TCB Aug. 17, 2016 — Off Course

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com August 17 – 23, 2016

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The weird, the funny and the downright fascinating courses from Triad-area colleges PAGE 16

Wendy Fuscoe resurfaces PAGE 12

Unlawful mapmaking PAGE 14

Ruger gets another shot PAGE 22

August 17 — 23, 2016

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2

A beautiful afternoon

by Brian Clarey

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

NEWS 8 Cleveland Avenue Homes 10 Affordable housing 12 HPJ: Bar-tique for good

OPINION 14 Editorial: Actual election fraud

14 Citizen Green: Why are Republicans so obsessed with race?

15 It Just Might Work: Just remove the ivy 15 Fresh Eyes: The world behind the windows

COVER 16 Off course: The weird, the funny and the downright fascinating courses from Triad-area colleges

CULTURE 20 Food: Flavors of Hawaii

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21 Barstool: Drinking in the park, legally 22 Music: Return of Ed E. Ruger 24 Art: SECCA welcomes a new development director

FUN & GAMES 26 BADD rolls Gate City in block party

GAMES 27 Jonesin’ Crossword

SHOT IN THE TRIAD 28 North Davie St, Greensboro

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Once I realized I was in the Ed E. Ruger business, not the music business, things got a lot easier.

– Ed E. Ruger, in Music, page 22

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 • Office: 336-256-9320 BUSINESS PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR Brian Clarey

ART ART DIRECTOR Jorge Maturino

PUBLISHER EMERITUS Allen Broach

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EDITORIAL MANAGING EDITOR Eric Ginsburg

SALES EXECUTIVE Stephen Cuccio

SENIOR EDITOR Jordan Green

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EDITORIAL INTERNS Naari Honor

Jesse Morales intern@triad-city-beat.com

steve@triad-city-beat.com

CONTRIBUTORS Carolyn de Berry Nicole Crews Stallone Frazier Anthony Harrison Matt Jones Alex Klein Amanda Salter

Cover photography

by Alex Klein Wake Forest University’s Wait Chapel is one of the Triad’s most iconic places.

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

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

Late on a recent Saturday morning, the beautiful people arrived in downtown Greensboro in groups of ones, twos and threes, parking on side streets and flowing up Elm Street in a striking current that drew in its wake the gazes of brunchgoers and Pokémon hunters alike.

It’s not often that more than 100 fashion models converge on downtown Greensboro — the next time will be at Greensboro Fashion Week next month — but this time they came to rehearse. No makeup, no hairdos, just a uniform of plain blue jeans and plain white Ts, paired with basic heels.

They funneled through the gates of the Elm Street Center and down to a sub-floor, where masking tape outlined an approximation of the 76-foot catwalk. They dropped their large handbags and sat on the floor.

GSOFW is over after just four nights of runway shows, red-carpet walks, flash pops and parties. But thousands of human hours go into those few moments, spread across the entire year.

Here’s what you don’t see: a hundred models sitting on the floor, tucking their long legs beneath them, their discipline and attentiveness; Witneigh Davis and Giovanni Ramadani corralling this pool of talent into a fashion-forward corps with their words and their gestures.

They gather at the stage and, one by one, with electronic music filling the bright room, make their play down the catwalk.

Wit watched from a bank of sofas at the end of the thing, sometimes gesturing to Gio, who marched alongside the models Gio marched alongside as they walked, the models as they walked, shouting instrucshouting instruction and tion and encourencouragement. agement — “You need to make the turn smooth, not so abrupt,” and, “Your right arm is hanging like it’s dead.”

Sometimes Wit would have him pull one from the line for a personal lesson in front of the room’s many mirrors.

They came at all skill levels — Fashion Week is as much about nurturing talent as it is a reinforcement of the city’s connection to the industry — and, though everyone’s physique was model-perfect, there was a refreshing array of body types that defied the uniformity of their attire.

As the models passed muster, they trickled up the stairs and back out onto the streets of downtown Greensboro, a drizzle of raw beauty as the afternoon ripened in the summer sun.

You don’t see much of that around here.

triad-city-beat.com

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

CONTENTS

3

August 17 — 23, 2016

WEDNESDAY

CITY LIFE August 17 – 23

Mussels, wine and music @ Print Works Bistro (GSO), 7 p.m.

Print Works combines aromatic wines, soothing jazz sounds and succulent mussels to create a night of relaxing bliss. Lobster bibs, muscle shirts, and stretchy pants may be in order. More information can be found on the events Eventful page.

THURSDAY

The Grapes of Wrath @ Pauline Theatre (HP), 6 p.m.

High Point University students collaborate with professional thespians in an adaptation of the John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. Due to a limited ticket availability, High Point University asks that interested patrons contact the campus concierge.

Detailed information can be found on the production’s Facebook event page.

FRIDAY 10 Ways to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse @ the Children’s Home (W-S), 7 p.m.

It is said that wisdom comes from the mouths of babes. Well these children plan on showing the masses how to survive the impending zombie apocalypse. The Children’s Home in Winston Salem showcases the delightful little play 10 Ways to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse and hosting an art showcase featuring the students of their program. More information at tchome.org.

Kid Capri @ George K’s Catering and Banquet Hall (GSO), 9:30 p.m.

You know that rebel yell. Say it loud: “It’s DJ KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID CAPRIIIII!” George K’s opens its doors to legendary disc jockey Kid Capri who is sure to spin nothing but musical greatness on the 1s and 2s. Check George K’s Facebook event page for more information.

4

QORDS End of Camp Performance @ ArtSpace Uptown (GSO), 6 p.m.

The QORDS, or Queer Oriented Radical Days of Summer campers have formed their bands and are ready to rock the stage for the public at ArtSpace Uptown. The School of Rock has nothing on these queer and trans youth that have spent their summer learning how to navigate this chaotic world through the performing arts. To find out more information about the event, check out the QORDS end of camp event page on Facebook.

by Narri Honor

triad-city-beat.com

SATURDAY Ultimate Frisbee @ Latham Park (GSO), 9:30 a.m.

The Disc Junkies wild out in a co-ed pickup game of ultimate Frisbee in Latham Park. The early morning high-energy game is open to all skill levels. A full list of details and game day suggestions on the Disc Junkies Greensboro Meetup homepage.

Beards, Burgers & Beer! @ the Pour House (GSO), 11 a.m.

The Official Beard and Moustache Club of North Carolina is hosting a lip-smacking shindig for hairy hipsters and those that love them. To learn more about the brew, burger and beard bash, check out the BMCofNC_Greensboro or Pour House Facebook event pages.

Byron Gladden campaign kickoff @ Interactive Resource Center (GSO), 6:30 p.m.

Social justice and education advocate Byron Gladden holds a campaign kickoff and informational session for his upcoming race for a seat on the Guilford County School Board. Further information can be found on Gladden’s campaign Facebook page.

Psych Nite @ the Garage (W-S), 8:30 p.m.

The Winston-Salem-based record label Phuzz Records hosts showcases new and existing talent. Bring your magic carpet. Possible body transportation expected and airspace may be limited. Further information can be found at phuzzrecords.com and the label’s Facebook event page.

Funk Mob @ Big Winston Warehouse (W-S), 9:30 p.m.

Funky tunes. Funky food. Funky friends. The Funk Mob hits the Big Winston Warehouse once again sharing their special brand of funky. Dang that’s a lot of funk. You may want to bring a fan! More information can be found artistically splattered on the band’s Facebook page.

TUESDAY

Homeless @ a/perture cinema (W-S), 7:30 p.m.

Homeless, an indie utilizing individuals who are currently experiencing homelessness and filmed in an actual homeless shelter, premieres at a/perture.

Specifics regarding the one night only screening can be found on the venues event page on Facebook.

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August 17 — 23, 2016 Up Front News

Sweet home Greensboro

I’m reaching out to say I’ve been reading Triad City Beat online for the past couple months and really enjoying it.

I live down on the coast of Wilmington, but I’m moving back to Greensboro, my hometown of sorts, in late October of this year. In fact, I recently wrote a blog post called “5 Reasons I’m Looking Forward to Moving Back to Greensboro, NC,” and the existence of Triad City Beat is one of those reasons.

Keep up the good work. I love what you all are up to.

Kimberly Houston, Wilmington

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Fun & Games

Culture

Cover Story

Opinion

You’ve been served

6

I’m a black US veteran, a homeowner with a VA loan, and a member of the Triad community. The Greensboro City Council and Mayor Nancy Vaughan will try to have land that is less than 25 feet from the Trinity Lake residential community rezoned from agricultural to commercial. The intent is to install a 24-hour gas station.

There is 200 acres of land for sale on the opposite side of Interstate 85, well away from the 250 homes of the Trinity Lake community, Glen Laurel community, and two very active waterways.

We are in a moral and legal fight for our homes, investments, and community against the divisive elements that still linger on the Greensboro City Council with Mayor Vaughan, on the grounds of environmental racism. We must give thanks to the strong voices of residential support on the city council in Sharon Hightower and Jamal Fox. This letter is to inform the citizens of Greensboro and the surrounding areas of the actions from the city council and Mayor Vaughan. We are preparing for a very visible and costly legal struggle.

Douglas Lewis, Greensboro

Neighbors for better families

What a beautiful story of this little man’s life [“Fresh Eyes: Not quite a single mom”; by Gwen Frisbie-Fulton; Aug. 20, 2016]. A life full of friends of all ages and a mom who is so full of love. Great story of neighbors loving neighbors. Glad you are doing well.

Kbar Upit, via triad-city-beat.com

3 ideal cocktails for a hot August day

by Jesse Morales 1. Nostalgia by Greg Schammel, LaRue Elm (GSO) Like a classic film noir, this drink creates its heady illusion by casting shades of light against a dark, mysterious background. Bartender Greg Schammel gives instructions to “place [the following] ingredients into a Boston shaker”: 25 milliliters Zaya rum, 25 milliliters Makers Mark bourbon, 25 milliliters lemon juice, 25 milliliters vanilla simple syrup, and six mint leaves. Then, he says, “add ice, shake well, and fine strain into chilled coupé. Garnish with a bouquet of mint.

Enjoy!” I can envision spouting Neruda’s deep Spanish stanzas to a love interest while slinging this cocktail — or drinking it alone on the railroad tracks.

2. The Rosewater Timmy by Adam Fought, Tate’s Craft Cocktails (W-S) This cocktail creates a subtle palette of sweet, tart and dry sensations with its simple array of ingredients. Bartender Adam Fought suggests the Rosewater Timmy as a pre-dinner refreshment fit for your porch swing. To make it, shake 2 ounces Sutler’s Spirit gin and 1 ounce dry sherry with a half-ounce of local honey and 3/4 ounces of fresh lemon or lime juice. Pour the mixture over ice, and top it off with a dashes of ginger ale and rosewater. I love this cocktail because it could pair equally well with garden party hors d’oeuvres, meditative jam session listening or melancholy sunset moments.

earth hard-liquor kick. For a true Carolina vibe, spin some slick John Coltrane on your vinyl apparatus while you mix. First, crush a handful of fresh sassafras leaves into a Mason jar and stir in 2 oz. Defiant whiskey and 1 oz. local clover honey. Next, slice a fresh farmer’s market peach and toss it in the Mason jar over ice. Then use a mortar-and-pestle to crush a fist-sized bouquet of backyard violets. Add violets to the jar. Finally, pour 2 ounces Dr. Enuf mineral water and 2 ounces hot Blenheim ginger ale over the jar’s contents and garnish with sassafras sprigs and violets. Swirl and serve.

