TCB Dec. 8, 2022 — The Return of FemFest

FEMFEST ’22

LEGACY CONTINUES

by James Douglas|

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

Roy Carroll, Greensboro’s oligarch

n its most recent install ment of its “Billionaires” series, Forbes magazine profiled Roy Carroll, the richest man in the Triad (probably) and the only one who owns a su peryacht (again, probably).

The story is rife with typical myth-building tropes: how he bought his first house at 14 with money saved up from mowing lawns, how he dropped out of college, his collec tion of limited-edi tion Ferraris and an obligatory reference to Warren Buffet, the patron saint of billion aires everywhere.

There’s no mention of the Rhino Times, the conservative newspaper he res cued from insolvency in 2013, nor is there any word of his recent individual political contribu tions — about $5,000 each to Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, NC Senate President Phil Berger, Greensboro City Council member Zack Matheny and Bill Saffo, the mayor of Wilmington. But these are the things that make him not merely a billionaire — not as rare as they used to be! — but an oligarch.

Idants could ever hope to possibly spend, while oligarchs, convinced of the superiority conveyed upon them by their many millions, seek to shape the world to be even more favorable to their interests.

Oligarchs, convinced of the superiority conveyed upon them by their many millions, seek to shape the world to be even more favorable to their interests.

For example, Carroll’s hotel/apart ment/retail complex in downtown Greensboro would not have hap pened had the city not granted him a couple blocks of Lindsay Street in 2014, emaciating the traffic pattern in a crowded corner of the city. In 2015, he almost succeeded in reshaping Greensboro City Council with the help of former state Sen. Trudy Wade, ostensibly because the current council wasn’t “business friendly” enough. He eventually backed off of that one — Carroll didn’t get where he is by backing losers. But let’s not forget the hundreds of abandoned Rhino Times boxes strewn across the county, made derelict after the Rhino became an online-only publication in 2018. Those orange monstrosities have been collecting garbage and taking up space on city sidewalks for almost five years.

It’s a pretty fine line between the two, the difference being that billion aires are content just to have more money than they and their descen

But I suppose those things only matter here, where he lives in a pent house 18 floors above Elm Street in downtown Greensboro, as aptly documented by Forbes

It’s not littering if you’re an oligarch.

by Brian Clarey

by MICHAELA RATLIFF

THURSDAY Dec. 8

Jamaica Coast Food Truck @ Terminal Tap (GSO) 4 p.m.

SATURDAY Dec. 10

A Christmas Carol: The Musical @ High Point Commu nity Theatre (HP) 2 p.m. High Point Community Theatre takes you on a musi cal journey as the cranky Christmas-hating Ebenezer Scrooge is forced to face and change his selfish ways after being visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. Purchase tickets at hpct.net/ events/christmas-carol-2022

A Christmas Story: The Musical! @ Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance (W-S) 3 p.m.

SUNDAY Dec. 11

Boxcar Holiday Pop-Up Market @ Boxcar Bar + Arcade (GSO) 12 p.m.

Enjoy the tropical tastes of Jamaica Coast Food Truck until 8 p.m. before watching some Thursday night football.

FRIDAY Dec. 9

Soul Revival @ High Point Yoga School (HP) 6 p.m. High Point Yoga School is hosting free yoga classes this month as part of the yoga teacher trainees’ final exam. No registration required. Find more information on the event page on Facebook.

Enjoy this musical based on A Christmas Story pre sented by Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance. 9-year-old Ralphie Parker is on a mission to obtain his Holy Grail of Christmas gifts, but he reaches several obstacles along the way. Purchase tickets at theatrealliance.ws/ box_office

Support local businesses this holiday season during Boxcar’s Holiday Pop-Up Market. Enjoy video games, $1 mimosas and items from more than 15 local vendors. Visit the event page on Facebook for a list of confirmed vendors and more information.

Corner Farmers Market in GSO faces uphill battle against sudden health department restrictions

by Sayaka Matsuoka

COURTESY PHOTO

Kathy Newsom is exhausted.

For the last few months, she’s been working nonstop to help the dozens of vendors at the Corner Farmers Market in Greensboro make sense of new restrictions put in place by the Guilford County Health Department.

