TCB April 25, 2019 — Leg Work by Triad City Beat

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point April 25 - May 1, 2019 triad-city-beat.com

GREENSBORO EDITION

Leg

FREE

Work

World Irish Dance Championships come to town PAGE 9

Flowering PAGE 10 Burr go home PAGE 8 About Gateway PAGE 7

PIZZERIA

April 18 - 24, 2019

L’ITALIANO

Large 1-topping pizza

Good through 5/4/19

Monday – Thursday

WE ! DELIVER

4-cheese pizza

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

Order online at pizzerialitaliano.net

every Tuesday, all day

219 S Elm Street, Greensboro • 336-274-4810

Job Opportunity CB Great Fortune INC is looking for a financial manager to develop and implement service plans that outline specific initiatives to increase return visits. Job Req: Minimum Bachelor’s degree. Contact: Xiukuai Zhang, cbgreatfortuneincgreensboro@gmail.com

Where the hell is everybody? I’m sitting in a restaurant right now, having dinner at 8 p.m. on a weeknight. And besides a funky barista, a couple grad students zoned into their glowing laptops by Brian Clarey and an oversharer at the bar who just got off her shift and isn’t sure if she should drink too much coffee, I am the only one here. C’mon, Clarey, you’re thinking. It’s an early weeknight, well past the Triad’s preferred dinner hour, which is exactly 6:30 p.m. Where do you think you are, Las Vegas? To which I say: Sure. Last week, on a beautiful Thursday evening, I went to a free art opening at a non-traditional venue, featuring a known artist and high-quality work based in popular culture. More, it was a commissioned show. An hour into it I was one of four attendees, and the other three came there with the artist. Later that night I happened upon my friend Jon Kirby, a writer, Winston-Salem native and

all-around culturati. He had just got back from the West Coast — Portland, San Francisco, that sort of thing — where, he said, he had been performing “DJ sets for grown folks who aren’t afraid to come out on a weeknight.” “I’m one of those people!” I said. “I thought we were going extinct.” I acknowledge my age — I’m of a generation that understood it was required to go out among the other humans in the evenings with some frequency. Parties. Rock shows. Bars and restaurants. Movies and plays. It was the only way to meet other humans, for purposes of social interaction and, sometimes, mating, or to stay abreast of happenings in the local culture. Now you can do accomplish all of those things on the toilet. Perhaps the whole nightlife thing will eventually become a vestigial piece of our past, a thing old people do, like smoking cigarettes or watching the Weather Channel or getting hammered on gin and tonics in the garage. If this is true, surely, the culture as we dinosaurs know it will suffer. Empty theaters and restaurants have a way of shutting their doors, eventually.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

All of our schools are suffering from a lack of funding. Sometimes we pit schools against schools, and that’s not the mentality we should be having.

— Byron Gladden, Guilford County School Board member

BUSINESS PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR Brian Clarey brian@triad-city-beat.com

PUBLISHER EMERITUS Allen Broach allen@triad-city-beat.com

EDITORIAL SENIOR EDITOR Jordan Green

EDITORIAL INTERN Cason Ragland ART ART DIRECTOR Robert Paquette

jordan@triad-city-beat.com

robert@triad-city-beat.com SALES

sayaka@triad-city-beat.com

gayla@triad-city-beat.com

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Sayaka Matsuoka SPECIAL SECTION EDITOR Nikki Miller-Ka niksnacksblog@gmail.com

STAFF WRITER Lauren Barber lauren@triad-city-beat.com

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336-256-9320 Winston-Salem: From the exhibit STAFF WRITER Savi Ettinger at Old Salem. [Photo by Lauren savi@triad-city-beat.com Barber]

KEY ACCOUNTS Gayla Price CONTRIBUTORS

Carolyn de Berry, Matt Jones

Greensboro: The World Irish Dance Championship came through Greensboro. [Photo by Todd Turner]

April 18 - 24, 2019

April 25 - May 1, 2019

CITY LIFE April 25-28, 2019 by Cason Ragland

The Land of Many Places @ a/perture cinema (W-S), 6:30 p.m. The 2014 documentary will screen in Winston-Salem late in the day. The film reports on displaced farmers who are forced to move from the countryside to the city. One of the subjects is a government official who tries to convince the farmers that they’ll enjoy their new, metropolitan life, and the other is one of the few remaining farmers left in a village. Check out a/ peture’s website for more info. Takeover Thursday: Beagles Takeover the Deck @ the Barking Deck (GSO), 6:30 p.m.

Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

Enjoy U2 but feel uneasy about being in the same room with a man who unironically calls himself the Edge? The GSC will host a laser light show featuring the music of the Irish rock band this Friday. Take a seat underneath the 40-foot dome of the OmniSphere theater and gaze at the dancing lights. Check out the event on Facebook to find out more.

SATURDAY April 27

The hounds will be released today at the Barking Deck. Don’t worry, though, this isn’t a Mr. Burns situation; these pups just want to play. Guests of the human persuasion must be 21 or older while canine visitors must be at least four months old. If you’re interested, take a peek a the event’s page on Facebook.

FRIDAY April 26

Laser U2 @ the Greensboro Science Center (GSO), 7 p.m.

We Out Here 4: The 2019 WinstonSalem Rap Round Robin @ Monstercade (W-S), 8 p.m. Join OG Spliff and many others with special guest Dark Prophet Tongueless Monk this weekend at Monstercade in Winston-Salem. The event will consist of three stages, two emcees for each stage and 36 songs in total performed for one crowd. If you’re interested, take a look at the even’t Facebook page.