Join the Beat.

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3. Carolina Moonbeam by Jesse Morales, not a bartender (GSO) My creation brings enough colorful savor to set your taste buds flying, but packs a down-to-

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70

50

30 20

72%

Salem College

8%

Wake Forest

6%

UNCG

5%

UNCSA

9%

Everything else

All She Wrote

10

Shot in the Triad

40

Games

60

Fun & Games

80

Culture

90

Cover Story

New question: What’s the best community college in the Triad? Vote at triad-city-beat.com.

Opinion

Eric Ginsburg: I went to Guilford College, my girlfriend is a UNCG grad, her mom attended Winston-Salem State, I’m training to be a back-up host at Wake Forest-based WFDD… but have you ever heard the “Aggie Pride” chant? And it’s hard to overlook UNC School of the Arts, the Bennett Belles’ marches to the polls or the pride Salem College grads take in their alma mater. High Point University would win if we were judging local resorts, but since Brian and Jordan already gave UNCSA and A&T love, I’m going to pull for Bennett College on this one.

Readers: This one wasn’t even close. Salem College dominated by an incredible margin, carrying 72 percent of the field with 261 votes. Wake Forest University trailed far behind in second with a mere 8 percent, just two clicks above UNCG and another percentage above UNC School of the Arts. The rest of the area colleges placed below 5 percent each, totaling 9 percent collectively.

That’s kinda sad. Terry Austin objected that community colleges were left off the list, and someone from Elon University’s PR team wanted them on there, too. Elon is out of the Triad cities, which is our coverage area, but as a nod to Austin’s point, check out the next Barometer question below.

I love Stephen King.

You know who else does? Durham natives Matt and Ross Duffer, twins known professionally as the Duffer brothers.

I don’t know this through reading any interviews with them or watching their whole body of work. All I require to know they love Stephen King is to watch “Stranger Things,” their miniseries that’s been streaming on Netflix for a month.

One facet I love about postmodernist approaches to art is that the artist can openly flaunt their influences because, after all, there’s nothing new under the sun. In that vein, the Duffer brothers loaded “Stranger Things” with allusions, both direct and subtle, to the King of Horror.

Some references hit you right on the nose. The state trooper in the fourth episode reads a hardback copy of Cujo with King’s face on the back cover, a reference made clear when Chief Jim Hopper (played brilliantly

by David Harbour) says, “Hey, I love that book! That’s a nasty mutt!”

But hell, deconstructing just that one scene leads down a rabbit hole of King’s influence.

The title of the episode, “The Body,” is the name of the King novella upon which the ’80s classic coming-of-age film Stand By Me was based. Stand By Me features four kids looking for a missing boy; that summarizes “Stranger Things” in and of itself. The kids are all lovable losers, and the idea of the loser-as-hero pops up constantly in King’s fiction. Chief Hopper also fills the trope, seeing as he’s an adept cop wracked by nearly debilitating substance abuse, quite like King himself while writing — wait for it — Cujo.

I could keep pointing out King’s oft-used tropes and literary devices: Unhinged parents (both Hopper and the mother played by the unparalleled Winona Ryder fill that role). Nascent sexuality. The sassy, sharp-as-atack action girl. The asshole as a dynamic, redemptive character. Use of a particular pop song as a recurring thematic motif. Supernatural evil invading Suburbia.

Disparate investigations of a common problem uniting to defeat said supernatural evil.

I point them out not to condemn the Duffer brothers. After all, I love both postmodern creative appropriation and Stephen King.

I point these out to tell you what’s great about “Stranger Things.”

Instead of coming off as a hack job, the Duffers and their incredibly gifted cast have produced a stunning homage to King — and Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter and the ’80s in general — somehow a well-executed and immersive period piece, yet timeless.

If the Duffer brothers keep creating such quality material, I may soon say I love them as much as I do King.

News

Brian Clarey: Ask me this question 10 times during the course of a week, and I’ll likely give you different answers each time. But today, right now, I love UNC School of the Arts — one of the only public conservatories in the country. It’s the most expensive among the UNC System schools, yet still a bargain when compared to its peers, which include the Berklee School of Music, the Yale Drama Department, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Julliard School of Dance. Their productions are always top notch, as is the list of graduates, which includes Mary-Louise Parker, Chris Parnell, Jada Pinkett-Smith, David Gordon Green and David LaChappelle. But ask me again tomorrow.

by Anthony Harrison

Up Front

Jordan Green: I didn’t go to college in the Triad, so I don’t have any particular loyalties, but I’m partial to many of the colleges in Greensboro. Guilford College is like a tamer, more wholesome version of my alma mater, Antioch (sorry, Eric). UNCG is my wife’s alma mater, and I feel like it has this boho cred due to the fact that Randall Jarrell, one of the great poets of the 20th Century, taught there. My mother in law — my daughter’s namesake — is a Bennett Belle. And how can you not be awed by NC A&T University, the mightiest HBCU in the state that gave us the Woolworth’s sit-ins and NASA astronaut Ronald McNair?

In line with our Back to School Issue on the cover this week, we asked our readers and editors to pick the best college in the Triad. Here’s what they said (the readers voted in a landslide).

triad-city-beat.com

“Stranger Things”

Best Triad college?

7

August 17 — 23, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

8

NEWS

Public housing to be replaced with mixed-income units

by Jordan Green

The housing authority hopes a $30 million federal grant will allow Cleveland Avenue Homes to be replaced with a “community of choice,” but some residents fear they’re being pushed out in favor of higher earning biotech workers.

Cleveland Avenue Homes, a community of brick, barracks-style housing built by the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem in the mid-1950s, could become a thing of the past if the federal government approves a $30 million Housing & Urban Development Choice Neighborhoods implementation grant.

Kevin Cheshire, vice president of real estate development and general counsel for the housing authority, said he suspects the decision will be made before the November election. If the feds approve the grant, the buildings will be torn down, residents will be given vouchers to find housing elsewhere in the city and a new community designed for a mix of income levels will be built in its place. The city has committed to an additional investment of $4.5 million to support the initiative, known as the Cleveland Avenue Neighborhood Transformation Plan, to pay for streetscaping, business façade improvements and revolving loan funds to support area businesses. The area of focus for the grant, with Cleveland Avenue Homes at its center, runs from Highway 52 east to Locust Avenue and from East 14th Street north to East 21st Street.

The housing authority is obligated to maintain Cleveland Avenue Homes’ 244 units of subsidized housing, so to achieve its goal of de-concentrating poverty, Cheshire said the housing authority will likely have to increase density and sacrifice green space.

“On the one hand you don’t want to lose 244 units of affordable housing,” Cheshire said. “But look, we understand that concentrated poverty is not sustainable. We want to make that a neighborhood of choice. Will it be three-story walkups or two-story townhomes?

Until you start talking to development partners, you don’t know what’s viable.

We’ve even talked about tiny houses.

Marquita Wisley is a cofounder of the Cleveland Avenue Transformation Team.

We want some urban pioneers. We want some upwardly-mobile millennials.”

The current building stock is obsolete on several levels, Cheshire said.

The “monochromatic” barracks-style exteriors are from another era; the HVAC, electrical and plumbing systems are aged; the units lack functional floor plans and natural light; the clay sewage pipes are susceptible to root blockage and backups.

The plan has caused some worry about displacement, said Marquita Wisley, a resident and cofounder of Cleveland Avenue Transformation Team, or CATT. “They talk about mixed-use housing,” she said. “To me, that sounds like another way to say gentrification. It sounds like to me that we’re gonna be moved out, and higher income people are going to be moved in. The people who have jobs at BioTech Place will be able to bike to work. We can’t get those jobs.”

Wisley said she worries that the housing authority will require that current

AMANDA SALTER

JORDAN GREEN Kevin Cheshire is vice president and general counsel at the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem.

residents are working full time before they’re allowed to move back in. That’s not realistic for most residents — people like Wisley’s sister who works as a home health aide, but gets fewer than 40 hours because her employer wants to avoid paying benefits. Cheshire said there will absolutely not be any work requirement, but he can understand how someone might have that perception.

Two smaller public housing communities in the area — Oaks at Tenth and Camden Place are designated as “step up” housing; the housing is reserved for people who are employed, and they receive support services like tutoring for their children as an incentive. Cheshire said the housing authority has talked about wanting to surround the 244 new subsidized units that are replacing Cleveland Avenue Homes with “step up” housing, so that might have caused some confusion.

Wisley said she remains skeptical, explaining, “Just because there isn’t a work requirement doesn’t mean there won’t be other stipulations to moving back.”

Cheshire said he suspects that some residents will decide they don’t want to move back.

“I hope they want to return,” Cheshire said. “There’s a lot of history.

There’s a lot of character. There’s a lot of culture. I know as a practical matter people want to retain mobility.”

As a condition for investing $4.5 million in the initiative, Winston-Salem City Council required the housing authority to commit to providing counseling to residents before they move out. The housing authority is engaging United Way of Forsyth County, which will in turn contract with other community agencies, to provide case management for the residents.

“There have been some communities in which we’ve seen across the country in which communities are revitalized; there’s displacement that takes place, and there’s the lack of full-service case management,” Councilman Derwin Montgomery said at a June 13 meeting of the finance committee of city council. “And what you do is in effect —

Wisley responded, “We have heard that several times, but still nothing has happened, so I have trouble believing it.”

Cheshire and others on the leadership team at the housing authority are aware of the suspicion that the transformation initiative is a new iteration of urban renewal — the slum-clearance and urban

renewal programs of the 1960s that promised revitalization, but in effect displaced black communities and destroyed black businesses.

“All we can say from an agency standpoint is that we’re aware of that,” Cheshire said, “and we’re gonna do everything we can to mitigate it and build community in transition.”

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8 vouchers because they’re not prepared for additional responsibilities.

“We feel like they’re more worried about the buildings,” Wisley said.

“We’re more worried about the people. We asked for programs like credit counseling to help people transition from public housing to Section 8 housing. CATT is trying to develop those programs.”

She added that the residents found a woman through the nonprofit Neigh-: 3.08 1/6 vertical bors for Better Neighborhoods who (w) x 4.875 (h) agreed to teach a wealth-building class.

1/6 horizontal: Cheshire said any dissatisfaction among the residents about housing 4.75the (w) x 3.1875 authority’s efforts to prepare them for (h) the transition is news to him.

“I have the greatest respect for Marquita and consider her a friend,” he said. “That concern has not been relayed to me. We’re in the midst of our second engagement with Neighbors for Better Neighborhoods. We are under contract with Neighbors for Better Neighborhoods to do capacity building for the neighborhood, to determine what the strengths are. I haven’t heard from the CATT team that credit counseling is a need that is not being addressed.”

triad-city-beat.com

when people are displaced, communities are broken. And communities create opportunities within themselves to resolve issues. And when you dismantle those neighborhoods and displace people you have removed some of the opportunities within neighborhoods suppress issues before we have to call police or before anything is really problematic.