First contact with the department at the end of August took Newsom — the market’s manager — by surprise. She said that an employee with the health depart ment emailed her out of the blue and said that they had been made aware that she was operating a farmers market, and that all of the vendors would have to provide various kinds of paperwork to be up to code.

“I was just like, ‘Really? Because we were set up in a parking lot in a kind of pop ular corner for quite some time, and we’ve never had issues at all with the health department,’” Newsome said.

Originally the market was started in 2013 by three farmers in the parking lot of Sticks and Stones in the Lindley Park neighborhood. In 2021, after eight years at that location, the Corner Market moved to the parking lot of St. Andrews Episco pal Church off of Market Street just a few minutes away. And since its inception, they’ve never had any problems, Newsom said.

“No customer has ever said anything,” she said. “Nobody has ever asked me about health codes. Nobody is doing anything that’s not safe.”

Now, as the market approaches its 10-year anniversary, the health department is asking to inspect all of the more than 40 vendors for things like ServSafe certifica tions, liability insurance and kitchen safety.

The part revolving around where people are physically making their food is the most problematic, according to Newsom, because most vendors make their food out of their homes, and some of them have pets. But that violates county health code.

Finding another place to cook, like a community kitchen, is expensive.

“Most folks have gone to Short Street in Kernersville and Out of the Garden’s commercial kitchen, and neither one is cheap,” Newsom said. “Nothing is as cheap as staying at home; it’s inconvenient, it’s expensive. It adds to every piece of mer chandise that you bring to market.”

According to one vendor, there is a $100 deposit to use Out of the Garden’s kitchen and use of the kitchen costs $15 per hour. Fridge space costs $10 per shelf while dry storage costs $5 per shelf.

So far, at least one vendor has had to stop selling goods at the market altogether

because of the sudden changes. Newsom said that on average, the market has about 40 vendors every week. And it’s affecting each vendor differently, she said.

“With every vendor, it’s different,” she said. “If they’re cooking they have to have a certified kitchen at home or wherever they go. Beyond that, there’s inspections by several different levels of agencies. I’ve never had to walk anybody through it. It’s not a simple thing you can Google.”

And despite Newsom’s best efforts, the process is really between each individual vendor and the county health department and not with the market as a whole. So some vendors are better off than others.

“Some of them need a lot of reassurance,” Newsom said. “Others have handed me a stack of paperwork no problem.”

But for many at the market, English isn’t their first language and they’re nervous, Newsom said.

Of the 45 vendors they have, about half are women-led, a dozen are Black- or Brown-owned and seven are operated by first-generation immigrants. Sixteen are farms for which the market is their main source of income. Five out of the eight vendors who have had to make major changes are Black or Brown vendors, New som said. A few vendors have stopped selling temporarily.

“For many, if not most, our market is their primary sales outlet,” Newsom said. “The vending that they do at the market may be the sole source of income for their family. Not to imply that anyone shouldn’t have to ‘play by the rules,’ but just to give you an idea of who is in our vendor family, and why I don’t want to lose anyone as a result of this process. This market is important to them and they are important to us, and to their customers.”

‘It’s not about safety’

Taylor Dankovich and Kyle Grimsley of Claude’s Vegan Market were having fun selling their plant-based products to people at the market until September. That’s when they had to reevaluate their business and really decide the amount of time, effort and money they were going to put into their hobby.

“If this had never happened, we would just have been coasting along,” Grimsley said. “This is forcing us to get into doing things and thinking about what our next step is.”

The Corner Farmers Market has been operating since 2013, but the county health department said they were only recently made aware of it.

But Grimsley and Dankovich are lucky, they said. They both have full-time jobs so the money made from the market isn’t something that they need to get by; they understand that many of the other vendors aren’t as privileged.

“Our situation with this is a lot different from others at the market who are feed ing their families with this money,” Dankovich said.

Even so, the process has been daunting, the two said. They had to pay about $200 to get ServSafe certified and they had to start looking for somewhere else to make their food because they live with a cat. Then they had to get liability insur ance, which adds to the cost, too. And it’s going to result in them having to raise their prices, which is something they don’t want to do.

“Through doing the market we’ve been able to build our customer base and that’s why it’s going to be hard to tell them that we’re going to have to raise our prices, but they’ve all been really supportive,” Dankovich said.