Opinion

News

Up Front

THURSDAY April 25

Aspire 2019 @ First Christian Church of High Point (HP), 7 p.m. Aspire 2019 is an event for women and features three hours of entertainment. Author Debbie Alsdorf, comedian Sally Baucke and singer/songwriter Jennifer Shaw will all be speaking and performing this year. If you’d like to know more, check out the event’s page on Facebook.

Opening Day Hoopla @ High Point Farmers Market (HP), 8:30 a.m. Those behind the opening day for the High Point Farmers Market mean it when they use a word like “hoopla.” Not only can you grab some produce, but the entire family is invited to take part in a petting zoo, have their faces painted and enjoy live music. Check out the BHP Chamber of Commerce’s website for more info. Crazy K’z Kidz Races! @ Summit School (W-S), 9 a.m. Crazy Running is an organization whose goal is to introduce the importance of an active lifestyle to children. In cooperation with the Winston-Salem Forsyth County School District, Crazy Running invites families for a kid-friendly trail race at Summit School in Winston Salem. If you find yourself intrigued, check out the event’s Facebook page.

2019 NC Korean Festival @ Center City Park (GSO), 10 a.m. If anything about Korean culture interests you, you’ll more than likely find it this weekend at the 2019 NC Korean Festival. The Korean-American Association of Greater Greensboro and Center City Park at Greensboro Downtown Parks Inc. will host live K-Pop as well as other cultural performances. This event is free and you can find out more on Facebook. Winston-Salem Medicare for All canvass @ Piney Grove Park (W-S), 1 p.m. The Democratic Socialists of America need your help in the Triad this weekend. Their chapter in Winston-Salem plans to canvass and spread the word on nationalized healthcare in the Twin City. To learn more, take a look at the event’s page on Facebook.

SUNDAY April 28

Easter Cookout for African-American History @ Kimberly Park (W-S), 2 p.m. Due to inclement weather, this event was postponed to this Sunday. The activist group Hate Out of Winston plans to ask the Winston-Salem Forsyth County School District to include a mandatory AfricanAmerican Studies program through letters and community surveys. Check out the event’s page on Facebook to find out more. Walk for Recovery! @ Center City Park (GSO), 2 p.m.

This public demonstration calls for solidarity between all those who’ve experience recovery in one way or another. Whether it be through a loved one or experiencing a rehabilitation process yourself, this event welcomes you. If you’d like to register, check out the details section of the event’s Facebook page.

News

We’ve got some new faces around the Triad City Beat newsroom these days, adding essential voices and insight to our publication. But before they can do that, they must be indoctrinated in some of my ways: general rules of professionalism, ethics and etiquette that I’ve learned over more than a decade at the helm. This one came up recently: It is okay to call a source and check quotes, if the reporter has time or some question about her notes, or to fact-check some of the elements of the story. But under no circumstances can anyone outside our newsroom — or, occasionally, our legal team — read our work until it is published.

Up Front

1. Show anyone outside the newsroom the story before it’s published

April 25 - May 1, 2019

6 things you don’t do in our newsroom by Brian Clarey

2. Source from social media

3. Make a sales pitch

Opinion

“Hey! Anyone know anyone who’s unhappy with their landlord?” “Reaching out to Facebook land! What are your favorite sandwiches?” “Where’s the best place to get sake? For a story.” No no no. Reporters are valuable because they know people, they have connections, they can find things out. A reporter who kicks his legwork out to Facebook is a reporter who made a pitch he can’t back up with actual knowledge. And there are no stories at a desk. Let me tell you something: Our writers are not in the ticket-selling business. It is for this reason that we rarely run previews for events, and when we do it’s only for things we truly believe that people need to know about. And even then, any prose encouraging people to “come on out” or “get your tickets early” will be stricken from the piece, and a short lecture will follow. A press release is supposed to alert media about an event they may wish to cover. It is not — not — journalism. This is an ethical issue; bylaws of just about every professional organization in our industry explicitly warns against it, including the NC Press Association, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and the Society of Professional Journalists. Happens all the time, though. But not in our shop.

Culture

4. Run press releases as articles

5. Use first person

Shot in the Triad

It’s true that there are times, even in journalism, when first-person is not only acceptable but also the best way to approach the story. But it’s lazy, and the honest truth for most journalists is that no one cares what they think about the story they’re covering. We enforce a six-week moratorium on first person for our interns, and even our veterans must defend their use of first person when they want to employ it.

6. Write about your friends

Puzzles

In a market like this, it’s almost impossible for journalists to avoid writing about people they know. Sometimes they’re friends. But I strongly advise against pitching stories about your friend’s band, your friend’s business, your friend’s daughter who does these really cool things with yarn. For one, it’s unethical — we studiously avoid subjects with whom we have personal relationships, and when it’s unavoidable we must make full disclosure. But also, and more importantly, they almost always end up hating the story.

