002. Both of the DeGeorge brothers, who wear their black hair in tousled mop-tops and large, round glasses, go by the stage name of Harry Potter. Contrasting with the brothers’

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Joe DeGeorge, Paul DeGeorge and Mike Harpring of Harry & the Potters proved that wizard-inspired rock can generate near mayhem at Geeksboro.

thematic uniformity, their drummer Mike Harpring wore a T-shirt honoring the pioneering black punk band Death.

Anchored by Harpring’s intensely focused drumming, the instrumental texture of Harry & the Potters’ music rests on Paul’s guitar playing and Joe on keyboards, with occasional turns at the saxophone. The brothers share vocal duties. The Potters’ sound resembles the loose, raucous proto-punk of fellow Massachusetts natives Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers, with a nod to catchy power-pop of latter-day practitioners like Weezer. Lyrically, the songs are consistently simple, with endless references to the Harry Potter franchise carrying the burden of signifying.

For those who are unfamiliar with the wildly popular series of books and movies, the lyrics of “Hermione Screws Up the Polyjuice Potion” will sound inane. In their entirety, they consist of “Hey cat lady/ Meow, meow/ Hey cat lady/ Meow/ Ron likes your whiskers/ Ron likes your fur/ Hey cat lady/ Meow meow/ Hey.” Mixing punk irreverence with childlike play, Paul DeGeorge exemplified the band’s interactive approach by shouting the first line of the song, followed by a feline “meow” typically inches away from the face of a female fan.

Venturing into political hardcore territory with “SPEW” — for the uninitiated, an acronym for the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare — the band took crowd interaction a step further by having random audience members yell the word “spew” in their most rocking voice, although nerdy enthusiasm also

JORDAN GREEN

seemed perfectly serviceable.

The band’s hilarious value proposition — a contrast between nerdy enthusiasm for wizardry and rock-androll zeal — was heightened by the mayhem of their stage presentation. Taking a tip from MC5 or Black Flag, Joe DeGeorge could be seen writhing on the floor or shaking his keyboard above his head.

Around 1 a.m., the band took a final stand for good prevailing over evil with a two-chord song whose lyrics were entirely encapsulated in its title: “Xmas Rulez, Voldemort Drools.” As the simple punk song evolved into a grindcore number, the two brothers called out every Harry Potter character that came to mind, prompting gales of laugher.

Then the concert ended in a paroxysm of spent energy and the guys headed for the merch table, where an appreciative line of fans was already waiting.

Pick of the Week Last songs, not words Amplifier Final Release Show @ New York Pizza (GSO), Friday, 8 p.m.

If you won’t miss the glossy pages, you’ll at least miss the release shows. For this last one Amplifier hosts Greensboro math-rock bands the Bronzed Chorus and Black Squares/White Islands. Are there two bands in the Triad that complement one another like these two do? You can listen to the bands on bandcamp.com and find the event page on Facebook for more information.

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CULTURE Get to know the citizens

by Anthony Harrison

he new exhibit at SECCA has its finger on America’s pulse in the way it contemplates the ineffable, complex facets of life in this postmodern society.

The Winston-Salem gallery is currently displaying Point and Counterpoint, an exhibit of works by the North Carolina Arts Council Fellows of 2014-15. The 18 artists hail from Asheville to Ocracoke, working with every medium from oils to jade.

The collection presents interpretations of the modern American experience, both personal and universal, exploring topics including the value of art as well as the democratic process.

Two pieces, “Soap (Ivory)” and “Gun 2 (Colt 1911),” both carved by Peter Oakley of Banner Elk, epitomize the exhibit. Taken at individual value, both pieces seem rather simple: They are sculptures of a bar of soap and a pistol. But the meticulous craft evident in the carvings stuns the viewer. The bar of soap, specifically Ivory brand, looks precisely like the familiar product, carved out of white marble and sitting on a dark-gray granite base. And laid atop white marble, “Gun 2” so closely resembles the instantly recognizable firearm that one may mistake it for a painted replica until noticing a dull green flaw at the butt of the handle betraying its ANTHONY HARRISON A boombox sculpture is one of the pieces on display at the Point and Counterpoint exhibit at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem. medium — black jade.