Starting this week, the two will be renting space at Out of the Garden’s com munity kitchen, which allows users to rent on an hourly basis compared to other shared kitchens that charge a flat rate.

They decided on renting space outside of their home because getting a home kitchen certified is out of the question if you have pets, plus it’s time consuming and expensive. According to the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, there are a number of steps business owners have to take to get their kitchen certified including having the correct number of sinks, creating compre hensive food-product labels, testing products for pH levels, filing for a tax number and registering a business name. And that’s in addition to having someone come out and inspect the kitchen, which currently takes at least four to six weeks after submitting an application. Grimsley said that some vendors have had to wait two or three months.

“The market was a community thing but now it’s like there’s a paywall to join the market if you want to be a food vendor,” Dankovich said. “You have to get ServSafe, you have to do whatever. So if you don’t have the money to do it, you can’t do it.”

Both Dankovich and Newsom believe that the regulations aren’t really about keeping people safe.

“Honestly, a lot of this doesn’t feel like it’s about safety,” Newsom said. “The vendors that we have are so serious about what they do and about serving their community. Safety is so important to them, we’ve never had a single problem.”

Instead, Dankovich said it feels like bureaucratic money-grabbing.

“Somebody wants their dime,” she said. “Maybe I’m just being dramatic, but it’s not about safety. Somebody sees a group of people who are thriving and they’re like, I need to get my cut of that. It’s like nobody can thrive without someone at a desk not doing anything profiting off of it.”

Triad City Beat reached out of the Guilford County Health Department but did not hear back in time for publication.

‘We’re going to have to change the laws’

Recently, the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship announced that they got a $20,000 grant to create a commercial kitchen at the center. The hope is that it will allow area food entrepreneurs to access a space to create. However, the timeline for construction, as well as cost for vendors is still unclear, according to Liz Hazlett, the president of Nussbaum.

The real thing that Newsom is hoping for is a change to the state laws.

“I think we’re going to have to change the laws to operate in the way we want to operate,” she said. “If our cottage food laws were more like they were in Virginia, we could do so much more. Other states are so farmer friendly.”

Currently there is no such thing as a cottage food law in North Carolina.

Cottage food laws in other states allow small-scale producers to bake, cook, can or pickle low-risk food items out of their home kitchens. In states like Maryland and Florida, vendors can make things like bread, pastries, candy, honey, jams and

jellies, coffee and pies without much regulation. Foods that require refrigeration are typically not allowed.

In North Carolina, some of the same foods like shelf-stable baked goods and sauces can be sold, but the red tape like what the Corner Market vendors are now facing make it difficult to do so. In fact, the Institute for Justice, which rates states based on their cottage food rules, has rated North Carolina’s homemade food laws a “C+” overall. However, in the regulatory burdens category, the state received a “D+.” A “C-” was given for food varieties and the state got an “A” for its sales and venue restrictions.

Ideally, a law like the one passed in June 2019 in West Virginia could be crafted to help vendors in NC, too.

“West Virginia has not seen any widespread foodborne outbreaks or negative effects from loosening regulations on cottage foods,” said Kent Leonhardt, West Virginia Commissioner of Agriculture at the time of the law’s passing. “To the con trary, we as a department continue to push for common sense regulations that move the government out of the way of producers. This is part of our effort to foster economic development through agribusinesses and local food.”

The state got an overall grade of “B” for their laws. The main difference between the states exists in the regulations.

Unfortunately, NC has not changed its rules despite the fact that since 2015, 34 states and Washington, DC have created new programs or expanded their existing laws, according to the Institute for Justice

And that’s problematic because during the pandemic, more and more people turned to making food and selling out of their homes to supplement their income streams. Other states have recognized that and changed their laws accordingly.

In the last two years, South Dakota scrapped its ban on selling homemade food and Utah expanded their laws to allow for homemade meals with meat to be sold as long as sellers have a permit.

According to Newsom, reaching out to the state’s Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler and local state representatives like Rep. Pricey Harrison, who pushed for legislation during the pandemic to keep farmers markets open, will be key to enacting change.

“I do feel like we have some friends in high places to talk to,” Newsom said. “We’ve just never had to go this route before.”

But it makes sense, because according to the data, the cottage food industry is only growing.