April 25 - May 1, 2019 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

NEWS

For Wake students, challenging racism goes beyond apologies by Jordan Green The disclosure that Wake Forest’s dean of admissions and associate dean of admissions posed with the Confederate flag in yearbooks in the 1980s launched a student antiracism movement, but their demands go far beyond apologies for yearbook photos. The revelation that Wake Forest University’s dean of admissions and an associate dean of admissions posed in group photos with the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity displaying the Confederate flag more than three decades ago may have been the spark, but a new burst of student activism to root out racism at the university goes deeper and seeks broader aims. The Wake Forest University AntiRacism Coalition renewed a call for a “zero tolerance” policy against white supremacy during a speak-out that drew upwards of 300 students, faculty, staff, administrators and community allies on Monday, while setting a deadline of Oct. 25 for administration to deliver. They also added a demand for the university to fund a mandatory African-American studies class for every student in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools. Hate Out of Winston, an off-campus ally, is lobbying the school district to implement the curriculum. The previous week, the university formally announced the launch of a President’s Commission on Inclusion, which will include a committee tasked with revising the Wake Forest’s Bias Incident Reporting System. Vice President for Campus Life Penny Rue, one of several administrators who attended the speak-out on Monday, reiterated that the committee will look “at the intersection of bias and freedom of expression.” She declined to address the call for the university to fund African-American studies at public schools throughout Forsyth County, pleading that the matter was “outside of my area.” For his part, President Nathan O. Hatch, who attended the rally, said he was there only “to listen and learn.” The administration had attempted to move past the Confederate flag controversy by arranging a small-group “community conversation” on April 17 for Dean of Admissions Martha Allman and Associate Dean of Admissions Kevin Pittard to apologize for appearing in yearbook photos with the Confederate flag as students at the university in the

1980s. Dissatisfied with what they view as an inadequate response from administration, student activists backed by a segment of progressive faculty members boycotted the event, instead calling on administrators to attend the speak-out on Monday and listen to students. Some, including President Hatch, did attend the speak-out. But when a student organizer extended an invitation to Hatch, Allman and Pittard to publicly apologize in front of the 300 some community members at the speak-out, none stepped forward. Allman said on April 17 that she has no memory of posing for the group photo with the Confederate flag and she was there as the “sweetheart” of the fraternity. The Confederate flag was more visible across the South, on television and on campus at the time, Allman said, adding that she didn’t give it much thought. While preparing to graduate, Allman said she was “engaged to be married to my KA,” and writing her honors history thesis. “I was not politically active,” Allman said. “I was not engaged in discussions about diversity, nor involved in issues of social justice. In retrospect, I’m ashamed of that lack of awareness, but it’s true. I read applications and I meet new students, and I’m aware that there are a lot of students who become aware in their youth, and for others it just takes longer.” But Allman defended her record on diversity as dean of admissions, declaring that her leadership on test-optional admissions has removed barriers for non-white students. Allman said Wake Forest was the first Top 30 university to implement the policy in 2008. She said that non-white undergraduate enrollment doubled from 6 percent when she graduated in 1982 to 12 percent when she took over leadership of the admissions office in 2001, and now exceeds 30 percent. A September 2018 study published in The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that total minority enrollment among undergraduate, graduate and professional school students at Wake Forest in the fall of 2016 was 21.1 percent, and only 8.3 percent were black, compared to 26 percent of the population of Forsyth County, and 21.5 percent of the population of North Carolina. Steve Boyd, a professor of religion, said the pace of progress in increasing

Aries Powell, with the Wake Forest University Anti-Racism Coalition, addresses students, faculty, administration and community allies on Monday.

African-American enrollment over the course of his 35 years at Wake Forest is unacceptable. “We’re not reflective of the community we’re in,” said Boyd, who attended the speak-out on Monday. “This semester I have 40 students in two classes — no African-Americans. So, one issue I’m really concerned about — we could do something about this — we need to recruit African-American students, faculty and administrators. It’s got to be an educational and budget priority for our trustees, the administration and also faculty.” Several African-American students described a climate of persistent racism in their educational and social experiences at Wake Forest University, while faulting administrators for being unresponsive or at best responding to crises with what one student described as “impromptu and quickly crafted emails.” “I understand that there is a question about infringing on people’s First Amendment right, but personally I think that my right to not get up every single day and be harassed or belong to a group that is constantly oppressed and have to drag myself out of bed every day to go to class is more important of a right than someone’s First Amendment right to harass me,” said Taylor Folks, a junior. Allman’s public, in-person apology — the second after an initial statement via email — on April 17, provided an op-

JORDAN GREEN

portunity for administration to announce the President’s Commission on Inclusion, but also to reinforce a previous announcement about an expanded role for Allman as senior assistant provost and dean of university integration, beginning on July 1. As such, Provost Rogan Kersh said, Allman will be part of “a much more coherent and focused effort to be a responsible partner with our community colleagues,” while adding that Wake Forest has a “burgeoning set of opportunities in Boston-Thurmond.” Allman’s elevation to a post where she will engage with the lower-income predominantly black community highlights a tender subject for Wake Forest, which like many universities has found itself accused of gentrification and pushing out longstanding black residents. Students honed in on that issue on Monday. “This is about Wake Forest’s ‘renewal project,’ the university’s continued adverse impact on the Boston-Thurmond neighborhood and the continued gentrification of historically black areas of Winston-Salem,” said senior Aries Powell, reading a statement on behalf of the Anti-Racism Coalition. “This is about an institution that pours money into building facilities for a predominantly white student body while it refuses to acknowledge the effects that these decisions have on the black and brown populations of this city.”