“And what full-service case management does is it makes sure that individuals have those skill sets moving into other neighborhoods and other communities as they’re engaging with other people and no longer have some of the safeguards that they would have in the neighborhood that they’ve been able to build over many, many years,” he continued. “Miss So-and-So is not in the neighborhood to come out on the front porch and tell somebody that they’re gonna call their mother or call their father or something like that to resolve an issue, and when you do that no matter what the other services that you provide are very, very critical.”

Similarly, Wisley said she’s concerned that long-term residents at Cleveland Avenue Homes who are accustomed to not having to worry about utility payments will wind up losing their Section

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The Cleveland Avenue Tranformation area is roughly bounded by Highway 52, Locust Avenue, 14th Street and 21st Street.

COURTESY

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All She Wrote

Presented by

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Shot in the Triad

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August 17 — 23, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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Affordable housing under construction, up for a vote

by Eric Ginsburg

A 72-unit affordable housing development currently under construction in south Greensboro is exactly the kind of thing that a housing bond recently approved by Greensboro City Council could fund if supported by voters this fall.

Right now, Sumner Ridge looks like a half dozen mounds of dirt on relatively flat land, almost the way a couple clustered anthills would appear under a microscope.

But when it’s done, the 7.5-acre property south of Interstate 85 and off of Interstate 73 in Greensboro will be home to 72 new units of affordable housing. With rents ranging from $237 to $705, the apartments will help meet a crucial need for affordable housing in the city.

Standing on the site on a recent Friday afternoon, Affordable Housing Management Executive Director David Levy pointed out the natural barriers between the property and its neighbors, rattling off a list of planned amenities that will include a picnic area, computer area and fitness center, among other features. His nonprofit, which specializes in projects like this, once managed as many as about 800 units of affordable housing in the city. That figure is down to about half, all in Greensboro, after Affordable Housing Management decided to sell off some properties — while keeping them affordable — in order to focus on larger impact developments such as the forthcoming Sumner Ridge.

But Levy knows full well that these 72 units, which are anticipated to open in July 2017, will only make a small dent in the problem. A whopping 26,000 households pay 50 percent or more of their income towards housing or live in substandard housing, he said. It’s an issue that affects a huge slice of the city’s residents; according to a handout from city staff at a community meeting on the subject in February, more than 25 percent of residents are “cost-burdened” when it comes to housing.

The term refers to households paying more than 30 percent of their income towards housing. About 48 percent of Greensboro residents are renters, with a median income of $27,897 and more than 50 percent of those renters fall in

Sumner Ridge doesn’t look like much yet, but David Levy can envision the 72 affordable housing units this south Greensboro lot will hold.

the cost-burdened category, according to city staff.

Building additional housing is a slow-moving process; Levy’s Greensboro-based Affordable Housing Management group — which has been operating for 46 years — purchased the land for Sumner Ridge more than seven years ago. Low-income housing tax credits are essential for projects like this to succeed, he said, and it’s a time-consuming process to obtain the credits from the state. The city played a considerable role in Sumner Ridge’s progress, with a $600,000 loan paid back at a flat annual rate, Levy said.

Affordable housing construction only moves forward with a complex matrix of public and private partnerships, he said, but to properly address the issue, a bigger step needs to be taken.

That’s why, even while he’s celebrating the moving dirt at Sumner Ridge and eager for the crews to resume work after a day of bad weather, Levy repeatedly switched to talking about the city’s planned bond referendum.

At the beginning of August, Greensboro City Council approved multiple bond items that will appear on the ballot in November when city voters go to the polls. Four multi-million-dollar items addressing housing needs, community & economic development, parks & rec-

reation and transportation will appear separately, allowing residents to approve or vote down each item individually, city spokesperson Amanda Lehmert said.

The $25 million housing bond is the smallest of the four, and covers much more than affordable housing construction. The multi-track approach would allot money for non-profit homebuyer lending, an emergency repair program, handicapped accessibility improvements and homeowner rehabilitation as well.

Most of the bigger ticket items are aimed at affordable housing head on; $3 million for multi-family affordable housing development, $4 million for east Greensboro housing development, $3 million for a code-compliance repair initiative and $8 million for a workforce housing initiative, according to the city website.

Levy refers to Sumner Ridge as workforce housing — most of the residents in properties run by Affordable Housing Management work and own cars, he said, which is good because some sites including this one are on the outer reaches of the city. They’d love for the city to extend bus lines further out, and even offered for $10,000 and an easement towards a bus stop in front of Sumner Ridge, Levy said. But out here, on the city’s fringes, is where most land at a reasonable price will be, especially

ERIC GINSBURG

for larger projects aimed at making a real dent in the problem.

Levy pointed out that SCAT transit services and others through groups like the United Way will help residents with transportation, and said that as a mixed income site, it’s likely many residents will have cars here too, though they may not be the most reliable.

It’s possible that some of the $10 million for sidewalks, intersections and transit in the $28 million transportation bond that will also be on the ballot could go towards improving public transit accessibility for developments such as these or new ones that come online if voters support the housing bond. And while Sumner Ridge will move forward regardless, Levy pleaded for support of the housing bond to make more developments like it possible.

Think of the number of families over the years that will move through communities like the two-story Sumner Ridge site once it’s up, he said, some of them taking advantage of his organization’s educational fund that helps residents pursue skills to land higher paying jobs and move out while others will stay forever. To them, housing at a more reasonable price is a godsend, Levy said.

But there are still about 26,000 more households who desperately need a reprieve.

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HIGH POINT JOURNAL

New boutique and wine shop emphasizes social good, community

by Jordan Green

A new business in High Point’s Uptowne district aims to bring people together while doing good by selling wares made by international artisans.

The chain of events that led up to Wendy Fuscoe and Julia Luce opening a combined wine shop and boutique with a focus on promoting social good has a serendipitous past.

Fuscoe, then employed by the city of High Point as executive director of City Project, had persuaded the Vino Shoppe to rent the left bay of a 1917-vintage office duplex in the heart of the city’s Uptowne district. The arrangement didn’t work out, and the wine store decamped for a location with a more favorable market near the Palladium. But before the wine store relocated, Luce took of a job there. She was working a shift when Bill Muckridge, a residential contractor who specializes in custom kitchen and baths, stopped in to visit the store. Muckridge, who would become Luce’s boyfriend, decided he liked the building and ended up buying it.

Fuscoe and Luce opened Public House in the space formerly occupied by the Vino Shoppe in March. Focusing on wine and handcrafted products — many of them made by international artisans or refugees — everything in the shop is there because it has a social benefit. They sell baskets made by a Rwandan women’s collective. Jewelry made of repurposed bullet casings and vintage coins is produced by HIV-positive artisans in Ethiopia and benefits a home for abandoned children there.

Sales of pottery by Jennifer Foy, office director at World Relief High Point, benefit her agency. And refugee clients at World Relief earn money from the sale of their jewelry. All the wine sales benefit two nonprofits, Wine to Water and Treasure Hunter. A portion of the proceeds from sales of Wine to Water wines — founded by Jamestown native Doc Hendley — support development of clean water around the world, while Treasure Hunter supports underprivileged children with debilitating diseases.

Wendy Fuscoe (left) and Julia Luce are the co-owners of Public House, a combination boutique and wine shop in Uptowne.

Fuscoe left her job with the city of High Point at the end of June, landing a position as a commercial realtor at Ed Price & Associates just up the street from Public House. Fuscoe’s soft exit from the city followed a tumultuous saga in 2014, when city council rejected many of the new urbanism ideas championed by Fuscoe’s project that focused on creating an urban center in Uptowne. At city council’s prompting, the former city manager reassigned her to a new role supporting core city revitalization while withdrawing support from City Project. The new council elected in November 2014 and the new city manager hired around the same time took a friendlier stance towards new urbanism ideas, but city leaders opted for a fresh start rather than rebooting City Project.

Many of the revitalization functions previous handled by Fuscoe have shifted to Assistant City Manager Randy Hemann, who was hired last year.

JORDAN GREEN

As co-proprietor of Public House, Fuscoe has the opportunity to directly implement the kind of project that she previously tried to facilitate as a city employee.

“To be surrounded by people who are so inspired is really great,” she said.

“It’s fun to be on that side to not worry about the restrictions of what you can and cannot do.

“I really think change is gonna come from people on the ground, not imposed from above by the city,” Fuscoe added.

Luce concurred.

“I would imagine that First Friday didn’t happen in Greensboro because the city said, ‘This needs to happen,’” she said. “It was some arts people saying, ‘Let’s throw some wine out and see what happens.’”

Luce said they were fortunate to be able to consult with Muckridge, who gave them a realistic sense of what it would cost to renovate the space to meet

the code requirements for the business.

But they’ve run into some realities that confront all first-time business owners, even those who prioritize financial profit over social benefit instead of the other way around.

“I thought we’d be making more money,” Fuscoe said. “I thought we’d be able to pay our bills. And we’re not.”

It helps that both partners have other full-time jobs, Fuscoe as a realtor and Luce as Muckridge’s showroom manager. Considering that an inside door connects the store to the showroom, Luce is able to do both jobs at the same time.

In the meantime, Luce and Fuscoe recognize that getting the word out about Public House will be essential to making it a viable business. The brisk pace of traffic on North Main Street is a challenge, and Fuscoe said she suspects few of the passing motorists have noticed the store.

“The challenge is marketing,” Fuscoe said. “If we can have 10 seconds to tell the Wine to Water story, nine times out of 10 we make a sale.”

Programming is part of the partners’ strategy to get people in the door. They host regular dinners by Steve Hollingsworth, a budding chef who formerly owned Green Door Wheel Works.

There’s a women-only gathering held on the full moon once a month called “Goddess Night.” And the store collaborates with Sunrise Books on a regular wine and books night.

“We don’t expect people to just walk in,” Luce said, “although that would be nice.”

The name Public House aligns with Fuscoe and Luce’s interest in bringing people together, but also serves a more practical purpose. Peter Freeman, an architect whose firm leases space on the second floor of the building, suggested the name as a way to avoid the more stringent regulations placed on retail space by the city’s building code, Fuscoe said. Freeman worked on the Ignite High Point master plan with new urbanist planner Andrés Duany, and designed the library plaza project, which is currently under construction.

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“Peter’s idea was, ‘Don’t pick a name like ‘shop’ or ‘store’ — choose something like a gathering space,’” Fuscoe said. “We are a gathering space, so it’s not just circumventing the regulations.

If we do retail as an accessory use, it would be fine.”

Along those lines, Luce and Fuscoe are organizing a “Back Alley Market” with neighbors JH Adams Inn and Brown Truck Brewery that will feature an outdoor screening of Ghostbusters and free space for vendors in the alley that runs behind the businesses on Aug. 24.

And on the retail side of their efforts, the two have talked about inviting refugees in to a spare room one day of the week to sew, and hiring ex-offenders to make lanterns out of salvaged tin cans.

“Both of us have lived in developing countries, places where they don’t have internet and electricity — things we take for granted,” Luce said. “Anything we can do to change that, we want to.”

“And bring people together,” Fuscoe added.

