TCB — Oct. 28, 2016: Shattered

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point

FREE triad-city-beat.comOct 28 – Nov 3, 2015

Daycare dilemma PAGE 8

A coffeehouse with food PAGE 20

Aggie pride! PAGE 7, 26 & 31

Depression, guns and the deadly result

by Liz SeymourPAGE 16

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In that winding gap made by the Smoky Mountains where they peel off from the Blue Ridge chain, the leaves have already turned. Amid the riot of reds and oranges and yel-lows, some trees show their naked black branches where the foliage has blown away.

It’s the road to Memphis, where I drove with one of the Mikes, who flew down from Long Island to make the trip with me.

I’ve known this particular Mike since fourth grade. We went through high school and, later, college together with the other two fools waiting at the end of the line.

Ray Ray’s out in San Francisco these days with a hands-on business and a young family. The D makes his home in Harlem, NY and works for a fantastic television show that I won’t name in print just to tick him off a little. That’s how we do each other, me and my friends.

And while we’ve seen each other a few times since we graduated and we keep in touch over our various screens, it’s been 25 long years since we had our time together in the city of New Orleans.

We all had our reasons for going on this trip: stress, lifestyle changes, divorce, escape. And at the heart of it, I believe, was the realization that despite our best efforts, the years are still managing to get away from us.

The D is going gray at his temples now, like Paulie Walnuts from “The Sopranos.” Ray Ray has been coloring his thick, white hair, a concession that one of the Mikes has been unwilling to make. I am by far the most bald member of the quartet, though when we were running around I had more hair than all of them put together.

But in the studio at Sun Records, where Bob Dylan once kissed the ground where Elvis Presley stood as he recorded “Hound Dog,” and in the Jungle Room at Graceland, where a young Lisa Marie used to nap in a monstrous carved wood-en chair, we felt young again.

The inside jokes. The ridiculous recollections. The relent-less busting. The bonds are still there, perhaps even strength-ened through the decades.

We felt strong enough to execute a maneuver known as the “bang bang,” wherein participants eat a meal at a restau-rant and then promptly go to another restaurant and eat an-other one. It surely put a hurting on me, but I have no regrets about the fried chicken at Gus’s, or, for that matter, the dry ribs from the Rendezvous, which we later ate for dessert.

Life’s too short for regret.

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

The long road to Memphis

UP FRONT 3 Editor’s Notebook4 City Life6 Commentariat6 The List7 Barometer7 Unsolicited Endorsement

NEWS 8 Eating Mudpies10 At-large voices12 HPJ: On the road

OPINION 13 Editorial: Timing’s the thing

13 Citizen Green: Measuring out-comes

14 It Just Might Work: More people14 Fresh Eyes: Fear & loathing at

Furniture Market

COVER 16 Suicide by gun

CULTURE 20 Food: Coffee with food21 Barstool: What goes with wine?22 Music: A broken bow24 Art: A laureate reads

GOOD SPORT 26 Striving for greatness at A&T

GAMES 29 Jonesin’ Crossword

SHOT IN THE TRIAD 30 East Lindsay Street, Greens-

boro

ALL SHE WROTE 31 The GHOE

by Brian Clarey

BUSINESSPUBLISHER Allen [email protected]

EDITORIALEDITOR IN CHIEF Brian [email protected]

SENIOR EDITOR Jordan [email protected]

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Eric [email protected]

NEST EDITOR Alex [email protected]

EDITORIAL INTERNS Daniel [email protected]

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING INTERNNicole ZelnikerARTART DIRECTOR Jorge [email protected]

SALESDIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING & SALES Dick [email protected]

SALES EXECUTIVE Lamar [email protected]

SALES EXECUTIVE Cheryl [email protected]

NESTAdvertise in NEST, our monthly real estate insert, the final week of every [email protected]

CONTRIBUTORSCarolyn de BerryNicole CrewsAnthony HarrisonMatt JonesAmanda SalterCaleb Smallwood

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St., Greensboro, NC 27406 • Office: 336-256-9320Cover photo illustration by Jorge Maturino

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

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

CONTENTS

QUOTE OF THE WEEKI almost gave up, but I sensed I would lose a lot more than a future with horses if I did. I’d be losing the self I was just beginning to construct — not the fearless girl who rode her pony bareback around fields at a gallop, but someone brave in a different way: a woman who was finding her own way, daring to be a beginner again, making peace with discomfort, and letting go of illusions.

— Mary Seymour, in the Cover, page 16

And at the heart of it, I believe, was the realization that despite our best efforts, the years are still managing to get away from us.

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WEDNESDAY Housing and the LGBT community @ UNCG (GSO)Is housing fair for the LGBT community in the Triad? What can we do to make housing fair, affordable and livable for everyone? Find the answers and discuss the problems with a group of housing researchers, housing service providers, LGBT advocates and city staff. The discussion starts at the Bryan Building at UNCG at 4:30 p.m. Visit oma.uncg.edu for more information.

Piedmont Wind @ RJ Reynolds Auditorium (W-S)For classic horror lovers, the Piedmont Wind Symphony plays the soundtrack to a screening of the classic 1931 film Frankenstein. The symphony features an original score and family-friendly environment. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Visit pied-montwindsymphony.com for more information.

CITY LIFE October 28 – November 3 by Daniel Wirtheim

THURSDAYAn Evening of Short Plays @ Stephen D. Hyers Theatre (GSO)The Drama Center Playwright’s Forum, based in Greensboro, presents Stage Fright, a collection of 10 to 15 minute long original plays. Members of the playwright’s forum crafted each play on the theme of Halloween or horror. The plays begin at 8 p.m. Visit Greens-boro-nc.gov for more information.

Everclear @ The Cone Denim Entertainment Center (GSO)If you had a radio in the ’90s you’ve heard Everclear. They were a staple of alternative rock with hits like “Father of Mine” and “Heroin Girl.” The band is touring to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their album Sparkle and Fade. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Visit cdecgreensboro.com for tickets and all the details.

Raise Up @ Central Carolina Worker Justice Center (GSO)Watch workers from across the South take a brave stand against corporations in this docu-mentary following the movement for labor rights and $15 an hour. The screening begins at 6 p.m. Visit carolinaworkers.org for more information.

FRIDAYHalloween Boo-ery Party @ Pig Pounder Brewery (GSO)Pig Pounder, the brewpub launched by Marty Kotis, hosts a Halloween shindig with a scavenger hunt, costume contest, games and, of course, beer. The games begin at 3 p.m. Visit pigpounder.com for more information.

HalloWheels Bicycle Festival: Spooky Scavenger Hunt @ Twin City Hive (W-S)You’ll need to poke some real big eyeholes in your ghost costume for the second night of the HalloWheels Bicycle Festival. This riddle-based scavenger hunt will take bicyclists to some of the spookiest historical sites in downtown Win-ston-Salem. The hunt starts at 7 p.m. at Twin City Hive. Visit beersngears.com for more information.

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t.comWAM Masquerade 2015 @ Weatherspoon

Art Museum (GSO)Pop-Art and Pop-Culture are the theme of this year’s Halloween soiree. The Forge is sponsoring a costume contest, and live jazz music will enliven the festivities. Animations will be projected in the atrium and local comic artists are waiting to draw you in character. The party starts at 7 p.m. Visit weatherspoon.uncg.edu for more information.

SATURDAYHalloWheels Bicycle Festival: HalloTweed @ Millennium Center (W-S)For the last day of the bicycle festival, riders are go-ing tweed. Get on your best clothes for the English countryside and support a more cycling friendly city. The ride starts at 9:30 a.m. Visit beersngears.com for more information.

Pumpkin Pancake Celebration @ Greensboro Farmers Curb Market (GSO)To celebrate the fall season Chef Alex Amoroso dishes out his pumpkin pancakes. You can guess the pumpkin weight and dress in costume for this celebration of all things pumpkin. The event starts at 8 a.m. Visit gsofarmersmarket.org for more information.

Carmina Burana @ Stevens Center, UNCSA (W-S)If you’re alive you’ve heard Carmina Burana, perhaps in a commercial or film. The first and last movements, as performed by the UNC School of the Arts Symphony Orchestra, start with the popular “O Fortuna,” the quintessential soundtrack for all villains. This music is so diabolical that Nazi Germany considered banning its release, which makes it kind of perfect for Halloween. The music starts at 7:30 p.m. Visit uncsa.edu for more information.

ComicFest @ Acme Comics (GSO) and Burke Street Comics (W-S)Halloween might be the best-fitted holiday for comics. That’s why Acme Comics and Burke Street Comics are giving out free comics as participating members of Halloween ComicFest 2015. One of the free comics is a dark reimagining of the origin of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Find each shop’s Facebook page for opening hours and more details.

Chamber of Beats: A Halloween Get Down @ Kohinoor Hookah Palace (GSO)Turn off the “Monster Mash” and get down to the Chamber of Beats. Six DJs perform and the bar promises drink specials. Plus, there’s a costume contest for most ridiculous costume. The event starts at 8:30 p.m. Visit the venue’s page on Facebook for more information.