By Sayaka Matsuoka The Guilford County Commission voted to delay the passage of funding for new career technical education programs after parents of students at a public school for children with disabilities spoke out this week.

Up Front SAYAKA Dozens of parents showed up to the board of education meeting on April 17 MATSUOKA to protest the proposed closure of Gateway Education Center.

Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

Hampton has been closed, its students diverted to Reedy Fork Elementary. If Hampton closes permanently, students will remain at Reedy Fork or go to Simkins Elementary or Falkener Elementary, depending on their new school zones. The proposed 2019-20 budget stated that a survey of Hampton parents in April showed that most wanted to transfer to Simkins or Falkener and that the proceeds from insurance will be used to design a new combined Hampton-Peeler school. A public hearing for closing Hampton is scheduled for April 30. Gladden believes that a proposed bond referendum, which he says will hopefully be presented to voters within the next year, is the best way to fix schools with the worst issues. The last time voters approved a school facilities bond was in 2008 for $457 million. “I want them all fixed,” Gladden said. “But there is a process. I’m hoping that the county commissioners respect that process. Don’t take from children to give to children because then we’ll have those parents coming to protest. “We have to tackle the schools with the greatest needs first,” he continued. “We prioritize from the projects that absolutely cannot be put off anymore. Some of these schools are past patching.” Gladden said that he supports Gateway staying open but that there is still a process for funding schools. “I respect the organization of Gateway,” he said. “I respect how special Gateway is; all schools are special to us. But if the county commissioners touch that funding, we’re gonna have to tell students which programs won’t open.”

Opinion

Byron Gladden warned against the commission taking money from the proposed budget, which was released on April 17, to set up funding for Gateway. He mentioned an evolving list of schools maintained by the board that ranks facilities by priority for renovations, insisting that the rankings should be followed. In a phone interview on April 18, Gladden reiterated the fact that fixing schools and finding funds to do so is a difficult and involved process. “All of our schools are suffering from a lack of funding,” Gladden said. “Sometimes we pit schools against schools, and that’s not the mentality we should be having.” Gladden represents District 7, which includes Gateway as well as Hampton Elementary, which was severely damaged in the April 2018 tornadoes and was recommended for closure by Superintendent Contreras this week. Gladden said Gateway parents are not the only ones that have concerns for their students. During the school board meeting, Gladden elevated the voices of Hampton parents who could not attend the session. “I wanted to uplift the fact that although Hampton parents could not be here physically, they have been calling. They have been emailing,” Gladden said. “I want to be very clear that Hampton does have a voice; it is very strong in spite of the socioeconomic conditions of east Greensboro, and Hampton is a sister school to Gateway…. We all have sacred cows and schools that we love and treasure, but if it happens to one, it happens to them all.” Since being damaged in April 2018

News

The Guilford County Commission voted 8-1 on the evening of April 18 to delay a vote on whether to allocate funding for six new proposed career technical education, or CTE, academies after parents of students at Gateway Education Center advocated last week for funding to fix their school. In February, the Guilford County School Board approved a resolution to create six new CTE academies as magnet school options. They asked the county commission to use $7 million from prior general obligation bonds, transfers from the general fund and other miscellaneous revenues remaining in existing project ordinances to create the new programs. Commissioner Skip Alston said the board decided to postpone the vote to get more information from the school system. “We want to see what the main priorities are,” Alston said. Several parents of students at Gateway Education Center voiced their concerns at a school board meeting on April 17 as well as the county commission meeting on April 18, asking the boards to fund renovations. On April 15, Guilford County Schools Superintendent Sharon Contreras said that she would recommend the school board to close Gateway, which serves students with significant disabilities from pre-K through age 22, after the district found issues such as water leaks, pest control, raw sewage, clogged toilets and poor air quality at the school. However, during the April 17 school board meeting, Contreras changed her stance and said that the school would remain open after many parents spoke out. “Closing Gateway should be a last resort,” said Cassidy MacKay, a parent of a student at the school during the April 18 county commission meeting. “What I really just want to ask you guys tonight is for us to work together, to think outside the box and most urgently to come up with funds immediately to fix our beloved school.” Contreras’s statement came days after Gateway parents received misleading calls and letters from the school’s principal stating that the center would

close after this school year. A copy of the letter, which was uploaded to Facebook, stated that “school-aged students who currently attend Gateway will attend Haynes-Inman, a state-of-the-art facility starting in August of this year.” “Certainly, I’ve made the best recommendation possible in order to keep these children safe,” Contreras said in the press release. “Nevertheless, Board Chair Deena Hayes and I agree: If Gateway parents wish for students to remain the building given the condition, we will not insist that Gateway students move from a building they love.” Despite the April 17’s session designation as a budget session without a public comment period, dozens of parents and advocates for Gateway filled the board of education room to protest the proposed closing of the school. Supporters, who brought several current and past Gateway students, held signs with slogans such as “Fix Gateway, No Mold,” “I can’t talk but I have a voice” and “Fix and keep Gateway: What if it was your child?” After Contreras made the clarification that the school would not close, board member Darlene Garrett made a motion to ask the county commission — which includes Board Chair Alan Branson who was at the meeting — to divert at least $2 million from money currently allocated for CTE programs to fix Gateway this summer, garnering enthusiastic applause from the audience. “If the superintendent really wants to put her money where her mouth is, she will say right now, ‘We need to fix Gateway,’” Garrett said. And while board member Linda Welborn eventually seconded the motion, the school board’s attorney eventually explained that because the meeting was a just budget meeting, that they could not vote on items. When asked if the outpouring of support for Gateway swayed the board’s decision to delay the passage of funding for the CTE programs, Alston said yes. “That’s one of the reasons,” he said. “And we wanted to see if there’s any way we can come to a win-win situation.” Alston said that the board will wait until its next meeting on May 16 to vote on the CTE funding. In the meantime, he said that the county commission will meet with the school board to explore different possibilities. Prior to the county commission meeting on April 18, school board member