“We’re a like a mini UN,” Luce said.

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August 17 — 23, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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OPINION EDITORIAL

Actual election fraud We already knew that the federal Congressional districts in North Carolina were drawn illegally, after a three-judge panel threw them out back in February and the party in power scrambled to submit new ones in time for a special May primary created just for the occasion.

Those districts’ illegality hinged on the use of race as an indicator: Turns out you’re not allowed to just draw lines around a few black neighborhoods and call it a district.

So it should surprise exactly no one that our state legislative districts are illegal, too.

And they’re not just illegal — they’re unconstitutional, positively un-American.

Our infamous gerrymandering of the state’s 170 legislative districts came in 2011, a year after the Republicans gained the majority and looked to hold onto it.

Their butchery ran from Murphy to Manteo, marginalizing white Democrats while excessively factoring race into the new boundaries.

Last week federal judges found 28 of these districts to be unconstitutional, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. This means we’ve already had two illegal elections in this state, and are about to have a third.

“We agree that these unconstitutional, challenged districts have already caused Plaintiffs substantial stigmatic and representational injuries…. However, we are also cognizant that the timing… is particularly delicate in this case,” the opinion reads.

So the crooks — for that is what you call people who engage in illegal activity — have until 2018 to get it together, nabbing one more illegal election under their belt before justice is restored.

Meanwhile the people of North Carolina are growing fatigued by the shenanigans of the Republican majority, which has been crafting bunk legislation and forcing us to live under it from the day they took over after the 2010 election.

They were elected to write laws, but we’re finding that much of the output from this majority party aren’t laws at all — they are crimes against the Constitution.

And the fact remains: If your party’s ideas are so good, you shouldn’t have to use deceit and fraud to enact them.

We’ve had enough of sham politicians crafting illegal laws. And though far too many of them run unopposed in this next farce of an election, perhaps we can nudge a few of them out before North Carolina returns to the ranks of states that adhere to the US Constitution.

CITIZEN GREEN

Why are Republican lawmakers so obsessed with race?

by Jordan Green

For the past three decades the right has more or less monopolized the espoused value of color blindness, while progressives have insisted that cultural differences matter and should be celebrated, that racial disparities must be acknowl-

edged to be addressed.

Pastor Mark Burns, the black televangelist from South Carolina, spoke most directly to the heart of the contemporary GOP during the Republican National Convention last month when he denounced “those race baiting Democrats” and charged that the party of Hillary Clinton “will do whatever it takes to keep us Americans focused on the colors that divide us and not the colors that unite us.”

So it’s novel, to say the very least, that the Republican lawmakers in the North Carolina General Assembly discovered the religion of diversity during their 2011 redistricting effort — two years before passing another election bill that disproportionately burdened African Americans by requiring certain types of IDs they were least likely to carry and eliminating voting practices that they were most likely to favor.

In ordering the North Carolina General Assembly to redraw state legislative district lines before the 2018 election, a federal court panel last week found that “race was the predominant factor” in 28 districts where the Republican mapmakers packed black voters so they would make up more than 50 percent of the voting age population. In defense of their scheme, Sen. Bob Rucho and Rep. David Lewis — co-chairs of the redistricting committee — cited Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, yet they failed to make a case that there was a violation of the African Americans’ voting rights in need of a cure beyond a general pattern of racially polarized voting.

It’s likely that Rucho and Lewis knew exactly what they were doing — manipulating race to lock in a partisan advantage. If they didn’t, they received an elegant lesson in the history of voting rights and the US Constitution from Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James A. Wynn Jr., who wrote that thousands of “North Carolina citizens have suffered severe constitutional harms stemming from defendants’ creation of 28 districts racially gerrymandered in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.”

As Judge Wynn explained, race may only predominate over other considerations — like compactness, contiguity, respect for political jurisdictions and communities defined by shared interests — in redistricting

if it is “narrowly tailored” to meet a compelling state interest in complying with the Voting Rights Act. The test for whether race is necessary to remedy a violation goes back to 1986, when the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of a black North Carolinian named Ralph Gingles.

The court ordered North Carolina to throw out its old multi-member system of electing state lawmakers, which made it next to impossible for black candidates to win elections. The crucial question, then and now, is whether racial minorities are able to elect a “candidate of choice.” And in Gingles the Supreme Court established a threefold test, as Judge Wynn explained: “That [the minority group] is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district; that it is politically cohesive; and that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it… usually to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.”

Rucho and Lewis diligently seem to have overlooked the third question.

While one of the defendant’s expert witnesses presented a report showing racially polarized voting in 50 out of 51 counties during the 2008 primary, Judge Wynn noted that they ranged from Greene County, where only 4.7 percent of non-black voters supported Barack Obama in the Democratic primary to Durham County, where nearly 60 percent did.

In almost half of the districts where Republican legislators maximized the number of black voters, the court found that black candidates had consistently won elections with less than 50 percent black voting age population.

So race-obsessed were Rucho and Lewis that they drew Linda Garrou out of her Forsyth County district, noting that she was a “white incumbent” who had “defeated African-American candidates in 2004 and 2010.”

But the court noted that Garrou won by large margins of more than 80 percent, and by the defendants’ own admission, African Americans comprised 68.7 percent of the voters in her district. They must have been happy with her representation.

And in Guilford County, the Republicans created a third minority-majority House district with the redrawn District 57. With 50.7 percent black voting age population and much of its base concentrated in northeast Greensboro, District 57 was custom-made for Yvonne Johnson, but the former mayor passed on the opportunity to run for the seat in 2012. And in 2014, voters rejected the gift offered by the Republicans by reelecting the white incumbent, Pricey Harrison, over a black challenger, Jim Kee. Maybe it’s the Republicans who need to get over race.

If Duke would just remove the ivy

by Jordan Green

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

Maddie Himes is a nurse working in Greensboro. She spends her spare time reading about existentialism, feminism and the current political climate until she falls asleep in her hammock.

Cover Story

crement out of her bum as if it were normal.

Her response, to our surprise and concern, was, “Oh, I have to do this to get it out.”

There are, of course, the more somber moments. I was taking care of a dying patient. The moment came to put her on “comfort care,” which means we only do interventions that reduce the patient’s pain to make their passing as peaceful as possible.

Going into the room to administer Ativan, surrounded by her weeping family, was one of the most difficult things I’ve done. I whispered what the medication was for as I gave it through her IV, trying to keep my voice from breaking.

I didn’t know how to answer the family’s questions about “How does she look to you?” and “What do you think?” I didn’t know, because I’d never been in that position before, taking care of a patient who was actively dying. I tried my best to answer them, to give them some of the comfort they were seeking in those questions.

I cringe to remember the time another very sick patient asked me to pray for her.

When she asked, I stopped in my tracks, stunned at the magnitude of this request.

This patient had never met me before and didn’t know my spiritual beliefs, yet in her vulnerability, she asked me for comfort.

I called the nearest chaplain to pray with her.

I left the room and leaned against the wall. The heaviness in my heart did not dissipate. All I could think was, I don’t think God even listens, and, How could I be so selfish to deny something from this women she so clearly wanted? These moments can leave me in my head all day, questioning my beliefs.

Sometimes during my lunch break (if I get one), I sit outside and look at the exterior of the hospital, thinking about how serene it looks. Thousands of cars drive by the hospital without a thought for the things going on inside these walls. But I know the chaos, the hilarity and the sadness inside. The people in their hospital beds, the nurses, the aides, the doctors and the physical therapists. We all leave work at the end of our shifts, get in our cars and drive home like nothing’s happened.

Just a normal day at work.

Opinion

There are nondescript, tinted-windowed commercial buildings all over the Triad that we all drive by on a daily basis.

by Maddie Himes The only hint we have of the goings-on inside those walls is a sign on the outside, indicating what company or organization resides within.

The same goes for the hospital, where I work. And just like the mysteries inside those buildings we’ll never see, behind the walls of the Triad’s local hospitals are med-surg floors, ICUs, mother-baby and labor and delivery units, privy to so many monumental and ponderous things.

There on the inside, my team of nurses and I experience things that no one looking in from the outside could begin to imagine.

But I’ll try to bypass the mystery and share a few stories here.

The nursing profession in practice is not like school. Let me repeat: It is not like school. In clinical training, work is structured, and student nurses scurry around following their nurse and they touch patients with great timidity. As much as nursing school tries to prepare you for the real world, there’s nothing that will acclimate you better than the gritty reality of hospital work.

Such as the days when you have to put condom catheters on your patients (only the dudes obviously). It’s what it sounds like.

A condom, except, try putting it on a flaccid penis. If you’re a visual person, like I am, you’re probably imagining a lot of pinching and pulling. You’re 100 percent correct.

And there’s the patient who asks to have his balls powdered. He called his testicles his “bag,” and I spent a quick 30 seconds thinking to myself, What the hell is he talking about?, and, once it dawned on me, I spent another 30 seconds holding in laughter.

I thought to myself, I cannot laugh in this 90-year-old man’s face.

In school, they don’t teach you about ball powdering. Or the importance of poop.

Regular bowel movements are of tantamount concern to nurses as plutonium exports are to global powers. After administering an enema to a patient, I returned to the room to see if we’d had any success. The aide and I found the patient lying on her side with her fingers up her ass, pulling ex-

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line on Ashland Drive.

The world behind the windows

Up Front

The sound of the tree toppling over woke both my wife and me around 4:30 in the morning, and I suggested she check on our 3-year-old daughter. In the fog of sleep I didn’t get a clear report of the treefall, but it must have been a low, powerful heave; I just knew something had fallen.

My wife peered out the bedroom window to the street below our sloping front yard, beckoning me to look. We heard the crackling sound of unharnessed electricity, a sizzle, and, only moments later, a pair of booms as light flashed from the downed power lines and they shorted out. Soon our next-door neighbor, a retired vice cop, was out in front of his house with a high-powered flashlight, and we saw a car turned diagonally in the street, like a scene from a zombie apocalypse. The terrified driver must have discerned the electrical lines tumbling down to their left and swerved to the right to avoid making contact while slamming on the brakes.

The next morning, around 7:30, I ventured down the street to survey the damage.

One of the high-line poles had snapped in two about midway, and the top half was helplessly dangling from the downed line. Then, a little further down the street I saw it: A large trunk not quite three feet in diameter encased in ivy like a heavy winter jacket lay across the street atop the lines.

If you could pick one issue that has pushed the well-heeled residents of Greensboro’s old-line neighborhoods with a healthy tree canopy — think Westerwood and Fisher Park — into a state of open revolt, it would almost certainly be the severe tree cutting and limb removal undertaken by Duke Energy’s contractors. Greensboro City Council even passed an ordinance to impose tighter restrictions on the practice, although it was neutered by the NC Utilities Commission.

The reason for Duke Energy’s aggressive vegetation control is only to protect their lines. That vigilance translates into a financial benefit that fattens the salaries of the utility’s executives or gets returned to ratepayers, depending on how the spoils are apportioned.

I couldn’t help but think as I watched a battalion of tree trimmers and utility trucks roll in to the neighborhood that Duke could have saved a huge amount of expense and trouble — with minimal expense and absolutely no intrusion — by simply hiring someone to pull the damn ivy off that tree. In comparison to the butchery committed in Westerwood two years ago when contractors toppled trees and dropped limbs, no one in my neighborhood on the west side of Lindley Park would have complained one bit about them removing ivy.