In 2008, cottage food sales totaled about $5 billion. In 2019, before the pandem ic, the total was projected to be $20 billion, according to former US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Like the makeup of the Corner Market, women make up a large portion of the cottage food industry, according to survey data collected by the Institute for Justice. Based on their data, 83 percent of cottage food producers were female with many of them living in rural areas with below-average income levels. The survey results also showed that the biggest benefits of running a cottage food business was the fact that workers could be their own boss, have flexibility in their schedule and have financial independence. And that’s what’s being taken away from some of the vendors at the Corner Market now.

“It’s so different to have folks set up at our farmers markets where they have a lot of pride, they have a clientele,” Newsom said. “Many of them are very satisfied with what they’re doing…. I feel like we provide something really valuable to lots of different people in different ways. I really just desperately want to figure out how to not get shut down.”

To learn more about how you can help support the Corner Farmers Market, visit the market on Saturdays between 8 a.m.-noon. The market will be open the next two Saturdays on Dec. 10 and 17. It will also be open on Wednesday, Dec. 21. It will be closed the rest of the year after that and will reopen in January.

Reach out to Kathy Newsom at kathy@cornermarketgso.com for more information.

EDITORIAL

Domestic terrorism and law enforcement in Moore County

Surely everyone in North Carolina knows that two substations in Moore County, just outside Fort Bragg, were damaged by gunfire on Saturday, wiping out electricity for about half of the 100,000 or so county residents.

Surely everyone knows that a woman named Emily Rainey, who led a protest against a drag performance inside the county limits scheduled for that very night, obliquely took credit for the terrorist attack on social media.

Did you know that Rainey, a for mer US Army psychops officer, resigned her military com mission just before she led a team from NC to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021? Did you know she faced criminal charges in Southern Pines in May 2020 for re moving caution tape from a playground closed due to the pandemic? She was again arrested in September 2020 during an anti-lockdown protest.

Everyone seems to understand that Rainey is a domestic terrorist, and that shooting out the lights in Moore County was a terrorist act, regardless of its true purpose, with the possible exception of Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields.

It’s important to note that Fields has been a Republican operative in Moore County since 1999, when he was elected to serve on the Car

thage Town Board; eventually he became mayor. He has been coun ty sheriff since winning election in 2018.

Keep in mind, too that the Dept. of Homeland Security has said the greatest threat of domestic terror ism comes from violent right-wing extremists

Fields said at his press confer ence that he visited Rainey right away, and that he cleared her of any wrongdoing after having a “word of prayer” with her, just after he chastised everyone in the room for spreading false news.

This was just before posed photos of the two surfaced online, his arm around her shoulder and pulling her close, from a Back the Blue event in October 2020.

It’s possible, we suppose, that the two don’t know each oth er. But Moore County isn’t all that big, and there are other factors as well.

As the FBI admitted in 2006, white-supremacist groups have been actively infiltrating law en forcement agencies for decades; we insist that US law enforcement has been a white-supremacist op eration from the very beginning

And so it’s not that we outright don’t believe the Moore County sheriff when he says Rainey was not involved. We’d just prefer to hear it from the FBI and the State Bureau of Investigation, who are now both on the case.

As the FBI admitted in 2006, white-supremacist groups have been actively infiltrating law enforcement agencies for decades.

Vivid Interiors

513 S. Elm St. 336.265.8628GSO vivid-interiors.com

Life is too short to be ho hum. Live Vivid!

Vivid Interiors is an Interior Design shop with a retail store in Downtown Greensboro.

e offer full service residential and commercial design, where we help the client realize their home or business’s potential through their own lens but honed with a Vivid vision.

In addition to our design services, we offer furniture, lighting, local artwork, accessories and small gifts from all over the world. We also carry myriad lines of wall coverings and textiles and much more than our 1200 square-foot space can accommodate.

Whether you’re shopping for gifts for the holidays, or shopping for yourself or your home, we have a wide assortment of gifts and accessories for all budgets and tastes.

Vivid Interiors is open Monday-Friday from 10 am-5pm, with special extended Holiday hours on Saturdays.

Scuppernong Books

304 S. Elm St. GSO 336.763.1919 scuppernongbooks.com

From vases and picture frames to tables and chairs to light bulbs and doors, it’s all at Habitat Greensboro’s ReStore. Come shop with us during our 12 Days of Deals this holiday season, Dec. 8 – 23, to find that unique gift or the perfect item to make your home holiday-ready!