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Lambs to the slaughter“Cooper has ignored calls to over-

turn the case and grant Smith a new trial for at least three years. Prosecutors drop cases or decline to pursue charges all the time on the basis of acting ‘in the interest of justice’ if they don’t believe there’s adequate evidence.”

This is in fact not the way the system works [“Citizen Green: Roy Cooper’s sacrificial lamb”; by Jordan Green; Oct. 21, 2015]. If a court reversed the conviction, an AG can choose not to appeal. If the court orders a new trial, an AG can decline to prosecute the new trial, thus effectively letting the accused out of prison. But the AG cannot unilaterally reduce a prison sentence. The AG cannot unilaterally grant a new trial.

Is your critique based on some objection to a motion for new trial filed by Smith? If so, then please detail what you are referring to, because the paragraph above just doesn’t make sense. You are essentially attacking Cooper for not exercising the power of the governor’s office, an office he does not hold.

Yet.Raleighite, via triad-city-beat.com

Jordan Green responds: Thanks for the opportunity to clarify. Cooper’s responsibility in this case rests on his le-gal opposition to granting Smith a new trial and his opposition to the federal court taking judicial notice of Swecker’s report. Certainly, the ultimate decision was in the hands of Judge Catherine Eagles, who indeed ruled against granting Smith a new trial. I would imagine that if Cooper had agreed with Smith that the original case was flawed and that a new trial was in order, Judge Eagles would have found that compel-ling, or at the very least worth con-sidering. If Cooper has had a change of heart about the Smith case, he still has an opportunity to publicly express his regret, even if the window for legal intervention has closed. As an aside, it’s worth noting that Swecker is the chair

of the Governor’s Crime Commission. If anyone has more credibility on mat-ters of public safety and justice in the state of North Carolina, I can’t think of who it would be.

I could also argue that Cooper himself is the sacrificial lamb. Put it this way, Cooper is arguably the last of a certain breed of NC Democrats – those who came to power at the turn of the millennium when Jim Hunt exited the scene for the last time. After all, no one believed that the Dems were in any danger of losing either legislative chamber or many Council of State positions. Since North Carolina is in a new era, the party has to change its tune especially since the business wing of the party that was faithful to people like Hunt have either themselves retired or switched parties.

Sure, McCrory’s approval numbers are like the Titanic, but so are the General Assembly’s – and those guys are immune to a 2010-like wave. If anything, some of the voters who are disgruntled with the governor are more aligned with Tea Party bloggers who are mad that McCrory, Berger et al are not pushing enough regressive policies. The real issue is that there is nobody on the right who’s forcing Pat into a primary. I don’t think that the General Assembly’s condescending attitude towards anyone who’s not in their spe-cial club has trickled down to enough people yet.

Meanwhile, Cooper is the last of an old generation of Democrats, so he has to take the bullet so to speak. A Cooper loss next year should (in theory anyway) force the state party to rebuild itself because whatever it’s doing now clearly hasn’t worked. In other words, the only way to combat legislature mal-feasance is electing a new generation of Democrats in 2020 with something coherent (Cooper is more of a vote against the NCGOP than a vote for anything).

Kdub1, via triad-city-beat.com

4 rediscovered cassettesby Jordan Green1. Reggae mix taped off the radio

My cassette collection goes back to 1984 — Duran Duran’s Arena was my first purchase, if you must know — and continues roughly until the turn of the millennium. Some are manufactured, others are copies with song lists dutifully inscribed with a Precise Rolling Ball pen, while still others are unlabeled and housed in mismatched cases. The latter are the best. One of my favorites arrived in the mail from a friend named Chris Kubic, AKA Finster K. Rain, in the late 1990s. The nearly inscrutable label is a greeting in the secret-handshake language of our personal bond over poetry and music: “Oh yea much goosey.” We called ourselves the Goose Poets; I can’t explain. But the music on the cassette is reggae taped off a radio station in Key West, Fla., complete with bits of static where he’s evidently tuning the dial to improve the reception. Ecstat-ic, affecting and perfectly sequenced, the songs are total classics, from Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come” and the Starlites’ “Dip Them Jah Jah Dip Them” to Linton Kwesi Johnson’s “Sonny’s Lettah.”

2. Bill Watkins — country demoOne of the unexpected benefits of small

children is they have this uncanny ability to dredge up items you never expected to see again in your life. That’s how I stum-bled on an old demo by Bill Watkins, an obscure Cincinnati rockabilly artist who re-corded the incomparable “Big Guitar” and “Missed the Workhouse” in the late 1950s. I had the honor of interviewing Watkins for an oral history that served as my senior project at Antioch College. During our visit or perhaps shortly afterwards he gave me a six-song demo of country songs that he wrote. If you can get past the maudlin sentimentality on songs like “Moving Rain” and “Mama Bought the Guitar,” each one is a perfectly formed vessel of Watkins’ mercurial acoustic guitar picking and thin, gentle vocals. The demo suggests an attempt to score commercial success in Nashville in the early ’70s, but Watkins’ huge and gracious personality could never

have fit in such a narrow frame.

3. Jesus Chrust/Apostates splitThis is truly DIY: a split between the

early ’90s political crust punk bands Jesus Chrust and Apostates. The cassette is a blank like you might buy in a package at the drugstore, and the hand-drawn labels look like they were copied at Kinko’s and then glued onto each side. I don’t really know anything about the bands, but by their names you can be assured they were hostile to organized religion. Song topics include animal rights, racism and the South African liberation struggle. The music is blistering, ear-singeing hardcore perfectly balanced on a knife’s edge between fury and idealism. I’m guessing the two bands were part of the scene at ABC No Rio in New York City. But I can’t know for sure because I was a 16-year-old in Kentucky when I mail-ordered the tape.

4. Iris Dement backed with Em-mylou Harris

Nothing particularly novel about this, but it hits my ears just right. During the period when I was known as “Country Jordan” at Antioch College, I checked out Iris Dement’s 1992 debut album Infamous Angel and Emmylou Harris’ 1995 left turn Wrecking Ball from the Yellow Springs Public Library, and copied them onto a 90-minute cassette. The title song of Dement’s album should have been a Jack Kerouac novel; the lead track “Let the Mystery Be” is an Americana anthem of agnosticism; and if you’re not crying when you hear “Mama’s Opry,” you might not be human. Harris’ Wrecking Ball, meanwhile, almost singlehandedly started the sub-genre of goth-country. Produced by Daniel Lanois, it’s mostly covers — the title track is by Neil Young — and for my money the best is her reading of “Goodbye,” Steve Earle’s sad meditation on the oblivion of addiction.

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F.luxby Daniel Wirtheim

Before a friend sold me on f.lux I attributed my slight eye twitches to an excess of caffeine. I hadn’t drawn the correlation between staring at a computer screen late into the night and my ailing optical health. I downloaded the program and used myself as a guinea pig.

F.lux changes the blue light coming from a computer screen to a softer red light. It was designed after research concluded that blue lights make people stay awake. So f.lux was actually made to help computer junkies sleep better. But others, like myself, find benefit from not staring at harsh lights.

You can download f.lux for free on the internet (it’s completely safe) and then it will ask for your ZIP code.

The idea is that it will match the color of your screen with the natural color temperature in your area at any given time.

Just consider for a moment the science behind this. We’re all biologically programmed to get tired when the sun goes down. But since the advent of computers, we’ve been staring at lights that tell our brains the sun is right in front of us and so we should stay up. F.lux is designed to realign us with our natural, healthy circadian rhythms.

So far it’s hard to gauge whether my sleep has im-proved. I can say that my eye twitches disappeared and I feel generally less stressed since I started using f.lux. This could be a mind-over-matter type of thing. I do know that

if I turn f.lux off I’m shocked at how harsh the blue light from the computer screen is. I had always believed that turning down the brightness would save my eyes a few years but I had never considered color was the most im-portant factor. And even if it is a mind-over-matter thing, is that such a bad thing if it makes you feel better?

It takes a while to get used to. The first day I wasn’t sure if I could take my computer seriously — seeing everything through rose-colored lenses. But after a few days, I quit thinking about it. Now, after about a month of using f.lux, I stick my nose up at non-users with their twitchy little eyes.

Best part of GHOE?With the Greatest Homecoming On Earth

happening at North Carolina A&T University this past weekend, we wanted to ask our readers and editors about their favorite part.

Brian Clarey: My northeast Greensboro neighborhood, loaded with A&T alumni, goes a little crazy during the Greatest Homecoming on Earth with cookouts, game-watching parties and backyard celebrations that run deep into the night. I love the parties, and I love the peo-ple. But dammit, I’m a football fan, and A&T has a fantastic team this year. They’re at 6-1 af-ter this weekend homecoming win over Howard University, a 65-14 romp. And they’re finishing their regular-season schedule with two home games against conference opponents: Delaware State on Nov. 14 and NC Central on Nov. 21. The Aggies are huge this year, which puts the game, which can sometimes be something of an afterthought, in the spotlight.