April 25 - May 1, 2019

Gateway parents fight for funding as commissioners weigh priorities

April 25 - May 1, 2019 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

OPINION

EDITORIAL

Removing Richard Burr from the saddle

NC Policy Watch Director Rob Schofield issued a more or less complete evisceration of Sen. Richard Burr last week, calling him “a classic, inoffensive, modern-day American politician” and a “right-ofcenter weathervane” who “stakes out enough ultraconservative positions to keep far-right challengers at bay, mostly avoids embracing the extremists on the fringe and will, on rare occasion, do the right thing on a tiny handful of issues.” This evaluation came on April 18, a few hours after the Mueller report revealed that our senior senator briefed the White House on the details of Mueller’s investigation before it came out,, which may be illegal. More than that, he tipped the intelligence committee’s hand on the Senate investigation in Russian election meddling, of which Burr himself was in charge. We remind you that Burr is also ranking chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It also seems germane that Burr announced in July 2016 — just a few months before winning re-election Richard Burr — that he would not seek a checked out fourth term in the Senate. And Burr joined the years ago. Trump campaign as an advisor shortly after he was Time to make briefed as intel chair on the it official. FBI investigation into the campaign. It would be one thing if Burr simply checked out. But it’s quite another for him to be tipping off the subject of Senate and federal investigations. That is an abdication of his duty as a US senator, who must take the same oath as the president to “defend the Constitution of the United States from enemies both foreign and domestic.” Burr seems as unconcerned about the responsibilities of his office as he does about the fact — established by the Mueller report — that Russian agents meddled in the 2016 US election, and they got the outcome they wanted. And his defense of his possibly treasonous action — that he doesn’t remember the conversation with Trump — is a steaming pile of crap. Either he’s lying, which is what any reasonable politician would do in his situation, or even worse: He’s telling the truth. That would mean that, he’s capable of breaching all sorts of national security protocol without ever remembering he did so. It’s like Dory in Finding Nemo, except she knows our country’s greatest secrets. In either case, we’ve had enough of Richard Burr. So we’re joining Politics NC, the WRAL editorial board and everybody else who cares about our state and our country in insisting that Sen. Burr hand in his resignation now instead of making us wait until 2022 to replace him. Decency demands it. As do the rules of the US Senate.

CITIZEN GREEN

Law enforcement tries to head off the next mass shooter-

Feverishly plotting the narrative of his short story “The Minority Report” in 1956, with its team of mutant precogs feeding information to the Precrime Division allowing agents to arrest suspects based on a prediction that they will commit crimes in the future, science fiction by Jordan Green writer Philip K. Dick might have instead imagined the BeTA Unit, which was unveiled at the UNCG Police headquarters on Gate City Boulevard in Greensboro in the year 2019. Dozens of law enforcement personnel, including an undercover officer the head of the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, members of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and NC State Bureau of Investigation, as well as officers from agencies across the state from the Elizabeth City Police Department to Appalachian State University Police, including a handful of undercover officers, sat at long tables on Tuesday drinking coffee and absorbing a fast-paced lecture from Gregory Glod and Clem Hourican, security consultants with Aegis Threat Management. The instructors discussed the behaviors of Adam Lanza, who carried out the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary mass shooting, and Dylann Roof, who perpetrated the 2015 massacre at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, SC, as case studies. A former supervisor with the protective intelligence division of the US Secret Service, Hourican told the students that in addition to grappling with mental health issues, anger and social isolation, Lanza became immersed in violent, first-person shooter online video games, in which players can chat with each other in real time. “That’s a little too technical for me — I couldn’t figure it out,” Hourican joked. “But I understand there’s more technically astute people in law enforcement these days, thank God.” If one gained access to the game chats, Hourican said, they would have found Lanza talked frankly “about what he thought about young children, thought about other people, his very carefree attitude about violence.” If they could have seen him in his home life, they would found that “he ended up staying in his room, which was covered in tinfoil literally for about three months without coming out and having contact with another human. These are all very odd behaviors, I think we can all agree on that.” BeTA, short for the Behavioral Threat Assessment Unit, part of the NC State Bureau of Investigation, was conceived by agency Director Robert Schurmeier and Brent Herron, the associate vice president for safety & emergency operations at the UNC System, shortly after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. in February 2018. Herron, himself a former Secret Service agent, brought the idea to Schurmeier. SBI personnel traveled to Washington DC to study the approach taken by the Protective Intelligence Division of Secret Service to targeted violence, and then to Quantico, Va. to meet with the behavioral analysis unit of the FBI. As of Tuesday, when the model program was officially rolled out, Schurmeier said the SBI analysts and an agency psy-

JORDAN Clem Hourican, a consultant with Aegis Threat GREEN Management, discusses the Sandy Hook shooting with law enforcement officers from North Carolina and Florida.