When we first moved into our new house in May 2015, our neighbor, the retired vice cop, told me: “You need to pull the ivy out of those trees.”

He was right. I used a handsaw and a pair of loppers to remove a two-foot band of ivy around the base of the trees that line the northern boundary of our property along Walker Avenue. Over the intervening months I’ve pulled 20-foot lengths of dead ivy out of the trees. My neighbor appears to have been on to something: Not one of the giant deciduous trees has toppled over and crashed through the roof of our house.

Just thought I would share a bit of expertise from the Lindley Park home guard with our powerful JORDAN GREEN A tree choked to death by energy overlords. ivy toppled into a telephone

FRESH EYES

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IT JUST MIGHT WORK

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August 17 — 23, 2016

The weird, the funny and the downright fascinating courses from Triad-area colleges

Cover Story

by Brian Clarey, Eric Ginsburg, Naari Honor and Jessie Morales

The newer buildings towards the eastern side of NC A&T University’s campus are among the more visually appealing in the Triad. You can see the downtown Greensboro skyline from some

In some ways, all college course catalogs are the same. You can take American history anywhere, or microbiology, or statistics. But delve deep into the undergraduate offerings at our Triad-area four-year colleges and universities, and you start to find the good stuff: obscure topics, professorial pet projects, classes that exemplify a school’s mission or particular bent, some that reflect the cultural zeitgeist and others that defy easy categorization.

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And some are just weird.

Our area colleges and universities are no exception: Greensboro College, Guilford College, High Point University, John Wesley College, NC A&T University, Salem College, UNC School of the Arts, Wake Forest University and Winston-Salem State University all have fascinating nuggets of scholasticism tucked into their offerings. These are just a few.

BENNETT COLLEGE BI 205: Histology and Biological Microtechniques As a mid-med-school specialist elective, this challenging class might be par for the course. But to take a twittering class full of 19-year-olds and teach them “histological techniques useful in biological research,” as the course description touts? That’s a recipe for getting mad props from tired med students 10 years the young scientists’ senior.

PS 350: Afri-centric Psychology This class dives into emerging takes on psychology based on

GREENSBORO COLLEGE GER 2210: The Fairy Tale Can’t you just picture it now? Your parents ask you what subject you are taking in school and you reply, “The Fairy Tale, Dad.” I’m done! Greensboro College has this fantasy field class as a part of its teaching curriculum. The class takes a look at the origin of Italian, French, German, and twenty-first century fairytales. Who wouldn’t want to take this class out of general curiosity?

KIN 1510 & KIN 2510: Ballroom Dance I & ll While ballroom dancing is an amazing skill to learn, it’s hard to believe students can study it in college, let alone at two different levels. There are no prerequisites for this course, so it isn’t like it is reserved for dance majors.

Any kid who wants to dance can waltz on in and get their groove on. (Yes, puns intended.) The class is intended to help students sharpen their social skills while teaching them the fox trot. It’s getting an extra toy in a happy meal.

MUS 1607: Handbells Dude, there is a class for handbells. Handbells! Does anything more need to be said?

REP 3600: Punishment Yes, the class is called punishment, however there are no dungeons or chains involved. The course is a part of the school’s Religion, Ethics and Philosophy Department.

Students will have the opportunity to compare medieval and current methods of punishment. Sounds yummy, right?

GUILFORD COLLEGE

e of them as well.

ERIC GINSBERG

African and African-American traditions in the discipline.

From historical models of mind and spirit in African cosmology to the field of black psychology in its United States iteration, this course offers the kind of identity-based, multimedia psychology course that will appeal to tech-and-politics-savvy millennials. Bet the course’s book list comes packed with enough obscure theorists to dazzle most professors, too.

EN 209: Readers Theater This course presents students with the opportunity to

REL 237: Jesus in Film & Pop Culture Maybe you go to church every Sunday. Maybe you post scriptures on Facebook, and maybe you’ve seen The Passion of the Christ. But have you studied the so-called son of God through literature, film and art, or “the many ways Christians and non-Christians have created Jesus Christ, and what significance those diverse creations hold” before? Now you can.

IDS 461: Nothin’ But Disasters How do you choose which stands out more when Ethics of Capitalism, Barrier Islands: Ecology & Development and Culture/Travel/Writing and are all competing?

Guilford College seniors are required to take an interdisciplinary IDS class, and the subjects all sound unusual, including the very Guilford-esque Quakers, Community

& Commitment. It’s somewhat arbitrary to select Nothin’ But Disasters — which studies everything from tsunamis to meteorite impact and mass extinctions through the lenses of science, myth, literature, economics and more — over The American Upper Class, but the name is too good to ignore.

PPS 240: Cape Fear River Basin Seminar Also categorized as ENVS 240, this “principled problem-solving” class is all about place-based learning. That means getting outside of the classroom to study North Carolina’s Cape Fear River Basin, including “a three-day canoe camping trip and multiple class field trips” that are mandatory. Guilford’s beloved Maia Dery teaches this and a few other related courses that didn’t exist during my tenure at the Quaker school, and it’s enough to make me want a do-over.

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perform syllabus-assigned plays in front of their peers in class. While many undergraduates likely shudder at the thought, this would have been all-out paradise for many a former English nerd professor when they were in college.

While other kids peaced out to watch the game, they probably created dorm-wide renditions of Hamlet while drinking peach schnapps from teacups. Students brave enough to take this course will probably find their tribe.

SPST 213: Stress Management Few things could be more pertinent to college or the realities of work in this society than stress management.

This sports studies class “teaches how to identify, understand and combat the stresses of everyday life while developing a healthy living concept.” If students can master this, they’ll save countless miserable hours at home, at work or in therapy for years to come. That and UNCSA’s class Foundations of Finance may be the most important skills a college could teach. This class does so through exploring Zen meditation, yoga, music therapy, time management, tai chi, massage therapy and more.

Hopefully the progressive and radical non-athletes don’t overlook this one.

HIGH POINT UNIVERSITY COM 2261: Theory and Design of Games This communications course plays around with game theory for a full semester. Since it’s not a computer science course and students won’t physically design their own video game, for example, this course sounds like a real opportunity for shenanigans. Textbook cornhole?

D&D? The possibilities are infinite.

HST 3222: Enlightenment and Revelation: Rational and Irrational in America This sure sounds topical when it comes to the upcoming presidential elections. And, like the best trivia team names, it’s topical and lascivious. The course description advertises “case studies in the intermingling of rational and traditional perspectives [on] science.” Does that hint at a time-traveling prediction of what a 3-way Franken-baby engendered by Bernie, Hillz, and Trump would look like?

COM 3394: Media Masters: The Coen Brothers A standard academic argument involves a decision on whether to expand the “canon,” or most important body of texts, to include more masterpieces than those created by dead white guys. While the average socially-aware professor actively promotes diversity with their syllabus choices, this course makes its own kind of contribution

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August 17 — 23, 2016 Cover Story

to expanding the canon. That’s right, white guys who are still alive dominate its film choices. As the Dude from the Coens’ Big Lebowski would say: “This is a very complicated case, Maude.”

LAUREL UNIVERSITY CM 414: Discipleship Development of the Family The course’s name reads like a fitting title for a dark comedy about the overly religious childhoods of too many Southern kids. Fade from black: a living room scene.

The kid, at 3, on her preacher pop’s knee, trying to remember all the disciples’ names for applause and Goldfish crackers. Company aghast at how she smashes the crackers into her mouth as soon as she says “...and Matthias!”

(For those who came up sans “discipleship development,” that’s the apostle who replaced Judas.) Could it be Freudian repetition compulsion that Laurel students will probably snack on Goldfish while writing term papers for this class?. Translation: If you take this class, be prepared for some later-in-life “Twilight Zone” level food voodoo.

ED 215: Developing a Philosophy of Christian School Education This class aims to snag college kids and whip them into shape as philosophizing teachers-in-training. Sounds great, except that the “special attention given to the Christian school movement” isn’t likely to delve into the historical fact that most Christian schools in the South emerged suspiciously close to court-ordered school integration? Just saying. Otherwise, more colleges should pick up on the idea of schooling teachers in philosophy.

As the life of Socrates shows, a little intellectual humility goes a long way — if it doesn’t kill you first.

TH 239: Holiness Prior to John Wesley Holiness provides a semester-long education in the writings and practices of holy (white) men who influenced minister/theologian John Wesley. Some figures probably include Thomas à Kempis — penman of such aphorisms as “fight like a man” and “habit is overcome by habit” — and Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zanzendorf, a Moravian guy. Someone should relay the following saying of Wesley’s to the hapless student who finds herself daydreaming in this course: “Beware you be not swallowed up in books!

An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge!”

NORTH CAROLINA A&T UNIVERSITY PHYS 490: Space Radiation How do you teach a course on space radiation? What do the field trips look like? Is there a space shuttle kept underneath the school like the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning? What secrets does NC A&T have on their grounds that the public is unaware of? Guess one should take the course to find out.

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POLI314: Southern Politics Yes! Because obviously there are a whole set of rules for the south that doesn’t apply to the rest of the world.

High Point University is arguably the most visually distinct campus in the Triad. This is just the smallest taste of that.

Wouldn’t you just love to be the fly on the wall during one of this courses lectures?

SALEM COLLEGE ENGL 223: Taboos, Experiments and the Other: Modern Drama While the title seems almost erotic, this class at Salem College consists of studying some of the most significant playwrights between 1870s and 1990s who stretched the perceived boundaries of theater. Students will have a chance to explore how these playwrights experimented with the dramatic art form to address social issues of their time.

ENGL 299: Shakespeare Meets Manga Not sure who asked for it, but it’s been done; Shakespeare has been adapted to manga for all of you anime heads out there. Some of the things the course will discuss are the parallels of Shakespeare’s use of cross-dressing and how it relates to kabuki theater and then incorporated into manga. This class, while walking that thin line of comic relief, requires teacher approval for enrollment.

ENGL 245: Hayao Miyazaki: Anime Master Storyteller and His Influences Its official, Salem college has been taken over by nerds and we love you for it. There is no arguing that Hayao Miyazaki was a grand storytelling but one mustn’t forget that he is a God amongst Gods in the world of anime.

According to the Salem catalog, the “course will analyze Miyazaki’s major animated feature films and explore his literary, filmic and cultural influences to understand the stories he tells, and how and why he tells them.”

ALEX KLEIN

UNCG RCO 150 Experimental Course: The Cultural History of Tea in Japan Experimental, indeed. This class — which sounds more like a two-hour lecture than a full-on course — “traces the development of tea and the tea ceremony, chanoyu, in Japan following a history of tea written by one of Japan’s contemporary tea masters, Sen Sōshitsu XV.” Sounds like those of us not enrolled as Spartans could just buy the book.

ATY 300: The Culture of Baseball In the immortal words of “Summer Heights High,” “Public school is so random.” I’d never expect to find a class all about baseball culture, let alone in the anthropology department, let alone at a public institution. But this class actually sounds amazing: Ritual, superstition, racism, language, immigration — the history and culture of baseball provides a familiar lens to examine and contextualize socio-cultural experience.” The class incorporates baseball abroad too, including the Caribbean, Japan and Mexico.