Habitat Greensboro’s ReStore is not just a place where you can donate your gently used items and find a great deal on furniture, housewares, or building materials. It is a place where people

cuppernong Books opened on Dec. 21, 2013 and has been an essential part of the rebirth of downtown Greensboro ever since.

We are a general interest/literary bookstore featuring fiction and poetry along with a remarkable children’s section and a broad range of general interest titles.

Within the store is a café serving organic coffee and espresso, wine and beer sourced primarily from local small businesses. We also partner with Jerusalem Market for sandwiches, salads and more substantial fare.

Scuppernong Books also hosts hundreds of events a year, bringing in writers from around the world, the country and the state. In 2019, we hosted more than 250 writers, as well as theater, music, dance and

community conversation.

In 2017, Scuppernong Books was instrumental in the formation of the Greensboro Literary Organization, a separate non-profit organization which stages the annual Greensboro Bound Literary Festival, and brings authors into the Guilford County Schools through their Authors Engaging Students program.

In 2018, we formed Scuppernong Editions, an eclectic small press.

Scuppernong Books believes that independent bookstores have an important role to fill in a community.

We hope to live up to that responsibility with an openness to ideas, a respect for all the individuals that make up our Greensboro community, and a willingness to have fun doing so.

For 25 years the Pipe & Pint and has been the Triad’s home for premium cigars, fine wine, craft beer and accessories. With the finest se lection of cigars and wine you are sure to find the perfect gift for the discerning person in your life. Our experienced and knowledgeable staff can make the task of sorting through our luxury selection of goods a breeze. Choose from the best cigars across the world and wines from value to collectible.

Gift cards and gift baskets available and made to order.

2190 Lawndale Drive GSO habitatgreensboro.org The Pipe and Pint 3716 Spring Garden St. GSO 336.218.8610 Thepipeandpint.net

from all walks of life work together for a greater good; and a place that strengthens families and builds homes.

Every purchase from Habitat Greensboro’s ReStore helps build safe, stable, and affordable housing for families in Greensboro through Habitat Greensboro’s Homeownership Program.

For more information, please visit HabitatGreensboro.org.

Clemmons

Established in 1954, Clemmons Florist is Greensboro’s oldest family-owned florist. A fourthgeneration florist offering the finest flowers and plants available anywhere, we offer prompt delivery service to all of Greensboro and

most of Guilford County. Because customers are important to us, our professional staff is dedicated to providing you with the most prompt service and quality products obtainable. Hundreds of arrangements available for delivery or pick up online, or call directly for that extra special touch!

Area Modern Home

511 S. Elm St. GSO 336.370.1050 Areamod.com

AREA’s clean-lined, midcentury vibe has been waiting for you since owner Mark Hewett opened it in 2000. A native of Birmingham, England, Hewett studied industrial design and worked in London, Hong Kong and New York before he came to Greensboro 20 years ago, specializing in reproductions of midcentury furniture designs.

Hewett has a long relationship with High Point–based Younger Furniture. Customers can select from a wide range of designs and upholstery for the couches, chairs and headboards displayed in AREA, which are then custom-made and delivered to their homes, usually within six to eight weeks.

Most of the case goods — nonupholstered chairs, side and coffee tables, et cetera — are sourced from a Minneapolis-based company, which in turn sources from a manufacturer in Pennsylvania. So customers can feel good about supporting locally supplied and American-made products with the

attendant lower carbon footprint. “AREA is lifestyle furniture,” Hewett says. “We are bringing together appealing design, high quality construction and moderate pricing.”

Hewett wants to ensure that the furniture a customer has waited weeks to receive is in perfect condition, is exactly what was ordered, and is assembled and placed precisely as directed. On the one hand, it’s a smart business move to make sure this crucial last step in the process goes smoothly, especially since Hewett does not collect final balance until customer sign-off on delivery.

But mainly Hewett just wants the job done right. “People are happy when you bring in the couch or dining room set they’ve been waiting on,” Hewett says. “I want them to stay happy for years to come.”