Jordan Green: The people. I covered homecoming in 2006, and the whole thing is fabulous. I have to say the people are the best part of it because I was impressed by how much pride the alumni have in their school and the pleasure they take in seeing each other at homecoming. During that assignment I ate dinner at Natty Greene’s Brewing Co., where I had the pleasure of meeting alum Derrick Giles, who advised me on how to hang at the tailgate party. Derrick is a public-spirited guy whose company Enpulse Energy Conservation pro-vides a model for sustainability, entrepreneur-

ship and job creation. We see each other almost every day because Enpulse is housed next door to Triad City Beat in the Nussbaum Center. I’m proud to call Derrick a friend, and it’s thanks to homecoming.

Eric Ginsburg: The parties, or more spe-cifically, the tailgating. I’ve been to the show before, and witnessed a standout performance from 2 Chainz (Young Jeezy was woefully inad-equate). But the action outside Aggie Stadium and at Fanfest is where I’ve had the most fun. And it’s dispatches from a friend at this year’s tailgate, which I missed because I was out of town, that I find most entertaining.

Readers: The people chose the parties (33 percent), but they also chose each other (“the people” with 25 percent). Alum Jessica Langley explained: “I love the fellowship between Aggies. Even though thousands of people are in one area, it has the intimate feel of fami-ly.” Professor Derick Smith offered his own answer: “Post-game at the plots; it’s like a family reunion.” The game and “other” tied for third (17 percent) while the show received a measly 8 percent.

New question: What (if anything) do Greensboro police need to change in the wake of the New York Times article? Vote at triad-city-beat.com.

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City loosens stake to increase daycare’s chances of survival by Jordan Green

NEWS

City leaders are willing to relinquish a clause that would allow them to claw back property sold to a daycare to give the nonprofit the best shot at survival. They reason that keeping the daycare afloat will protect the city’s $527,000 investment in the facility and meet a need for childcare that they consider critical for the continue revitalization of downtown.

The unanimous vote by Winston-Sa-lem City Council on Monday night to relinquish the city’s claim on the property of Mudpies Downtown East in exchange for a $200,000 payment by the daycare’s primary lender was not a surprise. The resolution was passed without comment as part of the consent agenda.

The deal had been worked out a week prior in closed session by the finance committee of city council.

“I think there’s an old saying you should never see sausage or laws being made,” Robert Clark, who chairs the committee, said at the time. “I’m glad we just did that in private.”

The daycare across the street from Wake Forest Innovation Quarter, which is operated by the nonprofit North-west Child Development Centers, has racked up escalating debts since the city sold the property for the facility in 2011. Under the initial deal, the city sold the property to the nonprofit for $362,505, receiving a cash payment of $203,755. The remaining balance of $158,750 was to be forgiven based on new jobs being created and property taxes being paid. The property taxes are expected to repay the debt over a 10-year period.

Since the daycare opened in 2013, continu-ing financial challenges have prompted the city to step in and loan the non-profit $483,000. The cur-rent balance on those debts is $399,250, putting the city’s total investment in the daycare at $527,000. The city’s invest-ment is subordinate to a $2.1 million debt to BB&T, which financed construc-

tion of the building and leasing equip-ment. Part of the nonprofit’s debt to the bank is a $300,000 equipment lease at a high interest rate. The nonprofit wants to renegotiate the loan to purchase the

equipment so they can reduce the interest rate. The nonprofit estimates the deal would increase their monthly cash flow by $8,000, which would in turn free up funds to repay the city loans.

But as a condition of approving the loan, the bank wants the city to relinquish a reversionary

provision in the deed that allows the city to reclaim the land if it is no longer being used for the public purpose of providing nonprofit daycare services.

“Essentially, what we would like to

see is some kind of resolution or option that could be signed by BB&T such that in the future the city has committed to a set hard number that the bank could then pay to have that released and they could go forward with a more smooth foreclosure and ultimate sale of the property,” Drew Phelps, a lawyer repre-senting Northwest Child Development Centers, told the finance committee last week.

Clark said he came up with the $200,000 figure for the settlement.

“If they foreclose, most likely we would have to write off the loans,” he said, “and that $200,000 would cer-tainly mitigate the pain.” He added that if the city’s asking price had been too high, the bank would likely have walked away from the deal, and this action could potentially protect the city’s $527,000 investment.

The finance committee was legally allowed to go into closed session under a state law that permits public bodies to preserve attorney-client privilege.

Clark said the reason for going into closed session is that he wanted City Attorney Angela Carmon to be able to explain some things to the other members of the committee without the knowledge of the nonprofit’s legal counsel.

“There’s different legal options that we have that I would prefer the oth-er side not know about,” Clark said, “although they probably are aware of them.”

Northwest Child Development Cen-ters CEO Tony L. Burton III said the nonprofit’s financial difficulties are tied to enrollment.

“We didn’t get the development in that area as fast as we thought we

The city of Winston-Salem is forgiving a $158,750 balance as part of a sale of property to Northwest Child Development Centers through property tax payments over a 10-year period.

DICK GRAY

‘If they foreclose, most likely we would have to write off those loans.’– Robert Clark

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There is a DifferenceVOTE

OUTLINGA NEW DIRECTION

CITY COUNCIL DISTRICT 3

Paid for by Vote Outling Campaign• As of October 20, 2015

Solutions over Politics, Independent-Minded, Results-OrientedUniquely Qualified to Serve Greensboro Representing District #3

The following organizations have given their endorsements:*Professional Fire Fighters of Greensboro

Equality North Carolina PACLGBT Replacements Ltd. PAC

Guilford County Community PACTriad Good Government PAC

Triad Central Labor Council – NC State AFL-CIOPiedmont Triad Apartment Association

Support also offered by Greensboro Regional REALTORS PAC

ProfessionalBrooks Pierce McLendon Humphrey & Leonard LLP - Attorney

Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, LLP - Wall StreetLaw Clerk, the Honorable William L. Osteen, Jr.

U.S. District Court for the Middle District, in Greensboro, NC

Other QualificationsDuke Law School, J.D.

UNCG Undergraduate DegreeUNCG Alumni Association Board of Directors

UNCG Board of VisitorsNorth Carolina & Greensboro Bar Associations

Chief Justice Joseph Branch Inn of CourtNC Business Court Rules Committee

Community ServiceCurrently serving on Greensboro City Council – District #3 by appointment in June

Minimum Housing Standards Commission – Former ChairmanFuture Fund of the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro – Steering Committee

Greensboro Fun Fourth Advisory CommitteeAction Greensboro - synerG, Council and Co-Chairman of the Leadership Committee

FamilyMarried to College Sweetheart

Father of two toddlers, Homeowner

would,” he said. “One of the reasons we located there was the Innovation Quar-ter. The families that needed care did not come as fast as we expected. Now that people know that we’re there we’ve gotten the enrollment we need.”

Burton said enrollment at Mudpies Downtown East is up to 171 with a capacity of 196, while enrollment across the board is down. The nonprofit also operates a daycare on North Poplar Street at the other end of downtown, one in King and one in Mocksville, with plans to open a fifth facility near Law-rence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The Mudpies Downtown location on North Poplar Street has an enrollment of 99 with a capacity of 160. Burton said cuts to the department of social services have adversely affected parents’ ability to pay for daycare and the coun-ties no longer make direct payments for daycare.

City leaders believe that quality daycare is essential to the successful revitalization of downtown, as Clark said when the finance committee met on Oct. 19.

Jason Thiel, president of Down-town Winston-Salem Partnership, said “there’s a lot of unmet need” for daycare in the center city. His own child was enrolled at Mudpies for about a year.

“Particularly in this part of down-town, near the Innovation Quarter, when you’re building new residential units and new employees are coming like Inmar, you have to think holistically so you can accommodate growth,” he said.

Thiel said childcare, like retail and restaurants, is a key component to attracting quality employers.

“At the time this is something that to me you have to go out and aggressively pursue the things that you need or you allow things to happen via the market,” he said. “I personally believe in a proac-tive approach in recruiting and playing a proactive role in determining how things unfold. The daycare was a strate-gic use; it was needed downtown. The market is playing a role. But there is some government help. It was controlled by the city. It was a public purpose. We are trying to build a well-rounded city. It wouldn’t have been able to happen without government assistance.”

As the sole Republican member of

city council, Clark finds himself in an interesting position as the person who was tasked with putting together a deal to try to save Mudpies Downtown East.

“The medical school’s getting ready to move downtown, so there’s more folks coming,” he said. “So I think the demand will grow. I don’t think the city should be in the daycare business. If you look at the total investment, we have about 15 percent. I see us as a minor player trying to get a catalyst going.”

Clark noted that he voted against at least one of the city loans to Northwest Child Development Centers.

“I said, ‘You guys have got to get your financial house in order,’” he said. “I’ve already expressed in my vote my displeasure.

He added, “As chair of the financial committee, it is my job to try to come up with a plan to protect the city’s assets, and I think the plan we came up with encouraging BB&T to come up with that equipment loan and giving them almost $100,000 in cash flow, and make Mudpies a viable company and protect the city’s investment is a good one. I think I can wear two hats.”

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5 Newcomers outline positions in at-large city council forumby Eric Ginsburg

In a forum for Greensboro City Council candidates on Monday, two distinct new voices emerged, presenting their visions for the city.