ATY 477: Zooarchaeology Don’t read too fast and mistake this for zoology: this is the much more interesting crossroads of the study of animals and archeology. A whole anthropology class dedicated to animal bones! Hopefully this covers dinosaur bones as well, because there’s no independent course on the subject at UNCG. That would be a grave oversight.

CPS 540: Social Entrepreneurship: Justice and a Green Environment This Conflict & Peace Studies class looks at social entrepreneurship as a way to affect change around environmental sustainability. UNCG offers a handful of entrepreneurship classes that go beyond the predictable,

UNC SCHOOL OF THE ARTS HUM 2710: Murder as a Fine Art Yes, this humanities course at UNC School of the Arts is actually called that. The course description is a little less interesting, explaining that the class is a study of the murder-mystery genre that will discuss “the criminal as artist, the detective persona” and, most intriguingly, “the cultural significance of the murder mystery’s popularity.”

How many people who grabbed trashy, murder-mystery beach reads this summer considered themselves consumers of fine art, and did they ponder the deeper societal implications of the genre’s popularity while brushing sand off their toes?

HUM 2111: Paths to the Present: History of Suburbia “Many of us grew up in a suburban neighborhood,” begins the presumptuous class description, which is likely great insight into the composition of the student body at UNCSA. But the course sounds fascinating: “This course examines the historical foundations for the suburb… the suburban ideal and its representation in popular culture including advertisements, novels, movies and television.”

Few things could be more important than teaching kids from the ’burbs how such places came to be and forcing them to think about the cultural values that shape such enclaves, and really we’d all benefit from such an exploration.

MAT 1200: Foundations of Finance There are plenty of cool classes at this arts-based school — such as The Art of Making a Difference: Documentary & Community Involvement — but Foundations of Finance is the kind of course that my peers at Guilford College all wished we’d taken when graduation arrived.

Most of us could probably still use it. “Among the topics studied are uses and abuses of percentages, simple and compound interest, compound interest for interest paid n times per year, continuous compounding, savings plans,

total and annual returns, types of investments, loan basics, credit card debt and fixed rate options, and mortgages,” the description reads.

ENG 1200: Writing About Popular Culture: Toys Uh, yeah. This class is all about toys, and their “significance and implications.” Seems like students can almost minor in examining their suburban childhood here.

“Material might include poetry and fiction such as Sandra Cisneros’ Barbie-Q, artworks like The Nutcracker, non-fiction and documentaries, movies such as Barry Levinson’s Toys and, of course, Toy Story and field research.” Field research? Sign us up.

WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY ENG 318: Culture and the Sitcom All those years of watching back episodes of “The Brady Bunch” and “Cheers” pay off in this English class, which calls the situational comedy “one of the oldest and most ubiquitous forms of television programming.”

HST 348: Samurai and Geisha: Fact, Film and Fiction Two of the more notorious castes in Japanese history come under scrutiny in this history class that overlaps with the Japanese Studies Department. Using contemporary and classic film, ancient fiction and primary sources, “the course considers how Japanese and Western historians, novelists and filmmakers have portrayed the two groups and by implication Japan and its history in the modern period.”

MUS 185: John Cage: Works and Thought John Cage was an American composer of the avant garde, sort of the Andy Warhol of postmodern classical music — one of his most famous pieces, 4’33”, requires that the musicians hold their instruments in silence for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. This music class is a study of his music, poetry, art and philosophy.

WGS 100: RAD: Rape Aggression Defense This intro-level class from the Women’s and Gender Studies Department trains college first-years “basic physi-

Wake Forest University boasts several pristine sports fields and courts.

ALEX KLEIN

cal self-defense tactics and risk reduction and avoidance,” with required readings on the research of violence against women. It’s a pass/fail.

WINSTON-SALEM STATE UNIVERSITY LLS 301: Blame it on the Boogie: Exploring the Music and Health Connection WSSU has the best class names. This one delves into the physical effects of listening to music. “You will participate in music activities and review research to discover the effect music has on social behaviors, physical condition and ways of thinking,” the course description reads. It culminates with a lab.

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including ENT 455: Entrepreneurial Career Strategies for Dance & Performing Artists that addresses founding and sustaining an arts-based business.

MSM 1301: Introduction to Motorsports It may seem counterintuitive for Winston-Salem’s HBCU to have a motorsports major, seeing as the sport appeals largely to white guys. But the program has access to the track at Bowman Gray Stadium, where the university football teams also plays, and has been matriculating graduates for more than a decade. This intro-level course covers the history of the sport, classifications and governing bodies, its economic impact and industry-specific literature.

LLS 1315: Pop Culture The class description says it all: “You have now been transformed into junior editors at the Acme Publishing Corporation. You will create one of four Pop Culture magazines for one of the decades including the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and the 2000s. Your magazine will cover topics such as iconography, notable biographies, popular advertisements, politics, current events of the period and entertainment.”

LLS 1337: Oh No She Didn’t: An Exploration of the Negative and Stereotypical Behaviors of Black Females This class busts the stereotype of the “eye-rolling, neck-twirling, finger-pointing, loud-talking, ‘ghetto fabulous’ creatures” portrayed in literature, film and media for generations, examines the mythos of the strong black woman and adds historical perspective. “The seminar explores the rationale behind the labels and what truly defines a black woman,” the course catalog says.

SOC 3347: Deviant Behavior More of a study than a how-to guide, this sociology class “examines the relationship between deviance, conformity and social control” in an attempt to understand the label. “An attempt will be made to dispel the belief that the roots of deviant behavior can always be understood from racial or inherited qualities of individuals, and rather help students to understand the relationship between social arrangements including religion, government, family patterns, economic conditions, differential association or interactions and deviance,” according to the course description.

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August 17 — 23, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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CULTURE Flavors of Hawaii exceed already-high expectations

by Eric Ginsburg

I

thought Brian Clarey’s recent cover story about Pokémon Go would be a good opportunity to introduce our readers to poke, the Hawaiian raw fish staple, in the food section. There’s no relation, sure, but I wanted to exploit your attention to convince you to try this island dish that’s rising in popularity on the mainland.

But last month, there wasn’t any poke in the Triad to speak of, and I’d only tried a salmon version at a froufrou restaurant in Boston rather than the classic ahi tuna variety. The dream died.

But my fortunes changed last week when ZC Hawaiian BBQ opened in Greensboro’s Golden Gate Shopping Center. Yours did too, you just didn’t realize it.

Here’s why: After showing up at the Triad’s lone Hawaiian restaurant and trying four different things, I realized that the poke isn’t even the best part.

It’s damn good, to be sure, packing a nice kick and finished off with the flavor of the scallions and white onions that the high-grade raw fish nestled in. PokePoke, a fast casual joint from Venice Beach with a location in Austin, calls the meal “the surfer’s sashimi,” and while there are probably countless varieties, poke is sort of supposed to be simple — a fresh kind of light salad, maybe seasoned with soy sauce or sesame oil.

That’s how it’s done at Hawaiian BBQ, accompanied by two mounds of white rice and a cup of macaroni salad, and it’s the only thing listed as “market price” — going for about $10 on Monday — which suggests an emphasis on much-needed freshness.

But I actually favored the saimin, and so did my buddy Anthony who came along.

I’d never heard of saimin before, but after looking at ZC’s menu online before showing up, I decided to do ERIC GINSBURG Clockwise from top left: Poke, chicken katsu saimin and musubi (bottom right) are among the some digging. When I saw descriptions arguing that thoroughly enjoyable options at the Triad’s lone Hawaiian restaurant. it’s inspired by ramen, and arguably lo mein as well as Filipino pancit, I knew I’d be game. pleasantly surprised by the pleasurable and flavorful (steamed dumplings), and that malasada is a PortuAt under $5, I figured the saimin with chicken katsu nature of this cheap and long-lasting meat. guese fried dough treat. The two sides I didn’t recog— a term for fried cutlet I recognized from Japanese I ranked it higher than Anthony’s Kalua pork and nize drive home the point that Hawaiian food much menus — would arrive in a small portion. Not so; incabbage dish, which he aptly described as succumore interesting then hip and trendy poke, and that stead, the thin-noodle soup with a crave-worthy broth lent, tender and possessing subtle flavors before he there’s a surfeit of reasons to celebrate the addition arrived in a large, to-go container with the meat on the enhanced the mixture with teriyaki sauce.

I liked his of the first restaurant around here lifting up Hawaiian side. The breading of the chicken added depth to the entrée just fine, and would order it elsewhere.

But with cuisine. broth, and Anthony and I easily took the whole thing so many delicious things in front of me, I’d probably down. It’s enough to fill most people up on its own, skip it every time for the saimin and poke. and can come with other proteins Or any number of other things on including fried shrimp or BBQ beef Pick of the Week the menu, including the grilled mahi instead. Do not miss it.

Visit ZC Hawaiian BBQ mahi, the aloha steak, the Hawaiian Sunday brunch slay I also knew I wanted to try the spam at 2224 Golden Gate spicy chicken, the shrimp gumbo or Southern Sunday drag brunch @ the Worx (GSO), musubi given that it rang in at just tempura, the beef curry or beef teriDrive (GSO) or at Sunday, 11 a.m. $2.25. Musubi is another Hawaiian stayaki bowl, the French fries with gravy, Some of Greensboro iconic drag queens bring a hawaiianbbqnc.com. ple — think sushi roll with spam and kimchee or the Portuguese sausage whole lot of laughter to one of the best meals of some teriyaki-style sauce, again availegg. Hell, now I’m ready to try the the day: brunch. Proceeds from the family friendly able with different meats including spam egg, too. event go towards Greensboro Pride 2016. For more Portuguese sausage. Though a little skeptical, associBut I’m really mad at myself that I didn’t do more information, take a look at the Drag Brunch Faceating spam with my grandmother’s basement storage research first and realize that manapua is the Habook page. in a somewhat rural part of Ohio, I was more than waiian derivative of Chinese barbecue pork-filled bao

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Drinking in the park, legally

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Breakfast • Lunch • Dinner krankiescoffee.com

Downtown • 211 East Third Street WSNC 27101

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A few adults arranged elementary the park — so no forties or flasks, I’m afraid — but if you buy school-aged kids in yogic poses on booze from one of the restaurants, you’re allowed to drink the vast, ground-level stage as I unit in the park. As in anywhere on the grounds of the massive screwed the top of the pocket-sized new open area, stretching from Davie Street all the way back bottle. Wind gently pushed at my to the Central Library. Drink while your corgi runs wild in the back, massaging the undulating and dog pen, drink while you cuddle at a movie night on the lawn, colorful mesh-like sculpture piece drink while you play foosball, drink while your kids climb the overhead, as a family with severmini rock wall.

by Eric Ginsburg al small children walked by and a I felt a little incredulous at this news, so I tested it out. I woman zoned out at a table nearby, snagged a 187mL bottle of rosé from Portuguese maker Casal lost in her cone of vanilla soft-serve.