Revolution Cycles was born almost 15 years ago out of frustration. We didn’t feel at home in any of the local bike shops. They were all great in their own way. But they weren’t what we were looking for, so we started something new. Add in some cool brands, great service, curated inventory, a hefty amount of suburban ennui and a little cheek... and voila.! Here we are.

We’re Greensboro’s Alternative Bike Shop. Alternative to box stores. Alternative to vanilla brands. Alternative to transportation. Ride styles. Lifestyles.

Revolution

1907 Spring Garden St. GSO 336.852.3972

Boutique without being bougie, with everything from used to new. Gear for everything from daily commuting to bugging out of town for a month. We work on all bikes and accept everyone.

Why choose Revolution Cycles? It’s a great question, and probably best answered by a super sexy interpretive dance about class war, consumerism, devolution, and the fleeting triumph of love. But the short answer is “bikes.”

Also, we’re not a cult.

Located across from Spring Garden Bakery. Open Tues-Sat. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Subject of the History Channel’s “Ax Men,” e.g.

Astronomer points at ___ (overused subject of science stock photos)

Regenerist skin care brand

“American Ninja Warrior” obstacle

Figured (out)

Sesame seed paste

Entertain, as kids at bedtime

Hardware fastener

2022 psychological horror movie

“Feel the ___” (2016 campaign slogan)

Alley ___ (comic strip which, thanks to the recent Charles Schulz tributes, I learned still exists)

“Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” singer Cole

2010 Apple debut

Ninth annual FemFest carries on founder’s mission of uplifting, protecting women

by James Douglas

Erika Kobayashi Libero, lead singer of Bangzz, addresses the crowd before the set.

“Fuck abusers, fuck predators, fuck domestic violence, fuck anyone who takes you away from yourself!” she shouts.

The audience volume increases in approbation with each example. They wrap up the introduction as most of the crowd at FemFest toasts its found er.

“To Bryn!” the crowd echoes, glasses raised, followed by the requisite hoots and howls. The next set soars with a mix of equal parts rage and joy, a catharsis of emotion.

Bangzz is the midpoint of the 9th annual FemFest, which took place Sat urday at the Ramkat in Winston-Salem. The yearly festival brings together a variety of female-led bands to raise money for the Family Services of Forsyth County and is unique in the realm of protecting abused and vulner able women.

“This isn’t really seen anywhere else,” says Chloe Alexander James, of True Lilith, a Charlotte-based band who played earlier. “ It’s a great cause for women.”

The mission was the vision of Bryn Hermanson, the founder of FemFest. Hermanson died in 2021, after a short illness. Sarah Burns-Williams, who took up Hermanson’s mantle , continues the tradition of raising money for Family Services. Hermanson is no longer around, but everyone from the bands to the volunteers to the venue speak to her legacy.

“I loved that there were people I’ve never seen before,” Burns-Williams says. “Friends of Bryn came from Charlotte and Massachusetts. This town has a share of people who only go see bands where they know someone in it, it’s also nice to see random people out here having a great time and supporting the cause.”

The bands, largely from the Southeast, represent a post-punk mental ity that coalesces in shows where the music provides an escape. The 10 bands all exude a take-no-shit approach to injustice. The raw fury of Bangzz, the chainsaw energy of Reese McHenry’s guitar, and the chaos of bands like Thelma & the Sleaze are the result of pent-up anger. Their energy is exactly where they want it, where it’s needed, for those who need to hear it. A reassurance of, “We’ve got this.”

The show is reminiscent of a past Winston-Salem music scene, where

the occasional wanderer could find a random set on a Friday night at the Garage or Test Pattern, venues that have long since closed. Faces in the crowd are a “who’s who” of the burgeoning Winston-Salem of years past, when it was still a powder-keg of creativity and cheap thrills (and real estate).

As longtime Winston-Salem musician Billie Feather gets on stage with the P-90s, a punk band that has played past FemFest events, musicians unloading for later sets pass by those who have just finished. One is the Red Lipstick Society. Despite consisting of all iconic Winston-Salem musi cians, Jill Byers, Alana Meltzer-Holderfield, Teresa Blackburn, Andy Mabe and Amanda Dunn-Moore haven’t played together in almost a decade. They open their set with some Wilco, and move onto a Wanda Jackson standard, “Funnel of Love.” The crowd of old friends and strangers listen and sway as they roll into Donovan’s “Season of the Witch” and Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made for Walking.”