The format of the Greensboro Neigh-borhood Congress candidate forum on Monday differed from others this elec-tion season, fitting more questions into its two-hour program by posing each to just a few candidates rather than the en-tire slate before moving on. That made it more difficult to directly contrast spe-cific candidates’ positions but opened up space for more detailed answers, giving audience members a fuller sense of each candidate overall.

Portraits of two candidates in par-ticular — newcomers Sylvine Hill and Marc Ridgill, who are both running for citywide office — with whom the public is less familiar came into sharper view.

The forum, held before a full audi-ence at the Central Library downtown, attempted to cover the at-large, or citywide, race as well as the mayor-al contest. But the absence of Devin King, who is challenging Mayor Nancy Vaughan, and fellow first-timer Brian Hoss who is running at-large made the discussion lopsided.

Though the mayor is in her first term, she’s a longtime figure on council. And all three at-large incumbents, especially

former Mayor Yvonne Johnson, are well known political figures in the city. Even casual observers of city council in the last few years wouldn’t be surprised by the ground staked out by Vaughan, Johnson, or at-large incumbents Mari-kay Abuzuaiter and Mike Barber, all of whom have served multiple terms on council.

Hill and Ridgill, who each hope to push past an incumbent on Nov. 3, no doubt have networks of their own, but neither is a well-known political figure in Greensboro. Here’s a closer look at the ideas they articulated on Monday so that voters can make an informed decision. Early voting is already under-way, and concludes Saturday at 1 p.m.

Sylvine HillThe 25-year-old Dudley High and

UNCG grad talks about the need for more tech and green jobs to bring Greensboro into the 21st Century and keep young people like her in the area. She has previously complimented the current city council and did so again at points on Monday, even hugging a council member after the forum con-

cluded, but she isn’t afraid to stake out her own positions.

“I really want a more progressive Greensboro,” she summarized in her opening statement.

The city is currently in a transition-al phase, Hill said, but the council shouldn’t focus as much on downtown,

but rather should expand its view to lift up small businesses across the city.

Hill, who is black, addressed a few race-re-lated questions differently than her fellow newcom-er Marc Ridgill, at times making remarks similar to populist Mayor Pro Tem Yvonne Johnson, the city’s first black mayor.

The city needs to do a better job in hiring diverse employees at the top, she said, especially considering the wide ra-cial diversity of Greensboro that extends far beyond black and white. Hill said she supports the release of police body camera footage to the public in some cases — the release is currently illegal, according to the city — to build public trust and awareness. When asked about diverse hiring in the police department, which is 75 percent white despite white people being less than half of the city’s

population, Hill said that many black people don’t want to be police officers in the first place because of a lack of trust, adding that the city’s complaint review committee should be strengthened.

Similarly, when asked how Greens-boro could emulate something success-ful in Winston-Salem or Durham, Hill suggested that the city would benefit from more peaceful protest in line with Black Lives Matter demonstrations in other cities.

Marc RidgillRidgill, a 56-year-old retired police

officer who finished his career as a school resource officer at Grimsley High School, said council would benefit from his unique background. He would like to see the city become more business friendly, he said in his opening state-ment, which he explained could include a less cumbersome city inspections and permitting process.

Ridgill said on Monday and at a previous League of Women Voters’ can-didate forum that he would like to see the International Civil Rights Center & Museum pursue national historic land-mark status, which he said would help the museum qualify for federal funds and would help “save and elevate it to the status it deserves.” He identified it

Former police officer Marc Ridgill has said he learned “invaluable” lessons during his professional career that would benefit council.

Recent UNCG graduate Sylvine Hill is one of three challengers running for city council at-large.

ERIC GINSBURGERIC GINSBURG

‘I really want a more progressive Greensboro.’– Sylvine Hill

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as one of the most important things the city could prioritize.

The museum operates independently from the city, which runs the Greens-boro Historical Museum, but has received considerable public funding, making it a common topic of discussion on council.

Ridgill said during his time as a police officer he worked closely with the neigh-borhood watch in Glenwood just south of UNCG, an experience he described as “invaluable” because it taught him to listen to residents concerns — tree

branches blocking traffic signs, for example — to build trust and relation-ships before trying to address the city’s concerns, such as a high rate of home break-ins.

Greensboro used to be known for youth sports, he said in response to another question, and he would like to see a resurgence, saying that it has been deemphasized in the city’s marketing.

When it comes to diversity in the police department, Ridgill said the department has tried to attract diverse recruits for a long time, but is competing

with others nationwide as well as private employers that offer better pay.

“Everybody is trying to search for minority candidates,” he said. “They are doing their best [in the police de-partment].”

Ridgill also brought up policing when discussing economic development in east Greensboro, as he did at a previous candidate forum, saying that partnering with police to address vandalism and theft from stores will help business own-ers know that their investments are safe while helping residents by protecting

nearby businesses.He shared lighter moments with

Johnson during the forum, though the two disagreed often, but both felt the police department could do more to provide sensitivity training to officers.

Ridgill relied on his professional expe-rience as candidates discussed the idea of merging departments with the coun-ty to save money, saying that it was tried with first responders but proved to be complicated and not entirely successful.

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Montlieu Avenue on list of projects leaders want to push forwardby Jordan Green

Local transportation leaders want the state to consider funding improvements to Montlieu Avenue near High Point University, but there are contrasting visions for what the project would accomplish.

The city of High Point has a wish list of road projects that they hope will move forward if state funding becomes available. And with the state budget signed by Gov. Pat McCrory adding $1.8 billion for transportation projects, some of that money could trickle down to the local level.

Mike Mills, the head administrator for Division 7 in the state Transportation Department, said transportation officials will likely know in the next three to four weeks if the funds will allow any local projects to receive funding.

The wish list put together by local transportation officials includes proj-ects that are not funded through 2020. Among them in rank of priority are re-constructing the interchange at Business 85 and South Main Street, changes to Montlieu Avenue, extending Piedmont Parkway from Eastchester Drive west to Sandy Ridge Road and building the Jamestown Bypass.

The Montlieu Avenue project, still in its infancy, has already caused conster-nation. Mayor Bill Bencini invited then Transportation Secretary Tony Tata to visit High Point to discuss the project earlier this year.

“They took us on a tour to show us how Montlieu Avenue could take you from High Point Uni-versity to Interstate 74,” Mills recalled. “They were talking about how important it was to get it done, along with the A-section of the James-town Bypass to get that connectivity.”

The High Point City Council had previously voted to close the section of Montlieu Avenue that bisected the campus of High Point University to en-able the university to build a pharmacy school. The closure brings the eastern

leg of Montlieu Avenue to the universi-ty’s main entrance.

A description of the Montlieu Avenue project, which is estimated to cost $10.1 million, calls for widening the “roadway to accommodate a two-lane median divided facility with bike lanes and side-

walks on both sides.”Mills touted the

Montlieu Avenue project in tandem with the Jamestown Connector as giving people in High Point another way to get to Piedmont Triad International Airport be-sides Eastchester Drive/Highway 68 in the north and Kivett Drive in the

southeast. “[Highway] 68 to the airport is pretty

congested,” he said. “This will give you pretty good access to [Interstate] 73,

[Interstate] 74, PTI, downtown High Point and High Point University. It will be a pretty good economic development corridor.”

While the city’s decision to close part of Montlieu Avenue prevents the improved roadway from providing a link to North Main Street, Mills pointed out that motorists will still be able to head south from the western terminus on College Drive to get to downtown. Transportation officials’ long-term vision builds off Montlieu Avenue’s con-nection to Greensboro Road in the Five Points area, a commercial hub in the black community near the Interstate 74 interchange. Beyond Interstate 74, the new Jamestown Bypass — with a price tag of $48.1 million — would swing around the south side of the town and travel north past GTCC. The B-section of the project from Vickrey Chapel Road near GTCC to Hilltop Road in

Greensboro is already under construc-tion. That project includes an inter-change with Interstate 73, which is the southwest leg of Greensboro’s Urban Loop and a straight shot to the airport.

But Greg Venable, a transportation planning administrator for the city of High Point, downplayed the Montlieu Avenue project as a link in a major thoroughfare.

“The project that we put forward, you’re not increasing capacity; you’re not providing new access per se,” he said. “It’s more of a beautification proj-ect. Montlieu Avenue would add bicycle lanes so you have that potential there for improving safety for cyclists. There’s a bus route there, so there’s the potential to add a bus shelter.”

Venable also downplayed the signif-icance of High Point University to the project.

“Montlieu does end right there,” he

HIGH POINT JOURNAL

Utility lines are being moved on Skeet Club Road to accommodate two additonal lanes. Several other major projects are in the planning stages.

DICK GRAY

‘Montlieu Avenue would add bicycle lanes...’– Greg Venable

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acknowledged. “Now, it’s a private drive through campus. As far as where the road would end, that’s the end of the project — there’s that potential. But providing a safer area for all modes of transportation is probably the main goal of the project.”

Mills said the state has yet to hold a public-input meeting on the project, emphasizing that it’s still in the early stages.