Shown on adjacent pedestals, however, the two viewer becomes key — Klein taught each participant Each ceramic building — the most minuscule not pieces represent a yin-yang juxtaposition of good and how to stitch the knot. even an inch high — is anthropomorphous, etched with evil, clean and dirty, which begs philosophizing: What But, as with “The Power of the Ballot,” Klein asked cutely smug expressions. Magnifying glasses provided is more important in our society, soothing tranquility questions of her volunteers. on the table displaying “The Long Road” allow the or violent security?

A card tied on a string hangs below each stitching. viewer to get to know each building, which Evergreen Another piece with important implications is “The They list the age, gender and occupation of the artist, calls “the Citizens.” And, after inspection, patrons can Power of the Ballot” by Stacey L. Kirby of Durham. The as well as the start and stop time of each piece. Ages rearrange the Citizens however they like, crafting a installation is a large stack of old-style voting boxes ranged from 25 to 69; careers varied from dance innew town. in the shape of a voting booth, complete with a green structor to claims adjustor.

Every building might have its own personal backcloth privacy curtain.

But the most touching query was the question, story in the mind of the beholder, just as every person The monolithic booth impresses on its own, but “What is your time worth?” in our society is special and unique, a bitty part of the “The Power of the Ballot” also serves as a piece of Answers differed wildly in many respects, but the whole. interactive performance art. best stayed brief.

Viewers would be hard-pressed to find a piece, or On the wall next to the piece, teal ballots can be A 69-year-old retired woman an entire exhibit, better encapsulating American life filled out. The ballot asks one simanswered in shaky cursive, “A lot.” in this turn of the millennium than Point and Counterple yet powerful question: “What Point and Counterpoint A male stockbroker, age 64, point. obstacles did you overcome to shows at SECCA. Visit secca. wrote in stark capitals, “NOT vote?” Gallery goers may answer MUCH.” and submit their ballot, which Kirorg for more information.

And a female, 69-year-old artist by collects and mails to politicians Pick of the Week wrote, “No idea.” who voted for House Bill 589, the That’s nothing but the full spectrum.

The fleas you want Voter Verification Act, the bill which requires a form of Another interactive piece demonstrated a whole Pokez Holiday Market @ 874 N. Liberty St. (W-S), identification in order to vote beginning in 2016. community in its own little ways.

Saturday & Sunday, 11 a.m.

Other works in the exhibit ask questions less politiDurham’s Maready Evergreen carved dozens of tiny It’s the same great Hoots Flea Market with a new cal, but just as poignant. ceramic buildings and arranged them into “The Long name. The Pokez Holiday Market might be the place Jeana Eve Klein of Greensboro curated a series of Road.” At a distant glance, the piece resembles a windto get the Christmas shopping over with. Lots of pieces by others called “Trading Time.” While Point ing city, with small shops predominating, skyscrapers quirky, vintage, handmade and repurposed home and Counterpoint also displays Klein’s fiber art — “Four and water towers dwarfing the smaller buildings. furnishings are up for auction. Meanwhile the food Hundred and Ninety French Knots” — Klein invited But closer inspection reveals much more. In fact, trucks are cooking and Hoots Roller Bar is pouring. others to stitch French knots of their own on small cirEvergreen even encourages extremely close inspection.

Visit hootsflea.com for more information. cular pieces of cloth. So here too, interaction from the

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Dec. 9 — 15, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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GOOD SPORT A silenced dream psets happen.

You can’t really explain them. Sometimes the underdog shows up in force. Other times the favorite underwhelms their competition.

You can point at plays and

by Anthony Harrison athleticism on the winning team, but in my opinion, upsets spring from what sports people call “intangibles”: Character, leadership and team charisma. That kind of unquantifiable stuff.

And sometimes, it comes down to luck or bad officiating.

The NCAA seeded Wake Forest University’s men’s soccer team as No. 1 in the national championship.