chologist are working with local law enforcement partners on 30 cases, “some in various stages of inactivity, and others… being actively pursued.” “We took back best practices of both [Secret Service and the FBI] and created a unique — and we think it’s the first of its kind program to identify and mitigate people on the path to targeted violence,” Schurmeier told reporters at a press conference on the first floor of UNCG Police headquarters on Tuesday. To be fair, the BeTA Unit and its local law enforcement partners are focusing on behavior as a predictor of violence, not a “hydrocephalic idiot” that generates reports for analysis by a computer, as Dick envisioned it. But the analogy is not completely off: Rather than working backwards from a crime to develop evidence establishing probable cause to arrest a suspect, officers are attempting to build intelligence needed to anticipate an attack before it’s carried out. The behavioral based threat assessment management model was developed by the Secret Service in 1995, said Russell Palarea, president of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals. While federal agencies have been using the model for more than two decades, he said “by and large” the model “has not been incorporated into the fabric of [local] law enforcement culture.” “Instead of conducting a criminal investigation, we conduct an investigation into risk factors for violence, identifying those risk factors, looking for behaviors of concern and specifically looking at behavior,” Palarea said. “What is someone doing to prepare for an attack? Once we see movement toward the attack, then a variety of strategies can be conducted that may involve arrest, but it also may involve hospitalization. Or it may involve talking with someone to tell them not to commit the attack. Find pro-social ways to solve their problems. Get inside their head.”

April 25 - May 1, 2019

CULTURE Irish dancers of the world step into Greensboro By Sayaka Matsuoka

Up Front News Opinion

The 2019 World’s Irish Dancing Championship was held in Greensboro over the weekend. It’s just the third time the competition has been held in the US.

Puzzles

plex,” she says. “There’s a continued refinement and progression that I find so very unique.” And even though the dancing has its roots in tradition, Hall says the art form continues to change each year. “We are not performing a standard form of dance,” she says. “Our dance continues to evolve. Teachers introduce new refinements and each year brings something new and yet we stay rooted.” This year, dancers from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and even Mexico gathered at the world championships to compete after qualifying at one of the 27 regional competitions. Nibhriain says the girls and women’s categories tend to be the largest but that there are several men and boys who compete too. And while many perform solo, several dancers also perform as a team. In a large ballroom, Eva Ennis eagerly waits for her daughter Tara Shea, 17, to dance with her team. A group of eight girls, each dressed in pink with large, bouncy curls that would put Dolly Parton to shame, march onto the stage. Ennis stifles her breath as she watches the girls hold hands, skipping and weaving swiftly through the rows during the routine. “It’s evolved into a sport,” says Ennis who traveled from Savannah, Ga., to be here. “It’s kind of a way of life. My daughter knows nothing else.” And that’s how Irish dancing is, says Hall. She says that the artform is addictive and kind of like a disease. “Once you get the bug, you just are never really going to leave Irish dancing,” she says. “It stays with you for a lifetime.”

Shot in the Triad

shows that King placed 27th this year. Megan Whelan, a 28-year-old dancer from the Triangle, sits towards the side of the room, observing dancers like Kelly. “I look at what I am doing versus what they are doing and learning how I can be better,” says Whelan, who didn’t qualify for the competition this year. She’s been dancing since she was 12 but took a break to go to college when she was 18. She says she returned to dancing when she was 24 and has been trying to catch up ever since. “I’ve always loved sports, but this is the one thing I could do forever,” Whelan says. According to Orfhlaith Nibhriain, a spokesperson for the competition, the interest in Irish dancing is growing. “The competitive scene is something that’s gone very global,” Nibhriain says. “Formerly it was people who had a link to Ireland or to Ireland’s diaspora but I would have to say that in a post-Riverdance, post-Lord of the Dance show scenario, we have people who are becoming part of that Irish dance community who… fell in love with the culture but don’t necessarily have actual family there.” The simplicity of Irish dance is what makes it easy for anyone to get started, says Anne Hall, a dance teacher and marketing professional for the competition. “It is rooted in a very traditional form of folk dance that is quite simple and can be learned by anybody,” she says. “Children after their first class, they can get up and perform a dance.” Hall illustrates the light jig, the first two steps that every dancer learns in Irish dance. She kicks her foot in front of her body then folds her leg around her other leg, then slips it behind and repeats the movement. “It goes from simple to more complex to even more com-

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elly King kicks her foot up in the air, so high that it looks like she could smack herself in the face with it. She steps swiftly back and forth on the stage, her bright-green bedazzled outfit glimmering as it refracts lights from above the stage. King is one of the 5,000 dancers — including girls, boys, men and women — who gathered at the Koury Convention Center in Greensboro last week to compete in the 2019 World’s Irish Dancing Championship. It’s only the third time the competition, which is celebrating its 49th year, has been held in United States. King says that of the 50 or so Irish dancers in the city, she and her sister were the only ones to qualify for the world championship. Friends and fans, especially young girls, come up to King after her performance to congratulate her on her routine; a few ask for a photograph. King’s been dancing since she was 4 years old. These days she practices at least three times a week, and in the months leading up to a major competition like this one, she also trains at a studio in Charlotte on the weekends. “Time-management is the hardest thing,” says King, who is a sophomore studying business and marketing at UNCG. When she’s not practicing, she’s teaching other kids to dance at her local studio. “Dance is kinda my life,” King says. Having traveled as far as Glasgow, Scotland to compete in the world championships last year, King says she was shocked when the competition came to her hometown. “I never thought that in a million years that it would be held in Greensboro,” King says. The location was decided after the Greensboro Convention Center won a bid to host the competition. Since then, King says she’s been posting on social media accounts about things to do in the city. She’s even helped answer visitors’ questions like where to find good vegetarian food or where to get their nails done. King competes in the ladies under-21 category and has won regionals the past two years and placed 33rd at last year’s world championships. This year is her seventh time competing on the world stage. A look at the final scores on Sunday