Access to Piedmont Triad Interna-tional Airport is also a driving force behind the extension of Johnson Street from Skeet Club Road north to Sandy Ridge Road near the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market. The north side of the city already has a direct link to the air-port through Eastchester Drive/High-way 68, but the multi-lane roadway has become congested as the Palladium and other shopping centers, office parks, medical facilities and residential neigh-borhoods have created ever-increasing traffic loads.

An extension of Piedmont Parkway requested by the city of High Point would also build out the northern section of the city. The street currently

terminates at Eastchester Drive, where XPO Logistics is located. The extension would bring it to Sandy Ridge Road, providing an east-west connection. The completed length of the street runs east from Eastchester Drive to College Road at the division between Jamestown and Greensboro. It aligns with Hilltop Road, which in turn aligns with Groometown Road south of Gate City Boulevard in Greensboro.

Of the unfunded projects, noth-ing ranks higher in High Point than reconstructing an obsolete intersection at Business 85 and South Main Street. Venable said the state has already com-mitted funding to replace the bridge, which is deemed structurally deficient.

“A lot of the issues with that inter-change is the ramp configuration,” Ven-able said. “There are actual businesses within the ramp loop with driveways. That creates a problem from an access standpoint and traffic movement. People get confused a lot of times, and they’ll go the wrong direction on those loops, which is a safety concern.”

10 Reasons Nancy Hoffmann Is Bullish On GreensboroFor the past few years we have been saying that Greensboro is ‘on the cusp’ of great things happening. I believe they are happening NOW and will continue to do so in the future.

LeBauer Park - underway - 2016 completion - fabulous iconic

Janet Echelman air sculpture

Renaissance Center, Phillips Avenue addressing food desert concern

Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts

The National Folk Festival 3-year residency

The “new” downtown - Union Square and South Elm Street Brownfield Redevelopment, Bellemeade Village and Hyatt Place

Hotel, Downtown Wyndham Hotel, Downtown Hampton Inn, Battleground / Eugene development, South Elm development

Urban Loop - connecting segments underway - $308 million project

Roadway upgrades - Horse Pen Creek Road widening, Cone Boulevard / Nealtown Road, Gate City Boulevard

Streetscape, Fleming Road upgrades

Greenway - parts already in use

Community Initiatives - Say YES to Education - $32 million

Asset upgrades such as Revolution Mill ($140 million), Koury Convention Center ($30 million), and new Mid-Town projects

Paid for by the Committeeto Re-Elect Nancy Hoffmann

Remember to Vote on Tuesday, Nov. 3rd

“Choose good leaders. They will make sound

decisions which often require great courage and conviction.”

Nancy Hoffmann

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CITIZEN GREENMistrust and murky facts in black health

Dr. Sylvia Flack has been facing down a crisis in health disparities that disadvantage people of color since she joined the administration of Winston-Salem State Uni-versity in 1989. Her first job, as coordinator of the nursing program, was to halt a plan by

the NC Board of Nursing, UNC Board of Governors and state lawmakers to close the program at the historically black institution. Even though the university leadership considered the program a lost cause, she saved it.

Short in stature but with a bright disposition and engag-ing manner, she hinted during a workshop on Oct. 24 that she wouldn’t mind passing the baton, but still clearly sees the state of black health as profoundly unacceptable.

Hers was only one of the breakout sessions after lunch at the Cross-Systems Equity Summit hosted by Neigh-bors for Better Neighborhoods and funded by the United Way of Forsyth County that examined how various systems interact to perpetuate institutional racism and oppression. Flack said it’s important to be frank: People of color are more likely to be sick and die prematurely than their white counterparts, and face significant barriers to healthcare. This challenge intertwines, reinforces and compounds worse outcomes in education, employment, criminal justice and access to finance.

The basic facts about minority health disparities are not in dispute and have long been established. By 1980, the National Institutes of Health reports, there was a growing awareness that blacks, Latinos, American Indians, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were likely to die younger while suffering from higher rates of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke, infant mortality and low birth weight.

Local health leaders have evidence that those dispar-ities continue to this day, and are actually more acute in Forsyth County than in North Carolina as a whole. The 2014 Forsyth County Community Health Assessment Report, which was published in July, found that black res-idents were 23.1 percent more likely to die of cancer and 48.1 percent more likely to die of heart disease — the two leading causes of death in the county. Black residents also had higher death rates for diabetes and kidney disease than their white counterparts.

The report indicated that “the strongest predictors of better or poorer health status are better or poorer socioeconomic conditions respectively,” adding that “the racial differences in socioeconomic status, neighborhood residential conditions, and access to medical care are important contributors to health disparities.”

The report outlines a correlation between health, poverty and race that should be obvious: “The distressed

areas located within the community were in the low-in-come people of color neighborhoods.”

What accounts for the disparities? Certainly environ-ment. Flack mentioned lack of transportation allowing people to get to doctor’s offices and hospitals, and showed a slide that indicated blacks and Latinos are significantly more likely to live near waste management facilities. The same risks to people of color come into play with major highways. Anyone who is familiar with the ge-ography of Winston-Salem knows that the neighborhoods flanking Highway 52 are predominantly black and Latino.

The Health Disparities and Inequalities Report, published by the federal Centers for Disease Control in November 2013, found that “traffic-related air pollution is a main con-tributor to unhealthy ambient air quality… with the highest concentrations of risk of exposure occurring near roads.” This exposure is associated with asthma, cardiovascular disease, poor reproductive outcomes and mortality. The report goes on to say that “in the United States, it is widely accepted that economically disadvantaged and minority populations share a disproportionate burden of air pollution exposure and risk.”

But environment and poverty don’t explain everything, Flack said, adding that lack of trust, experiences of racism in the medical establishment and misdiagnosis because of stereotyping all play a role. She mentioned in particu-lar that black women experiencing abdominal pain have been misdiagnosed with pelvic inflammatory disease, a condition typically caused by sexual activity.

As a testament to the murkiness that surrounds mi-nority health research, I found three references to a study indicating that black women were being misdiagnosed with pelvic inflammatory disease as recently as 1993, but the so-called study was a news article in a feminist health journal, not a peer-reviewed scientific research paper. The original research appears to have been conducted by Dr. Donald Chatman in 1976. I couldn’t find any additional studies replicating Chatman’s findings. I’m not sure if that means the research lacks credibility, or that the racial stereotyping is so pervasive that there’s no interest in the medical establishment in correcting the record.

Whatever the truth of the allegation of black women being misdiagnosed with pelvic inflammatory disease, mistrust of the medical establishment among African Americans is well founded and historically rooted. To mention only a few well-known examples, right in Win-ston-Salem, white community leaders promoted forced sterilization, a program that lasted into the 1970s and predominantly affected poor women of color. Similarly, the US Public Health Service allowed black men to remain untreated for syphilis at the Tuskeegee Institute in Ala-bama from 1932 to 1972 without the patients’ knowledge so they could study the progression of the disease.

by Jordan Green

EDITORIALAlways question the timing

Nothing is random.Okay, some things are random. Lightning. The lottery.

A few candidates for Greensboro City Council.But most things happen for pretty good reasons, gen-

erally following the rule of cause and effect.For example, when UNC Board of Governors Chair

John Fennebresque stepped down from his post on Mon-day, it was for very good reason: He ham-fistedly axed UNC System President Tom Ross, held a secret, one-man search process for his replacement and installed Margaret Spellings, a longtime advisor to President George W. Bush and protégé of Karl Rove.

It was a blatantly political appointment — Spellings will be the first president of the UNC System not to hold an advanced degree since the 1950s, has no previous ties to the state of North Carolina’s vaunted public university system and will draw in salary about 30 percent more than Ross commanded: $775,000 a year.

Fennebresque didn’t even try to pretend that his resignation, effective immediately, had nothing to do with Spellings’ appointment.

With the search completed, he told the Raleigh News & Observer: “I am stepping down from the board to make way for and encourage new leadership. Significant chal-lenges lie ahead for the system as it continues to provide the unparalleled education our students deserve.”

It’s like he took a dump on the floor and ran out of the room.

In Greensboro, when Downtown Greensboro Inc. Chief Operating Officer Cyndy Hayworth stepped down last week, she was sure to iterate that the decision was not because of the parking-lot nap that landed DGI President Zack Matheny a DWI charge just a couple days before.

She told the Greensboro News & Record that her resig-nation had “nothing to do with what happened last week,” but she had the air of a person leaving the bar just before a heated argument turned into a fistfight.

Consider, too, the timing of the now infamous Win-ston-Salem Strip-Club Raid of 2015, when law enforce-ment agencies including state Alcohol Law Enforcement descended on three of the city’s topless bars and seized enough drugs to spread 122 charges around 25 people and shut them down for a month. The raid on Friday night dovetailed neatly with a piece in the Winston-Sa-lem Journal a couple days earlier about the downtown club Lollipop’s, a fully nude concern that does not serve alcohol that the city is trying to seize and close through a lawsuit filed in May.

You could call it a coincidence, if you believe in that sort of thing. But not too many people in Winston-Salem are willing to speak for the strip clubs now.

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IT JUST MIGHT WORKMore downtown residents

My recent trip to Memphis with some old friends — none of whom has spent much time in the South — brought me to the downtown streets of that Southern city, a familiar sight for me but one that jarred my more urbane friends who spend their time in New York City and San Francisco.