And the program deserved it. They’d taken the title in 2007, a fact proudly displayed on a banner under the scoreboard at W. Dennie Spry Stadium. During the 2015 regular season, the team racked up win after win, tallying only three ties and suffering just one loss: a 1-0 fluke against Elon University.

What can you say? Upsets happen.

They also seemed poised to take the Atlantic Coast Conference championship, but lost to Notre Dame in another 1-0 decision.

But hey — upsets happen.

No matter what, NCAA brass granted them the top spot in the bracket.

And the Deacs, unhampered by road-weariness thanks to playing at home in Winston-Salem, advanced through the Round of 32 and the Sweet 16 to reach their first Elite 8 since 2009.

On Dec. 5, the Demon Deacons faced the No. 8-seeded Stanford University Cardinals at Spry Stadium, their home turf.

A wintry nip in the air. Fogged breath. Heavy coats and toboggans. Aluminum stands chilling occupants’ rears. It certainly felt like football season.

And this was the real football — you know, the one where you actually use your feet to advance the ball.

What we Americans and our northern neighbors call “soccer” will never attain the popularity here of what we call football, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t popular.

Attendance at this Elite 8 game nodded to soccer’s rising following.

Deacon fans packed the stands. They even crowded the hill seating section.

Call it school pride, call it bandwagon fandom, call it whatever you like, but thousands showed up against the chill to cheer on their Deacs. While this late autumn has been relatively balmy, it was not mild that evening.

The fans’ enthusiasm for the imminent game rivaled that of any gridiron match.

Wild applause and adulation for the boys in white, black and gold as they trotted out onto the pitch.

Equal boos and disdain for their opponents in black

U

the crossbar, and Wake Forest exploded with glee. and cardinal-red stripes.

But Stanford midfielder Corey Baird stepped up for “Your mascot is a stupid tree!” a fan shouted at another free kick three minutes later. the passing Stanford players from the safety of Walt He was far out — 35 yards from the goal. And the Chyzowych Alumni Hill. Anyone who heard that sick kick seemed inconsequential. burn laughed.

Then, Cardinal forward Foster Langsdorf headed it This kind of heckling proved not to be an isolated inhigh into the net. cident. Some Demon Deacons even got a bit personal.

The only sound at Spry Stadium was the faraway The chant, “Andrew sucks!” erupted shortly before cheering of the Cardinal players, stripping their jerseys, the end of the first half, but subsided as quickly as it sprinting in triumph as the home team fell to their arose. knees on the field.

The Andrew in question was the Cardinal’s goalkeepUpsets happen. er Andrew Epstein, who had previously played for the But when you’re at home, it’s not just upsetting — US U-14 and U-15 national teams. it’s unsettling.

By that point, Stanford had the lead. And they’d had Stunned, crushing silence from the stands. The few it for a while.

Cardinal fans had a coming out party along the stands’ As a few Deacon faithful tried to get a feeble wave railing. started, Cardinal forward Brandon Morris nailed a Yet, as the morose Deacons filed out of Spry Stadiheader past Wake Forest goalie Alec Ferrell. um, the awkwardly confident chant arose: “Wake…

A boo ripples better than a wave.

Forest!”

The crowd also reserved some ire for the officials.

They’d already bought the dream, and they didn’t Now, a short admission: Sometimes, I honestly can’t want to wake up. More power to them. tell what’s a penalty and what’s not. So many people tripped and limbs went flying and players flopped all over the place so many times that I had no damn idea Pick of the Week what was happening.

This… is… High Point But there were some arguable no-calls working UNCG Spartans @ High Point University Panthers, against the home team.

Wednesday “Are you kidding me?!”

The High Point University Panthers (6-2) host “He tripped him!” the UNCG Spartans (3-4) in men’s basketball at the “This is the wrong kind of football for that!”

Millis Center in a Big South vs. Southern Conference “Take off your Stanford jersey, ref!” matchup. The Spartans, who have received three These disbelieving screams were a common occurchances at the Big Dance in the past, go up against rence during the game. a strong High Point squad whose only two losses There’s no home cooking like that from the home came at the hands of Texas Tech and Georgia Uniteam stands. versity. The game begins at 7 p.m.