Garcia at Ghassan’s – the cheapest at either spot at under Nobody seemed to notice that I was $5 – and pulled a colorful folding chair onto drinking alcohol, straight from the bottle the shade of the park’s main lawn. Nobody Visit LeBauer Park in actually, without so much as a paper bag or looked twice. downtown Greensboro Koozie to conceal it. And if anyone realized I I bet they would’ve if I bought a bag of next to the Greensboro Bonfire pinot grigio from Ghassan’s — the was brazenly consuming alcohol in a public park before 5 p.m. on a work day, a mere $28 menu item is equivalent to two bottles Cultural Center and dozen yards from an active playground, they of wine — and opened it on the green, but Center City Park. certainly didn’t care. nobody could’ve done squat about it.

Much has been said about the unveiling of Not that I’d advise doing that solo; that’s Greensboro’s LeBauer Park last week. And rightly so. From the a lot of wine, and I don’t encourage you to try and get hamping-pong tables to the dog park to the cushioned playground mered in the park or push the limits too much, lest these area, the new downtown park is a sight to behold, a real coup rules be changed. Instead, buy the bag with a couple friends for the city and not just because of the signature Janet Echelwhen LeBauer holds Sunday jazz picnics starting on Aug. 28, man piece claiming its space in the sky. In comparison to these or pick something off Noma’s summery beer list that includes features, it makes sense that we’ve all overlooked something Westbrook’s White Thai, Lonerider’s Shotgun Betty or Bell’s significant and cool as hell about LeBauer: You can drink there.

Oarsman Ale. There are two hard seltzers at Ghassan’s, as well Like, alcohol. as Bud Light and sparkling wine.

The two restaurant kiosks, featuring the stalwart GhasIt may be too hot to sit out like I did in the late afternoon san’s and rookie-of-the-year Noma, both sell beer and wine. blaze, even with a refreshing and cold rosé. Good thing LeBauThey won’t open it for you, and you can’t bring your own into er’s open late, and it isn’t going anywhere.

Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

A bottle of rosé is the perfect addition to a hot summer’s day in LeBauer Park. A bag of wine could be better.

ERIC GINSBURG

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August 17 — 23, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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CULTURE Ed E. Ruger, reloaded and ready

by Jordan Green

R

ocking camo shorts, the rapper Ed E. Ruger rises and shows off a black T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Hip Hop Dads” at the outset of an interview at the Common Grounds coffeehouse in Greensboro’s Lindley Park neighborhood.

“That’s sort of the direction I’m headed,” he says with a wide smile. “I’m a lot happier now.”

The avowed conversion is a little dubious: Since his early days with Iconoclast Crew, the grimy persona projected in albums from Shots from tha Ruger in 2005 through Lights Out in 2008 was belied by an upbeat and indefatigable entrepreneur, eager to make friends and forge alliances to help his fellow artists break in.

For a couple years after the release of Lights Out, Ruger — who is known to his family as Ray Armfield — wasn’t especially feeling the rap game. What would become Guerilla Grind, the album he released in January 2015, started as a song and a hashtag. People started asking him when the album was coming, and he duly complied. By then he had a lot of material banked, and in hindsight he says that deadline pressure resulted in some filler. Guerilla Grind Pt 2: The Token, released on Aug. 7, is more tightly curated, and generally more positive than his past work, to a point. The sunny “Good Day” is counterbalanced by an anthem for a day when everything that possibly can go wrong, does, called “F*** That, Screw You.” “Good Day” sets the mood for Guerilla Grind Pt 2 with a description of waking to the smell of breakfast, a child chasing a dog around the yard and a welcomed surprise visit from old friends.

“I’m just grillin’ with the family, kids chilling outside,” Ruger raps in the relaxed, loping style of Ice Cube on “Doing Dumb S***.” “Ladies catching up on life, just sipping some wine/ While the fellas killing time, just feeling the vibe/ And reminiscing and reliving the greatness/ And the memories collected from all the different places/ Feel like we never missed a day, but it’s been ages/ I love it every time I see the smile on they faces/ They say we’d never make it, but somehow made it out/ Let’s pour some Makers out for the ones that ain’t around/ I took my own route and stayed away from the doubt/ Now what a great time to celebrate, just look at us now.”

Reapplying himself to his craft, Ruger reflected on the parallel trajectories of fellow Iconoclast Crew members — people like Ty Bru returning to the scene in North Carolina from a stint teaching English in China, DJ Phillie Phresh deepening and confounding his sound, Stitchy C going harder than ever.

“Now you’ve got veterans who want to do grown-people rap,” Ruger says. “There’s a demographic — I’m in my mid-30s now. Ty Bru, he came back from China. With all of us back, we have found that the people we had before still want it. The grown people want good music, too. We’re not into politics all the time. We want to have a good time, too.”

Ruger’s posture has changed, and it hasn’t. “It’s still as obnoxious as can be,” he says. “Less violence. Less ‘I’m gonna shoot you,’ and more ‘You’re an idiot.’”

It can be tempting to dismiss the “street” sensibility in Ruger’s music as the posturing of a white dude conjuring an imagined authenticity of poverty and criminality. But as he tells his story in broad strokes, there is some basis for the profile projected ins song. He describes his father as “a forensic officer who went the wrong way,” explaining, “So I went in the opposite direction.”

Most of his criminal misdeeds could best be summed up as self-inflicted harms, he says, adding, “I never done anything to wrong anyone.” Indeed, Guilford County court records chronicle a string of minor offenses from the time James Raymond Armfield was 16 to about 30, mostly misdemeanors for small amounts of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, and many of them dismissed.

Ruger credits his wife with turning him around.

JORDAN GREEN Ed E. Ruger is a genial dude, but he really does have the record to back up his rough public persona.

“My wife bought me a thousand CDs,” he says. “She said, ‘If you can and in 2009 Ruger nearly lost his first child and his wife sell this, will you stop selling that?’” due to health complications during the birth.

Later, he adds, “I was the bootleg king, so it’s probaHe credits the Greensboro rap duo Illpo with the bly karma that everybody’s bootlegging me. Ultimateterm “grind” — meaning to work hard and relentlessly ly, as long as people are listening to my music, that’s for what you have — an ethos espoused, after all, by all I care about.” both Michelle Obama and Melania Trump.

Though most of Ruger’s music is not overtly politi“The ‘guerilla’ comes from how we promote, using cal, he displays a consciousness about how the color our local resources to go up against a bigger mainline operates based on his own experience. stream power,” Ruger says. “In warfare, the guerillas He mentions Alton Sterling, the black man killed by are the local fighters. We throw our own concerts. We the police in Baton Rouge, La. last month while selling make our own fliers.”

CDs, and recalls a run-in with the police for the same In addition to turning out a substantial catalogue of activity in which he was the only white person in a group of black men.

“There was one time when the cops asked us what we were doing, and they put everybody on the ground,” Ruger says. “Then they told me: ‘Get up and go home, you shouldn’t be hanging around with them.’

I said, ‘I can’t. These are my roommates. I literally can’t go home because they have the keys to the house.’”

Beyond whatever illicit activities he might have engaged in, Ruger has experienced the kind of adversity that no one would invite just to flesh out a compelling biography: In 2005, his close friend, the promising rapper Tre’ Stylez, died in a mysterious shooting incident,

Pick of the Week The return of the Soks Sok Monkee @ After Hour Tavern (HP), Saturday, 9:30 p.m.

Every wonder what happens to that sock that goes missing from the washer? It goes off and becomes a groupie for the famed Sok Monkee band.

The Monkees jam once again at the After Hours Tavern. More info can be found at afterhourstavern. com and the band’s Facebook page.

Up Front

Those connections have helped Ruger book shows at venues that otherwise wouldn’t give hip hop a chance.

“You talk to people that don’t like rap, but they like the Ugly Ducklings,” he says. “I have many, many different ways to get into places I shouldn’t be.

Once they talk to me, they find out I’m a professional.”

Ultimately, Ruger has realized there’s only one path — his own.

“Once I realized I was in the Ed E. Ruger business, not the music business,” he says, “things got a lot easier.”

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seven albums, opening for some industry heavyweights and touring nationally, Ruger has pulled off some notable guerilla strikes: He’s made music that was featured on AMC’s “Breaking Bad” and the Cartoon Network’s “Boondocks” series, and he created the theme song for the Ugly Ducklings wrestling crew. And in 2013, Ruger scored a near masterful bit of self-promotion by narrating a video chronicling the arrest of hip hop artist Riff Raff outside Greene Street Club in Greensboro, which was picked up by the celebrity gossip website TMZ.com.

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

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August 17 — 23, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games

SECCA welcomes a new development director

by Naari Honor

W

hen Katherine White was asked to attend a Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. board meeting for the planning of New WinIn making the decision to leave the organization ston Museum at the request of an old schoolthat she helped launch, White thought about would be mate, she was curious to know why they would want different in her new position at SECCA, where she put her thoughts given her limited museum knowledge. in her first day on the job on Monday.

White, who has now worked at nonprofits for 17 “As director of development,” White said. “I’ll be years, fell in love with the industry after writing about friend-raising and fundraising. Both are fun for me.” them as a journalist for the Winston Salem Journal.

While the roles of building relations and raising While working with nonprofits for special features of money for SECCA will contrast greatly in comparison various columns with the Journal, she began to develop with the “24 jobs” she jokingly admits to having at a soft spot for the work of the organizations, especially New Winston Museum, she is excited about her new those focused on rebuilding and sustaining communijob. ties in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. Her years There are many things she will miss about New of non-profit work made her an expert in telling the Winston Museum. stories of the community, and that was exactly what “I will miss the people at NWM,” White said. “I’ll the board members of museum were looking for. As miss the people that would stop in and share their a result, White was offered the position of executive story of life in Winston-Salem. I loved my staff, Chris director from the time of its inception.

Jordan and Alanna Meltzer-Holderfield.”

That was until Gordon Peterson, executive director At the same time White feels that this is the opporof the Southeastern Center of Contemporary Art, or tune moment for new leadership to step into her shoes SECCA, personally asked her to join the larger art muwith a fresh pair of eyes at New Winston Museum. seum across town.

White’s transition should not be considered a loss.

White had been engaged in a love affair with SECCA Despite the change of venue and shift in responsibiliSTALLONE FRAZIER Katherine White left the New from afar since she saw jazz musician and poet Sun ties, one thing will remain constant — her responsibiliWinston Museum to join the team Ra perform on its picturesque lawn when she was 19. ty to preserve and share the history of Winston-Salem, at SECCA, also in Winston-Salem.

After a tragic car accident involving her sister left her the town she has come to love. sibling permanently injured, SECCA became a refuge for White that helped her get through intermittent rough patches in her life.

Her refuge possesses myriad characteristics Pick of the Week that call out to her such as educational art Walls Taylor made, man programs, science fiction Taylor White opening reception @ InFocus Gallery at exhibits and collaborative GreenHill (GSO), Wednesday, 5:30 p.m. programs that utilize Raleigh-based artist Taylor White is the newest voices of artists from the Take charge of your mind, body and spirit artist to add to the “No Blank Walls” project in community as well as Test pH balance, allergies, hormones Greensboro. More info can be found on the painter, professionals such as a who focuses on the fragility of human body, and her Balance diet, lifestyle and emotions talk that featured Tony piece on Greenhill’s Facebook event page.