“Where is everybody?” one asked.Because besides some pedestrian action

on Beale Street and a thick crowd at the Peabody Hotel to watch the ducks ride the elevator, there was very little street life in Memphis.

I explained to my friends, who weren’t really interested, that like just about every other Southern or Rust Belt city, downtown Memphis was devastated by white flight in the 1970s, when everybody with the means moved out to the suburbs, leaving the inner city to rot in crime and pov-erty. Eventually all the residential buildings were torn down or converted for commercial use, and now in Memphis most of the people on the streets don’t even live there.

But unlike Greensboro and Winston-Salem, which have been actively trying to bolster the ranks of downtown residents for the last 20 years, Memphis has been focusing on tourist attractions for its dwindling base of visitors: Hotels, attractions, sports arenas and the like. So while our cities — excluding High Point, which has shown no interest in having residents in downtown — have been constructing apartment buildings and converting existing properties for residential use, Memphis built a gigantic pyramid for its NBA team that sat dormant for years after the FedEx Forum arena was built in 2004. Now it’s the world’s largest Bass Pro Shop.

Greensboro and Winston-Salem have been building on those down-town numbers, with each housing about 2,000 residents. But critical mass for a downtown, according to urban planner Patrick McDonnell, is 10,000 residents, at which point the commercial concerns — restaurants, retail and grocery stores among them — have enough of a market to really make a go of it.

Of course, compared to Memphis, Greensboro and Winston-Salem have virtually no tourist action, so it wouldn’t make sense to create entire districts like Beale Street for people who are never going to show up.

But we can further develop our downtowns to beef up those residen-tial numbers, and that’s exactly what’s happening. Almost 1,000 new residences are in the pipeline in downtown Greensboro, with a similar number on tap for downtown Winston-Salem. That doesn’t put us where we need to be in terms of critical mass, but unlike Memphis we’re moving in the right direction.

And though we don’t have a giant pyramid that sells fishing lures, we do have more people walking around on our streets than Memphis, with the possible exception of Beale Street.

But that’s all tourists anyway.

FRESH EYESAn impostor at Furniture Market

I started to get nervous about halfway to High Point.

My furniture-buyer costume was tight and hot and uncomfort-able, my market pass twisted and caught on my sports jacket. I tried to take my mind

off it, imagining the sights I was about to see — black rhino skins, dinosaur-leg tables, children from the developing world being used as chairs, I imagined. This was it; I was as going to see the greasy underbelly of the High Point Furniture Market.

Now I know everyone is sick of hearing about the vacant buildings in downtown High Point, but it’s difficult to overstate how similar parts of it are to the set of “The Walking Dead.” I easily found a spot to park in a long row of empty spaces across the street from a long row of empty buildings on a long empty street three blocks from my destina-tion. I locked my car, scanned the immediate area for zombies and set off.

I cut across the train station and some empty parking lots, walked past a long row of decrepit shrubbery and across a particularly brutal con-crete bridge when suddenly, over the horizon, I saw the glittering oasis that is the spiritual center of the beast: Market Square.

My heart pounded at the entrance, where three police officers stood by a woman with a scan-ning gun. I paced around pretending to text or research. I was racking my brain for a cover story to explain how lost I looked. “I’m just an assistant,” or “This is my first time at market,” or maybe “Could you please direct me to, uh, Alan Cousins Art Acquisitions? Yeah that’s it.”

I knew if I hung out too long they would get suspicious so I just bit the bullet and went for it, desperately trying not to look nervous as I made my way to the entry queue. I kept my head down, and my shaky hand lifted my fraudulent pass to be scanned. The woman casually scanned my tag and continued her conversation.

I was in.I entered the space and felt an immediate pang

of disappointment. Where I had expected sex and power, cocaine and opulence, I found only the eye of a swirling vortex of banal capitalism staring back. Here was a shopping mall with no registers. Long aisles were separated into makeshift booths. Sure, everyone looked rich, and I couldn’t have af-forded anything here, but where was the glitz, the glamour, the smoky backrooms where billionaires bet million-dollar furniture on poker games, a model on each arm? I trudged down the count-

less aisles and scanned for anything to report and came up with only this — the 2016 furniture trends are as follows: fake plants, fake books (yeah seriously a whole booth dedicated to fake books), headless rainbow birds, and Victorian-era furniture which appeared to be dipped in primary colored paint.

The building went on forever. It was a maze of color. I was getting uncomfortable. They could tell I wasn’t one of them and I picked up speed.

I needed a drink.I made my way through the labyrinth to a little

bar area. It was as surreal as the rest of this circus. Somehow the bartender must have known I wasn’t what I appeared, because after waiting anxiously in line watching people walk away with drinks he would only pour me quarter-ounce tastes of whis-key. Was there some secret code? I managed to cobble together an ounce or so of whiskey out of five or six “samples” and steeled myself to return to the fray. Down a metal staircase and onward. Up another staircase to the children’s section, with $30,000 bedroom sets made to look like airplane cockpits or spaceships. Down another flight to what looked like a massive antique store, stopping at the little wine and cheese carts with confused bartenders to hydrate.

I was on my fourth or fifth plastic four-ounce cup when I came upon a massive brick courtyard filled with people at the far side of the building. The “traditionally Southern” catering and mid-dle-aged cover band created the overall effect of a summer cookout in your rich friend’s backyard.

I made my way to the buffet line, filled my plate with barbecue and green bean salad, and found a spot out of the way in the corner to sit and think. What is the story of the furniture market?

I sat there for awhile watching the throngs of rich, middle-aged people from all over the world. I watched them in the middle of this city-with-in-a-city drunk on one cup of wine, letting their hair down and dancing. I thought about the bus station, empty buildings and the man I had asked for directions who didn’t even know how to get here. I thought about the plastic furniture and all the wealth. This tiny island of prosperity that only exists twice a year felt so separate from High Point. I turned these things over in my head, drank the free wine this forged pass got me and ate my free sandwich.

The party wound down and as the last chords of the Black Crowes-inspired cover of “Hard to Handle” rang into the autumn night, a strange phrase echoed through my mind: “Don’t worry folks, things are still about the same.”

Tim Nolan is a bartender and musician living in

Winston-Salem.

by Tim Nolan

by Brian Clarey

At the end of the workshop, Flack mentioned to me that black people are often hesitant to go to a local clinic in Winston-Salem, and suggested that I try to find out why. A woman who had previously worked with the federal Women Infants & Children food and nutrition program, who had overheard our conversation, posited some theories.

“Black people are tired of feeling like they’re the subject of a research study,” she said. “And they keep getting prescribed medications that don’t make them feel better. So they stop going back.”

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When I was in second grade my whole class made ashtrays for Christmas. Everybody’s parents smoked. Grown-ups would send their kids to the corner store to buy a pack of Winstons or Tareytons. The copies of Time and the Ladies’ Home Journal on the coffee table were filled with cheerful ads showing people making their daily lives better with cigarettes. And then 50 years ago the Surgeon General’s office issued its report on smoking and health and things began to shift. Ciga-rettes remained — and remain — legal, but the culture around smoking changed dramatically. Second-graders no longer gave their parents ashtrays for Christmas and doctors no longer smoked their way through medical consultations (yes, that used to happen too). Hundreds of thou-sands of people who would have died of tobacco-related diseases didn’t.

What will it take for us to apply the same national will to guns? Every time there’s another mass shooting we line up on either side and post and re-post angry things on social media and then stagnate into theoretical issues of constitutional rights and personal responsibility. And people go on dying.

The cost of our American gun culture

became painfully personal to me this past January when my beautiful, funny, smart sister Mary lost her way in the depths of a bipolar depression that her disease told her would never end. One chilly winter afternoon she lay down on her bed and shot herself in the head with a gun she had purchased earlier that day.

Something important to know about suicide by gun: At an 85 percent fatality rate it is by far the most effective method out there. The vast majority of those who survive a suicide attempt will never try it again, but once a gun enters the mix there are very few second chances.

Another thing to know about gun suicides: They are extremely common — more common than gun homicides, more common than accidental shootings and much, much more common than the terrible mass gun killings that dominate the headlines. Just look at the numbers: In 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control, more than two-thirds of all gun deaths in the United States were suicides — 21,175 in all. That comes out to an average of 58 gun suicides a day. A day.

It has become commonplace within the The last photograph of Mary Seymour — taken on a train trip in November 2014.

Depression, guns and the deadly resultby Liz Seymour

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17A professional photo taken of Mary Seymour taken to accompany one of her articles.The last photograph of Mary Seymour — taken on a train trip in November 2014. ABIGAIL SEYMOURLIZ SEYMOUR

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5 medical community to define access to guns as a public health issue — so much so that the connection between guns and public health has stirred up a powerful backlash from the National Rifle Associ-ation.