No-calls notwithstanding, the Cardinals surely risked shooting themselves in the foot with their numerous penalties.

Wake actually tied the game in the 70th minute — 1-1 — off a free penalty kick served up by midfielder Ian Harkes. The second half had seen an aggressive Wake resurgence, and with this long-awaited score, the crowd deafened itself.

And Wake kept steaming through the end of regulation, but their heroics couldn’t clinch the win.

Overtime began with 10 minutes put on the clock.

Stanford pulled an early punch off another questionable penalty kick in the fourth minute, granted to defender Brandon Vincent ANTHONY HARRISON Stanford Cardinals goalkeeper Andrew Epstein played a solid on a possible flop. High off game in a win over the Deacons, depsite fans’ insistence that he sucks.

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GAMES

‘Two-Way Streets’ hey, look where you’re going!

by Matt Jones Across

Down

Opinion Cover Story Culture

1 ___ index 2 “The Flintstones” pet 3 Harness race pace 4 Home to the world’s tallest waterfall 5 Hulk and family 6 Take out 7 Completely destroy 8 School excursion with a bus ride, perhaps 9 Oscar the Grouch’s worm friend 10 Kitchen noisemaker 11 Big name in violins 12 “Diary of a Madman” writer Nikolai 13 $1,000 bill, slangily 21 Device needed for Wi-Fi

22 Heart chambers 25 Street ___ 26 Jeans manufacturer Strauss 27 “Come ___!”

28 Ancient Greek region 30 Signs of a quick peel-out 31 Just go with it 32 “Paris, Je T’___” (2006 film) 33 “Skinny Love” band Bon ___ 34 Word in an express checkout lane which annoys grammarians 36 ___ Ababa, Ethiopia 37 Nellie of toast fame 41 “There was no choice” 42 Sweated the details 43 Go blue 44 “So much,” on a musical score 45 “Here we are as in ___ days ...”

46 Respond to a charge 47 Caravan member 49 It means “one-billionth” 50 Lingerie trim 51 Take ___ (lose money) 52 Chicken

News

42 Philadelphia hockey team 43 Follow-up to “That guy’s escaping!”

47 “Buena Vista Social Club” setting 48 Financial street represents a smellrelated statute?

53 Came to a close 54 Nick Foles’s NFL team 55 “Hawaii Five-O” setting 56 Bothered constantly 57 Bendable joint 58 “JAG” spinoff with Mark Harmon 59 Mozart’s “___ Alla Turca” 60 Lawn sign 61 Acquires

Up Front

1 Widescreen medium 5 DJ Kool ___ (hip-hop pioneer born Clive Campbell) 9 College football coach Amos Alonzo ___ 14 Blarney Stone land 15 Like much family history 16 Spanish citrus fruit 17 “Author unknown” byline 18 City south of Tel Aviv 19 Adult insect stage 20 Tribal carving depicting the audience for a kids’ show street?

23 Part of TMZ 24 More than just clean 25 Storm warnings 28 Macy Gray hit from the album “On How Life Is” 29 “Cold Mountain” star Zellweger 30 Amos with the album “Little Earthquakes” 31 Beach bucket 35 “Look out, bad generic street, my show’s on the air!”

38 Lindsay Lohan’s mom 39 Hose problem 40 Chair designer Charles 41 Incandescent light bulb depiction (because I have yet to see a CFL bulb depict one)

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Dec. 9 — 15, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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ALL SHE WROTE If you like piña coladas T

racy (mother’s caretaker): What are you going to do with all of the Christmas

crap?

Me: Done! I invited the girls over to help me go through it. We nailed it in less than two hours.

Tracy: Sounds brutal.

by Nicole Crews Me: On the drive home I had to pull over to throw up. Angie said, “That’s what happens when you edit 40 years of Christmas in 90 minutes.” I just call it “speed grieving.”