April 25 - May 1, 2019 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

CULTURE The languages of flowers in Moravian Wachovia by Lauren Barber

ith the Moravian community it was basically two things over and over again: roses and forget-me-nots,” archivist J. Eric Elliott says. “In German, forget-me-not is actually forget-mine-not. The German story is of two forlorn lovers walking along the River Rhine, and for some reason the guy falls off the cliff and as he falls he says, ‘Forget mine not!,’ which means, ‘Forget my love not.’” The Moravian Archives in WinstonSalem holds 265 years of community history in the forms of family collections, correspondences, diaries, travel books and newspapers, as well as the ongoing stories of flowers in Moravian society. The Languages of Flowers in Moravian Wachovia exhibit, examining the heritage of the Moravians’ employment of flowers in five distinct ways, and the legacy of those floral languages, will be on display in the lobby of the Archie K. Davis Center through April 30 before traveling to the Bethania Visitor Center and the Forsyth County Central Library. Languages is the first of three related exhibits; the second, anticipated this summer, will shine light on four distinguished Moravian botanists and the third will focus on the local evolution of gardens over the last 150 years. Lewis David de Schweinitz, a renowned natural historian and mycologist who served as the administrator for the Moravian Church in Salem from 1812-21, was among these scientistpreachers. During his lifetime, he identified thousands of species of fungi in the

Flowers were inportant in Moravian society for their healing powers, but also for their symbolism.

MORAVIAN ARCHIVES, WINSTON-SALEM

region and would co-found the Academy of Natural Sciences 40-year survey of Maria Schaaf’s birthday cards evinces the in Philadelphia. comparatively formal designs favored by friends still living Carl Linnaeus had introduced binomial nomenclature, the in Europe, in which ornate flowers encircle birthday wishes. formal two-term scientific naming system in Species PlantaWhile the earliest cards feature explicitly religious themes and rum, in 1753, the same year the Moravians settled in colonial scripture, an increasingly collegial tone emerges and focus North Carolina. Like their peers shifts to the floral embellishin Europe, the educated populace ments that adorn devotional verse took to designating new species numbers. Learn more at moravianarchives.org on long, leisurely walks, as eviOn display nearby, a page in an and visit at 457 S. Church St. (W-S). denced in handwritten artifacts in unmarked book features a hand the exhibit, which first analyzes painting of a pink rose “embracMoravians’ relationship to flowers ing” a white one with its vine. This through the lens of natural history appealing artwork yields deeper and botany studies. meaning when placed in context of the Single Sisters House in Flowers’ utility, the Salem community, built to provide single women and girls too, mattered to (who wore pink ribbons) and widows (who wore white) with the Moravians — the housing and space for community service. first known record “What more symbolic gesture of sisterhood than the of a planned garden younger woman, as a flower, putting her arm around the with a plant list widow,” Elliott says. from 18th Century But the Moravians valued aesthetic beauty for simple pleaAmerica is from this sure’s sake, too, as revealed in old photographs and diaries. An community — but early 19th Century diary of Susanna Elisabeth Kramsch is one artifact that illustrates each of these languages. communication and “She would walk around the neighborhood picking up celebration tradisamples of flowers and she would write about them just as tions illuminate her husband did: scientifically,” Elliott says. “It was scientific nuances of cultural knowledge mixed with a diary of all the terrible things hapnorms. pening in her life, particularly her husband Samuel’s ongoing Outside of symillness. So why would she pick up a flower? Well, you can make bolic language in a tea with yarrow flower to help soothe someone’s stomach; autograph books it symbolizes lasting love and hope; it also could be that it was and artwork, a happy memory, that [she and Samuel] used to collect them changes in Moravian together because it was such an everywhere plant. It’s the kind birthday customs, of thing that puts some humanity into [a text] that would in particular, offer otherwise be flat.” unique insight. A

by Savi Ettinger

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Bugs in jars in HPU’s Mobile STEM Lab.

SAVI ETTINGER

Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

her is making a bracelet. Red begin to stand. She grips a mirplastic chains pop against the ror with her free hand and her neon green tablecloth. A teen jaw drops as her hair heightens. holds a magnet to a dollar, his After the girl steps offstage, eyes widening as the bill seemManka opens a cooler to show ingly float towards it, due to the off dry ice, as nearly unanimous tiny bits of metal in the ink. hands raise to be a part of the Down the hall, Alison Manka next experiment. She places the ushers families and guests into dry ice in a blue bowl, covering a showroom, her white lab the top with soap. A bubble excoat reaching near the floor. As pands slowly, iridescent steaks people file in, filling the rows of enveloping the gas inside. When chairs while others lean against it pops, silvery carbon dioxide the wall, she steps up on stage spills out over the black table. for a scientific performance. A line forms as Manka hoses “A lot of these things,” Manka the CO2 gas through a soapy wand, creating a more palpable says, “are experiments you can’t version of do at home.” bubbles, She gesheavier than tures to a meThe Greensboro Scitheir runtallic sphere ence Center is located of-the-mill that should at 4301 Lawndale Drive. counterparts. conduct Audience electricity For other events and members of into somemore information, visit all ages rush one’s hair. greensboroscience.org. up, putting Manka invites on gloves to a small girl up protect their front, asking hands, but her to place Manka ensures the youngest a hand on a gray orb twice the ones get to experience science elementary-schooler’s size. She first-hand. A toddler holds her steadily positions her fingers covered hands out, and Manka on it, pushing her palm down smiles as a fog-filled bubble when she realizes it won’t shock plops out into her tiny grasp. her. Manka flips the switch and “Get ’em hooked while they’re slowly individual strawberryyoung,” Manka laughs. blonde strands on the girl’s head