Four years ago conservatives in Florida pre-emptively passed the so-called ”docs vs. Glocks” law that makes it illegal for doctors to ask their patients about gun ownership. Similarly, Dr. Vivek Murthy’s nomination for surgeon general was held up for almost 18 months largely by an NRA campaign that labeled him “Pres-ident Obama’s radically anti-gun nomi-nee.” His crime? Having tweeted, “Tired of politicians playing politics w/ guns, putting lives at risk b/c they’re scared of NRA. Guns are a healthcare issue.” Gun advocates went, well, ballistic. By the time he was finally confirmed in December of last year, Murthy had backed so far down as to promise that he would not use the surgeon general’s office as a “bully pulpit for gun control.” His position now is that we need more “common sense.”

It’s an odd part of the grief process, or the healing process, or whatever damn and unasked-for process I’m in the middle of right now, that every time I read a date a little clock in my head starts running backwards to where Mary was and what she was doing at that time. In May 2011, the month “docs vs. Glocks” was signed into law in Florida, Mary was starting a blog called Galloping Mind, subtitled “Musings on horses, humans, and life.” In the first entry she wrote about returning to horseback riding after a 25-year hiatus.

“I almost gave up,” she wrote, “but I sensed I would lose a lot more than a future with horses if I did. I’d be losing the self I was just beginning to construct — not the fearless girl who rode her pony bareback around fields at a gallop, but someone brave in a different way: a wom-

an who was finding her own way, daring to be a beginner again, making peace with discomfort, and letting go of illusions.”

Mary returned to riding in her forties. Months before her 50th birthday she left a writing and editing job in Massachusetts, sold her house and moved to Greensboro where her two sisters lived. It was the end of 2008, which, as it turned out, was a terrible time to be making a change. Once she arrived in Greensboro, Mary couldn’t find another editing job; she ended up working in retail for $7.50 an hour and freelance writing on the side. One of her freelance articles was a wry, funny piece about her job search; that article led to a conversation with North Carolina Public Radio’s “The Story with Dick Gordon” about being a middle-aged, college-edu-cated woman caught short in the reces-sion. It made for great radio, but it was Mary’s own life and she was scared. One evening we sat on a bench in the Greens-boro Arboretum while she cried and cried.

“I’m so tired of being plucky,” she said. Shortly after that she pluckily applied to graduate school.

In October 2012 when Vivek Murthy

sent out his tweet about guns, Mary was a couple of months into a job she loved at the Mental Health Association in Greensboro. In May of that year she had graduated with a master’s degree in counseling from UNCG. Two months before that our other sister Abigail and I had forcibly taken Mary to the emergency room at Wesley Long Hospital.

“I tried to bolt,” Mary wrote later, “but my boyfriend pinned me in his arms and carried me, kicking and pummeling, to his car. I understood in a thunderburst of clarity that this was a cosmic test. The universal force that was giving me orders would show me how to surmount this newest obstacle. It would all become part of my enduring myth as the next Dalai Lama.”

Mary told us later that she had not taken her lithium for several months — whether she had stopped accidentally, stopped on purpose, or stopped acciden-tally-on-purpose even she didn’t know for sure. Once back on the lithium she returned quickly to center.

It wasn’t the first time. Mary was diag-nosed with bipolar disorder — the brain disease that used to be called manic-de-pression — in the summer of 1995 after a dramatic psychotic break. From that moment onward she worked vigilantly to keep herself on the middle path between the terrifyingly seductive highs and the soul-destroying lows that are the two poles of the disease, and for the most part she succeeded, becoming along the way a vocal advocate for greater public under-standing of mental health.

She wrote about it — a piece she pub-lished in Newsweek in 2002 called “Call Me Crazy, But I Have To Be Myself” is required reading in some college classes — she lectured, she taught, she worked with individuals. She took up shardware, a mosaic technique that uses broken plates to make beautiful and eccentric works of art, and she taught it to other people with mental illness as a metaphor for finding the beauty in brokenness.

Still, Mary had a bipolar brain. At about this time last year, she started feeling depressed again. At first she attributed it to the change in the seasons — she hated winter’s long nights and cold days — and a change in jobs. She went to yoga class more often, rode her horse whenever she could, asked her doctor’s help in adjusting her medications, reached out to family and friends for support. Mary had been writing off and on about her own life; after she died we found fragments of a memoir.

“Depression is its own country,” she had written. “You don’t know exactly how or when you got there, but you know you want to get out. The country declares sovereignty and says you will live there until you die. Which may be sooner than you think.”

The particular depression Mary was writing about occurred in 1998, three years after her first psychotic break. It took two years for her to fully crawl her way out of that one.

Mary with Mystic, the white horse she had always wanted. KATE COOLER

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“I grew used to days that were shaded from black to pale gray, grateful for any that were pearly,” she wrote. “I started therapy with a Buddhist-oriented prac-titioner and came to know the strands of anxiety, insecurity, fear, hopelessness and grief deeply woven into my psyche. I learned to sit with them and study them rather than push the feelings away.”

Eventually the pearly days began to outnumber the gray days, and then the sunny days outnumbered the pearly ones and Mary went on with her full, creative and satisfying life.

By October of last year it was clear that the depression had returned. Mary was educated enough in her own illness to recognize that this was the depression that inevitably, in the cycle of bipolar disorder, follows the mania — in this case just a cou-ple of years late. By November she was describing a sense of despair and anxiety that rarely lifted; by December she had lost a noticeable amount of weight and was having trouble sleeping. To those of us who spent time with her every day, she seemed like someone disappearing under a sheet of ice, looking out at the world from a greater and greater distance. It was like her psychotic break but in reverse: a sharp parabola that felt like reality to her. But wasn’t.

“What’s so strange is that I am my own worst enemy,” she wrote near the end of December. “It’s my imaginings, my fears, that render me incapable. If I could only find a way to let go of all that fear. It’s irrational, really — I have enough money to get by for quite a while. It’s not about base survival — it’s about the mind playing tricks on itself, distorting reality.”

In 1996, in the wake of a mass shoot-ing, Australia dramatically tightened its firearm-licensing requirements, prohibited

several kinds of firearms outright and held a mandatory buyback of all the guns that had been made newly illegal. The firearm suicide rate subsequently fell by 57 percent. When Israel no longer allowed its soldiers to take guns home on the week-end, the overall suicide rate in the Israeli Defense Force dropped by 40 percent. Twenty years ago the state of Connecticut passed legislation that barred a person who had been a patient in a mental health facility within the last six months from purchasing a gun, and started mandating an eight-hour safety training course for anyone who wanted a gun permit. The firearm suicide rate fell by 15.4 percent. To receive a gun permit in Massachusetts, where Mary was living when she experi-enced her first big depression, you must fill out and mail in a hard-copy applica-tion, be fingerprinted and photographed, pay $100 and take a certified gun safety course. Massachusetts has one of the lowest overall suicide rates in the United States, fewer than ten for every 100,000 people.

In early January, Mary spent a couple of days in a mental health facility in Win-ston-Salem, hoping that a new regimen

of medications might begin to reverse the despair that had overtaken her days and her nights. She came home from the center on a Thursday evening feeling little better. On the Saturday after she got out, she sat down in her sunny work-room overlooking her sloping backyard and wrote: “Today I signed up for a gun permit. Apparently it takes 5-7 days for the permit to come through. The thought of buying a gun and shooting myself terrifies me, but so does the idea of living any longer. Maybe my meds will kick in during the next few days and none of this will happen.”

Mary applied online and paid the $5 application fee. On Tuesday around noon — fewer than two business days after her application was submitted — she received an email from the Guilford County Sher-iff’s Office letting her know that she had been approved and could pick her permit up from their office.

Perhaps given another couple of days the meds would have kicked in as she hoped, perhaps a good night’s sleep or a warm day or a decent meal would have been enough to alter her state of mind, but now we’ll never know. Five days after applying for a gun permit, Mary was dead.

Mary Seymour (back left) with her sisters Abigail (foreground) and Liz. COURTESY

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n many ways, the evolution of the space occupied by

Krankies at the eastern edge of downtown Winston-Sa-lem marks the various mod-ern eras of this city since big tobacco took a plunge.

It began with the Were-house, as some townies and scenesters love to tell you. And the latest remodel, a phase that began with the displacement of the Electric Moustache artist space in the building, coincides with a larger rebirth of the city’s core, and this quadrant in particular.

New floors, improved seating, a relocated stage, a torn-down wall and, most importantly, food set this iteration apart from earlier ones. And this likely won’t be the last facelift for the cultural outpost.

Krankies the café is not unrecognizable to those who grew used to Krankies the coffeeshop. Counter service is replaced with a fast-casual approach, with orders and payment still taking place at the register but dishes brought out to tables. But the culture and vibe prevail; despite a relatively extensive food menu, it’s more accurate to call Krankies a coffee-house that serves food than a restaurant that has an obsession with the black gold.

I ran into former Krankies employee Eric Weyer — the red-bearded Eric behind Hoots brewery and bar (as opposed to his more closely-cropped business partner Eric Swaim) — on my way into the newly transformed café. Without a clue of what the menu might entail, I solicited his ad-vice and took it, ordering the hoppin’ John plate.