Tracy: Holy crap.

Me: That should be a carol about materialism.

It bears mentioning that for having a minimalist design aesthetic, my mother made Christmas a big, “holiday house of hoarders” deal when I was growing up. Joann was the youngest of five and I guess she got short-shrifted in her own experience, because she was determined to make mine memorable — or at least the opposite of our regular routine of knickknack removal and clutter disapproval.

Our home was decorated from rafter to rafter in tasteful bits from the ancestral archives to the Bergdorf catalog. A choir of porcelain angels adorned one mantle, a vintage train set the other. An antique nativity scene (I called them “Jesus Barbies”) festooned an island. Homey, hand-knitted stockings were hung from fireplace to floor and garlands galore from door to door.

We always had a huge tree with Christopher Radko ornaments from tip to tail. (None of those charming, “Look what Nicole made” ornaments were allowed.)

The all-white living room featured a “branch tree” that hailed from some obscure Scandinavian tradition native to my mother’s home state of Minnesota.

Only glass and crystal ornaments were allowed on the branches and icicle lights added to the frosty (though we never mentioned the tacky snowman by name) effect.

All of this holiday hooplah came to an abrupt close when my father died in my 17th year, just a month before Christmas. We made a feeble attempt to celebrate the season — but there was more thistle in our hearts than mistletoe in the air.

That’s when we decided to bag the holidays. The next year, while the rest of the Judeo-Christian world was trimming trees, baking cookies, humming carols or polishing their menorahs, we retreated to tropical climes with nothing in our stockings but tanned legs and freshly waxed bikini lines. It was just the two of us — no children to dazzle with visions of sugar plums — so we went as low as we could go. We went to Key West.

The bottom of the barrel to some, the bottom of the bottle to others, but decidedly the bottom of America (being its southernmost dangling append-

age.) Key West was as unlikely a Jerusalem as we could figure.

The first few years away from holly and folly were fine.

Despite a brief run-in with a drag-queen Santa in ankle-length red sequins and pearls and five antlered poodles in tow one year, we had managed to find respite from holiday madness.

A few years later, we dragged another family along, went sailing, drank memorable wine, lingered over languorous meals and debated the merit of the mai tai versus the piña colada.

I think it was when we hit the nude, rooftop pool of a hotel where swizzle sticks were a moot point amongst the well-endowed waiters, that mother decided to change our holiday course for the following year.

After much procrastination and debate — Taos or Park City? Trinidad or Tobago? St. Croix or St. Thomas? — we were corralled into a last-minute venue. And so we found ourselves trapped for a solid week in a Bahamian air-conditioned nightmare resort surrounded by nouveau-riche bubbas, their tanning-embedded wives and a nasty cold front that forced us to seek shelter in a large, velvet-lined ashtray known as the Grand Casino.

We returned home as pasty as Frosty, as bloated as Santa from all the sugary drinks and as grumpy as Scrooge.

Needless to say, the next year we decided to revert to a scaled-back version of our old-school Christmas — a tradition we continued until last year. This year, I’m flying solo, so in honor of mother, I’m dusting off the Radkos, oiling the train, adding sparkle to the branches and — just to make it an authentic homage — making a pitcher of piña coladas.

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A fundraiser for ACME Comics’ Comics for Kids Campaign 9 pm Saturday! Admission is $5 and a random, odd gift Rifftrax Presents “The Magic Christmas Tree” 10 pm Friday. $5 ticket includes FREE BEVERAGE!

Ash vs. The Evil Dead

9 pm Saturday. Free Admission with Drink Purchase Special Preview Screening of Patrick Read Johnson’s

“Star Wars” film “5-25-77” Admission: $8 Into the Badlands

10 pm Sunday. Free Admission with Drink Purchase Holiday cereal breakfast screening.

Will Ferrell’s “Elf” 12:30 pm Saturday, December 19. $5 ticket includes ENDLESS BOWL OF SUGAR CEREALS! HOLIDAY BREW N’ VIEW PRESENTS

Steven Spielebrg’s “Gremlins”

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