The song that wraps up the set, “Savage Daughter,” is a much-loved and much-covered standard, entirely apropos of the event.

“I am my mother’s savage daughter, I will not cut my hair, I will not lower my voice,” the chorus repeats as the audience sings along.

In between a set, a scene of Hermanson speaking at a past event plays across the screen. She sits on a small stage as a band sets up behind her and the crowd quiets down as she addresses them.

“We’re all really lucky because there’s a whole room of support here,” she says. “And those women don’t have that, and those children don’t. And they had to abandon ship.”

Hermanson’s father stands in the crowd as her brother introduces him to many of her friends and acquaintances. He looks on in awe at the legacy of his daughter’s work.

“I’m starting to see her impact,” he says, wiping tears from his eyes.

FemFest IX has raised approximately $10,000 this year in show attendance and sponsorships. A raffle runs until Dec. 11. All proceeds will be donated to Family Services of Forsyth County. Info is available at femfestnc.betterworld.org

True Lilith, a Charlotte-based band, plays at this year’s FemFest.

PHOTO BY JERRY COOPER

by Brian Clarey

The last time this UNCG Men’s Soccer squad lost a game, it was September. That one, a 1-0 shootout against Campbell, was something of a heartbreaker: After trailing at the half, the Spar tans were unable to capitalize on seven shots on goal. They went down swinging, anyway.

This most recent loss, on Saturday, came in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament, a 2-0 grapple against Indiana, the same day the US Men’s Na tional Team got knocked out of the World Cup.

And just as with the US national team, there’s a long story behind the Spartans’ season-ending loss.

Soccer is a game of speed and angles, of missed opportunities and resets, of momentum shifts and set shots. In this way, soccer’s scoring system is inadequate in relating the narrative behind a match, let alone an entire season.

With no football team and an ambitious but struggling basketball program, soccer is UNCG’s signature sport, with both men’s and women’s teams winning numerous accolades over the years. It’s the sport they play at UNCG Homecom ing, and the program’s most famous alumni, Ale jandro Moreno of Venezuela (Class of 2001), played professionally for 10 years and for seven years on the Venezuelan Men’s National Team before becoming a commentator on ESPN. More than 20 UNCG men’s players have gone on to careers in pro soccer since the 1980s.

The current UNCG squad alone is a microcosm of the global game. About half of the 27-man roster come to Greensboro from countries other than the United States: Italy, England, Japan, South Africa, Ghana, Spain, two from

Germany, three from France. Conversely, one player from the Indiana team, midfielder Patrick McDonald, is from Greensboro.

The 2-0 final score does not measure the success the Greensboro squad saw this year, winning the SoCon title with a regular-season record of 13 wins and just that single loss to Campbell, how they barreled through the first round of the SoCon Tournament with a 6-goal win against Furman, or how their first two wins in the NCAA tournament, against Ohio State and Stanford, came on penalty kicks after regulation had expired.

UNCG went further in the NCAA tournament than just about every other North Carolina team in a cohort that included UNC-Chapel Hill, Elon, High Point University and Wake Forest. Duke also advanced to the quarterfinal, where they lost to Creighton the same day UNCG was knocked out.

And there’s no way of knowing, in looking at the box score, that it’s been almost 40 years since UNCG Men’s Soccer went this far — the team had a spectacular run in the 1980s, winning the title in 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986 and 1987, and finishing as a runner-up in 1989. All of those honors came when UNCG was still in the poorly named Dixie Conference, in Division II. This year’s effort was the furthest the Spartans have gotten in tournament play since entering Division I in 1992.

On the night of the game, stands at UNCG Soccer Stadium teemed with students and faculty, alumni and their kids, a full house on a cool December Saturday evening. And in the end, the loss didn’t feel that much like a loss at all, despite the final score.

Spartan No. 7, forward Maycol Reyes, navigates between two Indiana players. UNCG went further in the NCAA tournament than just about every other North Carolina team this year.

PHOTO BY TODD TURNER

SHOT IN THE TRIAD

BY CAROLYN DE BERRY

South Elm Street, Greensboro

Snow machine magic at the Festival of Lights in downtown Greensboro.