Ayala, director of the

Create a personalized health and nutrition plan

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(336) 456-4743

3723 West Market Street, Unit–B, Greensboro, NC 27403 jillclarey3@gmail.com www.thenaturalpathwithjillclarey.com

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August 17 — 23, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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FUN & GAMES

T

by Anthony Harrison

BADD rolls Gate City in blocking party

he Gate City All-Stars are rebuilding.

That’s the first fact gleaned from their home opener on Aug. 14 against the Beckley Area Derby Dames All-Stars. It’s the first because the score shouts at you: 29259 in BADD’s favor.

Gate City would be the first

to tell you that, though.

“We know there’s challenges, and we recognize those,” jammer Ashley Ferguson, aka Emma Ture, said after the bout.

Gate City lost crucial players in the offseason, notably jammer and co-captain Dalea Reichgott, better known as Betty Switch, and key blockers, some 5-year veterans.

Jammers score points for their team by lapping the opposing team’s blockers. Blockers, in a self-explanatory role, attempt to thwart the jammer’s efforts to pass. One can see how losing stars in both positions could cripple a team.

They’ve also experienced a coaching change. John Umberger, known as Coach Bash, joined the organization this year.

“He’s calm, very positive,” Ferguson said. “Even if there’s something we’re not doing well, he tries to show us how to improve in a positive way.”

Considering the circumstances, Bash did stay as calm as he possibly could during the first half of play.

Umberger calmly yelled to his team as BADD busted out, establishing an enormous lead in the first few jams thanks to the dominant performances of their jammers.

“Set it up!” Umberger screamed to his blockers. “Get ready, get ready! Stay in contact!”

Rounding the flat track seemingly without effort, the visiting jammers tacked on dozens of points.

BADD’s intensity was up.

“Every time I went out to jam, our blockers held the other jammer, and I just had to keep going,” BADD jammer Tricia Cooke said after the final period.

Yet the BADD jammers always found a way around the Gate City walls.

For instance, Cooke employed the apex jump, a hop over the inside of the turn when opposing blockers situated at the corner.

“It’s an easy way around,” Cooke said. “I’d rather jump than fight through the wall sometimes.”

Meanwhile, the visiting blockers held Gate City to only 4 over the first six jams, and many attempts by Gate City jammers to evade the stop led to penalties, leaving BADD to score at will.

“Our blockers were great switching from D to O, which is always phenomenal,” Lu C-4, real name Lee Mason, said afterwards.

By the time Buster Vicious — Shanna Buster’s nom de guerre — finally broke through BADD’s defense in jam 7

A big part of roller-derby strategy is gumming up the works.

and tacked on 9, the score was 78-13.

During the first half, Vicious was the only Gate City jammer able to produce consistently.

“Their blockers keep walling up, forming a brace-3,” Buster said, referring to a defensive formation where three players form a wide triangle supported at the shoulders. “I’m going for the links, and when I make contact, they’re supposed to drop, or they get a penalty. I’ve been able to push hard on them, disengage quickly, then burst through.”

If Gate City could’ve gummed up the works for BADD from then on, a mad-dash rally remained possible, but the BADD jammers kept up their relentless assault. Sunlight between scores widened: 90-13, 107-22, 116-22, until halftime finally came after jam 18, halting the slaughter at 136-22 for a time.

Coach Bash maintained his resolve during the break, but seemed despondent, the witness of trauma.

“We need to settle down and communicate and work together more,” Umberger said after addressing his team. “They’re doing a good job of keeping us split up. And their blockers are very agile; they’re able to stay with the jammer wherever they are.”

He paused, shook his head, and repeated, “They’re keeping us split up.”

BADD’s jammers realized cracks in the Gate City defensive line in real time.

“They have no plow stop,” Cooke said. “They’ll roll instead of stopping, making holes in the wall, so it’s easy to get through them.”

While Cooke often skipped the curve, other BADD jammers were content to juke.

“If I found a seam I could squeeze through, they couldn’t regroup quick enough,” Erin Hart said with a shrug after the bout. “During practice, our walls swallow us over and over, so it’s maybe a difference in the way we train.”

BADD head coach William Hill echoed the efforts regarding training.

ANTHONY HARRISON

“Our girls have awesome work ethic,” he said while walking the inside track as the BADD Intentions, the Beckley, WV B-team, warmed up for their bout against Greensboro Counterstrike. “They stay together and communicate well. They just observe and work around whatever’s thrown at them.”

Learning the hard lessons from the first half, Gate City improved offensively. But even though jammers Pixel Pusher and Miss Shuggenah joined Buster on the board, BADD more than doubled their own efforts.

The final score seems embarrassing. But, again, the Gate City All-Stars are rebuilding.

“We’re working on building everybody up and building a strong team together where everyone plays a part together,” Ferguson said.

And BADD, gracious winners, acknowledged their opponents’ strengths with respect.

“The score doesn’t always reflect how hard the team was,” Cooke said. “Though there was a big gap, they played awesome.”

And though they made it look easy, the BADD jammers all agreed on one thing: the Gate City All-Stars are heavy hitters.

“I had to prepare myself while on the jam, thinking, They are gonna hit me so hard, so be ready,” Hart laughed.

Pick of the Week Gunga galunga Wyndham Championship @ Sedgefield Country Club (GSO), Thursday-Sunday, 7 a.m.

Tiger’s gone, maybe for good, but some of the current best in the world play in this year’s Wyndham. Rickie Fowler, Kevin Na, Brandt Snedeker, Jim Furyk and actual World Golf Hall of Famer Ernie Els make up some of an impressive field vying for FedEx Cup points. Tee times are 7 a.m. on Thursday and Friday, 8 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

EVENTS

‘Revenge of Inerts’ with an element of surprise, I hope

Thursday, August 18 @8pm

52 Herb-flavored 28-Across 54 He’ll pour you one 56 Slippery fish 57 Frying pan sound 58 It really isn’t butter 59 Cellular tissue that makes up all glands 63 More than want 64 “Other” category, for short 65 Recent NFL Hall of Fame inductee Brett 66 Investigators: Abbr.

67 “No question!”

68 11- or 12-year-old

Renae Paige

by Matt Jones Across

Bob Fleming

Sunday, August 21 @ 8pm

Alli & I

Monday, August 22 @ 8pm

Mystery Movie Monday Tuesday, August 23 @ 8pm

Jazz with Joey

Opinion

602 S Elam Ave • Greensboro

(336) 698-3888

Fun & Games

SUMMER TIME BREW N’ VIEW PRESENTS David Fincher’s “Fight Club” 1999 Masterpiece Starring Brad Pitt & Edward Norton. 8:30 p.m. Saturday, August 20. $6 ticket includes FREE BEVERAGE

Culture

Playing August 20 – 25

Cover Story

1 Conventioneers’ clip-ons 2 One end of the visible spectrum 3 Took on 4 Abbr. on a bad check 5 Centipede creator 6 Kelp, for example 7 Susan Wojcicki, for YouTube 8 Quayle or Marino 9 Brunch offering 10 Not that much 11 Binary 12 Surround, with “on” 13 Band with the album “Abraxas” 18 Abbr. after a former military leader’s name 23 Attempts, with “at” 25 Boxers alternatives

Saturday, August 20 @ 8pm

News

Down

Friday, August 19 @ 8pm

Up Front

1 The Donald’s first wife 6 Band on Butt-head’s T-shirt 10 Elementary school basics 14 “Say that thou ___ forsake me”: Shakespeare 15 “The Owl and the Pussycat” poet Edward 16 ___ Cynwyd, PA 17 Beyond saving 19 “The Heat ___” (“Beverly Hills Cop” song) 20 Zurich peak 21 Stephen of “The Crying Game” 22 It’s often done with soil or fish tanks 24 Suffer a mosquito attack, say 26 Inkling 28 Snapple stuff 29 Hip or Nap follower 30 Feline foot 31 Admitted as a guest 33 He was joint FIFA Player of the Century along with Pele 37 Cube creator Rubik 38 Bygone auto 39 Info 44 Martini & ___ (winemakers) 45 Plumb of “The Brady Bunch” 46 Judith with two Tonys 49 1099-___ (bank tax form) 50 Michael of “Arrested Development”

26 “Unaccustomed as ___ ... “ 27 The Rock’s real first name 30 Not so well off 32 Aphrodite’s beloved 34 Beethoven’s Third, familiarly 35 African antelope 36 Costar of Bea and Betty 39 Board game where players guess what three things have in common 40 Puff the Magic Dragon’s land 41 Address of the Boss’s band 42 Zoologist’s eggs 43 Hard to pin down 47 Nutritional supplement brand in cans 48 Flunkies 51 Axis, to the Allies 52 “___ Interwebs” (sarcastic name for online sites) 53 “___ My Heart in San Francisco” 55 Body ___ (piercings, earlobe stretching, etc.)

56 Do art on metal, e.g.

60 Black coffee go-with 61 “Happiness ___ Warm Puppy” 62 Scientist’s formulation

Open Mic Night

triad-city-beat.com

GAMES

Answers from previous publication.

Games

Star Trek Countdown Featuring the TOP 50 EPISODES of Star Trek. 7 p.m. Wednesday, August 24. FREE ADMISSION!

Totally Rad Trivia

8:30 p.m. Thursday, August 25 $3 Buy In! Up to Six Player Teams! Winners get CASH PRIZE!

©2016 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com)

Beer! Wine! Amazing Coffee!

2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro geeksboro.com •

336-355-7180

All She Wrote

TV Club Presents MR. ROBOT (SEASON PREMIERE!) Based on the hit comic book series! 10 p.m. Wednesday, August 24 Free Admission With Drink Purchase!

Shot in the Triad

--OTHER EVENTS & SCREENINGS--

27

August 17 — 23, 2016

North Davie Street, Greensboro

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Fun & Games

Culture

Cover Story

Opinion

News

Up Front

SHOT IN THE TRIAD

28

Janet Echelman’s “Where We Met” is 35 miles of technical fibers crafted into 242,800 knots, and it has officially changed the Greensboro skyline.

PHOTO BY CAROLYN DE BERRY

triad-city-beat.com Up Front

News

Opinion

Cover Story Culture

Fun & Games

Games

Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

29

August 17 — 23, 2016

ary’s Gourmet Diner

30

(336) 723-7239 • 723 TRADE STREET, W-S

marysgourmetdiner.net • facebook.com/MarysGourmetDiner

triad-city-beat.com

SERVING UP THE BEST OF SUMMER

AND THERE’S PLENTY TO GO AROUND

WINSTON-SALEM OPEN

Winston-Salem, NC • August 20 –27, 2016 WINSTONSALEMOPEN.COM • 336.758.6409

Players subject to change. © 2016 USTA. Photos © Getty Images.

31

Unscramble the letters below the photograph to identify the TCB team.

O

O

o s e r uo w' esome!

Ya

Nice! hair balanceryir

nonreadergj

bergerinicgs

cowreclines

unhairsnotaryho

Great pick!

rearmingjotuo

gradyick

punchiestecco

abnormalsgi

Stop playing hooky!

alienklex

floatersartzine

seamlessjore

rhinoanora

cheererglyn

candleberroyry