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speckled butterfly floats in suspended animation inside a liquid-filled jar. The jar sits among others in a row, lined up on the shelf attached to the purple bus parked in front of the Greensboro Science Center. A young man leans in closer to one, examining the large beetle preserved inside. The display makes up one portion of High Point University’s Mobile STEM Lab, which extends past the bus itself. Tables set up with buoyancy experiments and a telescope beckon visitors to the center before they reach the front door on a Saturday morning, setting the collaborative Science Extravaganza in motion. The event plays a role in the annual North Carolina Science Festival, an annual statewide spree of STEM-related activities. Martha Regester, vice president of education at the center, stops at a table demonstrating beekeeping equipment. She pulls out a slat of a bee box to reveal not honeycomb, but posters with facts and figures about pollinator behavior. Aside from the science center’s offerings, community partners section off areas of the building to engage with audiences. “We’ve got a really rich resource of science right here in the Triad,” Regester says. Microscopes line the bus’s interior, as visitors examine the lattices of leaves and the patterns of insects in chrysalis. Veronica Segarra, assistant professor of biology at High Point University, feels that interactive elements make STEM more wide-reaching. “We don’t all have access to the tools of science,” Segarra says. Down a spiral staircase inside the center, a massive pendulum sways to keep the time. Around its gravity-regulated swing, NC A&T University hosts a medley of nanotechnology demonstrations. A student from the engineering program squirts water onto a khaki-colored fabric. Rather than soaking into the cloth, the droplets gather together and slip right off, leaving it dry. Salil Desai, an engineering professor, explains that nanotechnology takes the form of a waterproof coating. A passing man grabs the fabric, feeling for himself that the fabric remained dry. “Its impact is only relevant,” Desai says, “if the public knows about it.” A girl at height with the table exclaims that the 3-D printer in front of

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CULTURE NC Science Festival rolls through GSO

April 25 - May 1, 2019

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1 “Buenos Aires” musical 6 A plus 11 “Power Is Power” singer born Sol·na Imani Rowe 14 Moses’ mountain 15 Renault vehicle marketed in the U.S. with a sorta-French name 16 Singer Benatar 17 It may be stunning 18 It’s put on when being courageous 20 Decays 22 “___ my case” 23 Cereal with a cuckoo mascot 26 Hercules’ stepmother 30 Social critter 31 Krypton, e.g. 32 Number of novels in “The ©2017 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) Chronicles of Narnia” 33 First lady between Eleanor and Mamie 35 Ring arbiter 37 Epic that includes the Trojan Horse 38 Delivery person in a brown uniform 41 He played House 44 Reddit event full of questions 45 Early WWI river battle site 49 Dark-to-light hair coloring trend 50 Gp. led by Mahmoud Abbas 52 It may be a snap Answers from last issue 53 Pre-”Happy Days” Ron Howard role 24 Undivided 54 Host of “The Voice” 25 Like thrift-shop goods 58 Make amends 27 March 16, for St. Patrick’s Day (hey, someone 60 It may come before overcast weather tried it) 61 Blockaded 28 Big name in camping gear 65 PC platform with command lines 29 As well as 68 World Cup chant 32 “What’d I tell you?!” 69 Flash drives, memory cards, etc. 34 Phantasmagoric 70 Some laptops 36 Address for a monk 71 Ditch 37 “Elena of ___” (Disney Channel cartoon) 72 Campus head, in headlines 39 Diner order 73 Movie studio that the beginnings of the 5 40 Little demons theme answers have in common 41 Place to go in England? 42 Guitar store buy Down 43 Where, in Latin 46 Stretchy fabric 1 Suffix with winning or best, slangily 47 Nigiri fish, maybe 2 By way of 48 Singer LaMontagne 3 Category for fleas, but not ticks 51 Like most itineraries 4 1990s cardio fad 54 Software writer 5 Steering wheel safety device 55 Battery terminal 6 Calgary’s prov. 56 Do more repairs on 7 It’s absent in the Impact font seen in many memes 57 Plural seen way more in Ancient Greek history 8 Cold-weather wear than in the modern decathlon 9 Roof overhangs 59 Short-term worker 10 ___ leches cake 61 Took home 11 Hotel amenity 62 Comedian Siddiq 12 Efron of “17 Again” 63 Superman foe’s name 13 Emulated Matt Stonie 64 “King Kong” actress Wray 19 Early Civil War battle site in Tenn. 66 “Let You Love Me” singer Rita 21 Hardly packed 67 Lithuania, once (abbr.) 23 Ride around town, maybe

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