Weyer knows what he’s talking about. The Southern-style vege-tarian meal of rice and beans with satisfying cooked greens, a wedge of cornbread and a scoop of chow chow might not sound like much, but it’s tasty and filling. There are other vegetarian choices here too, including the $5 toast with ricotta and honey or avocado and radish, the daily vegetable plate or, more popularly, the griddled cheese hero.

The provolone cheese itself is cooked, rather than melted by proxy between bread in a typical grilled cheese. Protruding from the sides of the puffy hero bread, the cheese is visibly browned and topped with cold crisp vegetables (think of a raw slaw) oregano, mayo, red wine vinegar and tomato. Weyer’s heard good things about this one too, and a Krankies server on shift recommended it to my friend Emily, who en-joyed it. I finagled a bite for myself, and while I liked it, I’d pick the Hoppin’ John over it again.

Later that week, Krankies Coffee posted a mouthwatering photo of an-other vegetarian dish, served during dinner — a wild mushroom spätzle with cultured cream and rosemary — which apparently became a bestseller. Spätzle, I learned from a few cooking

websites, is a kind of soft, egg noodle common in cen-tral European nations, and its now the No. 1 reason I’d want to travel to Hungary or Austria.

The menu at Krankies isn’t dominated by food for herbivores though, nor European cuisine. Lunch options also include a meatloaf sandwich, a chopped

salad with bacon and a turkey Reuben, among others. There’s a Cheesy Western with a quarter-pound patty and fried egg served all day, and a Southern cast-iron fried chicken sandwich that bests some of its counter-parts with slaw and pickles. When the chicken entrée arrived in front of my friend Bethany, it made me wish I hadn’t opted for the healthier meal.

But this is just the beginning of Krankies’ new config-uration, the latest evolutionary step on central fringe, and there’s plenty of time to come back for some fried bird or the wild mushroom spätzle.

Eric Weyer, from Hoots, recommended the Hoppin’ John Plate and I’m glad I took his advice. ERIC GINSBURG

Consuming Krankies’ cuisineby Eric Ginsburg

CULTURE

Pick of the WeekPumpkin Pancake Celebration @ Greensboro Farmers Curb Market (GSO), Halloween, 8 a.m.

With a ton of flour-dessert experience under his belt, Chef Alex Amoroso of Cheesecakes by Alex might be the most qualified person to whip up some pumpkin pancakes. You’re invited to come and guess how much the Great Pumpkin weighs, and costumes are borderline mandatory. The event will start at 8 a.m. Visit gsofarmersmarket.org for more information.

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Visit Krankies Coffee at 211 E. Third St. (W-S) or at krankiescoffee.com.

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Unconventional wine pairings

The best part about being a booze columnist — besides the whole getting paid to drink thing — is that you’re always trying something new, on the lookout for the unexplored, the forgotten, the experimental. It’s a habit anyone could cultivate, but with the job actually requir-ing that you not fall back on your go-to, an instinc-tive feeling of guilt builds anytime you aren’t pushing yourself.

So when your girlfriend says something like, “Hey, can we put Fireball in that bottle of prosecco you bought the other night along with apple cider to make this drink I saw on Insta-gram?” you say yes much more quickly than you might otherwise, if at all.

And that’s a good thing, because the apple-cinna-mon mimosa spinoffs we drank from martini glasses in the wilderness just south of Great Smoky Mountains National Park are worthy of repeating.

I might’ve felt differently, even considering the inborn require-ments of the job, if the bottle of Ciacola Prosecco hadn’t felt like a steal at $13, or if I didn’t know I could find it again at Caviste, a Winston-Salem wine shop over on Robinhood Road.

See, I came by the prosecco at a wine tasting event last week, where the Caviste proprietor showed up to sample a red, white and rosé alongside it. Art Nouveau Winston-Salem, the young-bloods associated with the city-county arts council, held the wine and cheese event to stir up additional interest in an exhibit it put on at the Milton Rhodes Arts Center on the southern edge of downtown, and invited Caviste to facili-tate the sampling.

And sample I did, asking for more of the fruit-forward white wine before rotating through the exhibit. If there is such thing as household names in

the local arts scene, those folks were represented, especially from (appropri-ately) a younger cohort, including Dane Walters and Laura Lashley. Art Nou-veau asked several of these prominent artists to pick another local — which in this case included Greensboro — whose work inspired them, resulting in a diverse cast spreading across mediums, styles and social networks.

How else do you end up with a tattoo artist exhibiting masterful drawings next to a three-part think piece on race and appearance next to carnie-style paintings? Wood carvings, sculptures, conceptual photographs and other materials graced the room’s walls and floors.

There is beauty in events like these. Art Nouveau held an opening for the exhibit of course, but this more inti-mate setting provided ample space for attendees to study each piece without

feeling forced to step out of someone’s way. And for someone like me, who fully intends to check out new gallery exhibits but can never seem to find the time, it set forward a structured reason to show up at a specific time.

Plenty of art openings offer wine or stacks to attendees, a sort of reward or incentive for attendance, but in a way the role reversal here made art a bonus to this chance to socialize.

Because to be totally honest, the people excite me more than the art or the wine. The folks of Art Nouveau — like Jackie Johnson who was showing her mom and a family friend around the ex-hibit or Devin Mackay, Shaheen Syal and Eliza Walmsley who invited me along for dinner and yes, more wine, after the event ended — are sharp, welcoming and affirming. It isn’t that I dislike the art, and I sure as hell don’t dislike the wine. But running into people such as

these, or Michael Hewlett from the Winston-Salem Journal and city planner Kelly Bennett, is the real reason I rec-ommend small events such as this.

Maybe they, in fact, are really the best part about my job.

by Eric Ginsburg

Shaheen Syal, Michael Hewlett and Eliza Walmsley admire a piece by Laura Lashley that Syal committed to buy at the event. ERIC GINSBURG

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t was near the dead end of “Winter,” during one of the

last voracious bursts of Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas when a hair from her violin bow snapped. But Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg didn’t notice. She only dug harder into her violin, bracing the current of sound that she had built in a fury as the stray horsehair waved above her like a war banner.

Thirty minutes before the horsehair broke, the Gate City Camerata were play-ing the waltzes of Arnold Scholenberg, 10 light and touching pieces. It was Triad Stage and UNCG’s Oct. 23 concert featuring the violin-ist with the UNCG Sympho-ny Orchestra and Gate City Camerata. The camerata — a group of 18 UNCG student and faculty members — sat erect, moving as a tightly disciplined ensemble. A few of them adjusted their eye-glasses after each waltz, and when they finished Sonnen-berg walked onstage.

Her pants were pink, more vivid than a tickle-me and just short of a hot pink. She was slightly slouched, her walk relaxed but purposeful. She stopped at the center of the ensemble and placed a white cloth on her violin where her left cheek would meet the wood.

The violinists of the camerata began the first of Astor Piazzolla’s Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas with dis-sonant, hissing sounds as the double bass picked up a rhythm dropped by Sonnenberg’s swaying hips. It was a bold choice for a concert with university students. Pizzolla’s Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas is a mean com-position, four tightly wound tango pieces that make Vivaldi’s Four Seasons sound like elevator music. Played together, the tangoes are a turbulent ride of hard-hit-ting crashes and major lifts with the blustery kind of energy that can break a bow hair.

Sonnenberg looked to the bass, pumping her body up and down with the rhythm. She let out a guttural “humph,” as her body dived low with a voracious burst of notes. She moved herself up and down like one might if undergoing an exorcism, at times both of her feet leaving the ground at once. With so many oppor-

tunities for devastation, her performance carried the intensity of a high-wire act.

Besides being a composition bred for devilishly bold musicians, Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas has its share of slow, sweeping moments that Sonnenberg played standing erect, her dark and fierce browline raised and mouth twisted with concentration. It was far from the image on the program that UNCG provided, the picture of a seemingly pleasant and smiling violinist.

Sonnenberg is 54 and the director of the San Fran-cisco-based New Century Chamber Orchestra. In her early years she was a child prodigy abandoned by her father and the youngest-ever winner of the Naumburg International Violin Competition, which gave her an entrée to Carnegie Hall and flung her into the limelight as a controversial yet extremely talented player. It was when she was 32 that Sonnenberg badly injured her pinky finger while cutting onions and had the fingertip surgically reattached. She had almost fully recovered when she attempted suicide, but the gun never fired.

Throughout the entire performance at Aycock

Auditorium, she didn’t speak a word. But her personal demons were evident in her sneer, in her dark eyes, and the way she thrashed the air above her head with the violin bow.

After the Gate City Camerata finished the fourth season, the UNCG Symphony Orchestra took the stage with the classic symphonic sound of Bela Bartok. They played Dance Suite, three sweeping numbers worlds

Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, a polarizing figure in classical music, plays along with the UNCG Symphony Orchestra. DANIEL WIRTHEIM

Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg snaps a hair from her bow by Daniel Wirtheim

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Pick of the WeekFrankenstein! @ RJ Reynolds Auditorium (W-S), Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.

Most consider the 1931 film Frankenstein to be the best version to date. The Piedmont Wind Symphony makes its homage to the cult classic with original music to accompany the screen action. Frankenstein-lovers of all ages can find something to enjoy about this performance. Visit piedmontwindsymphony.com for more information.

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away from the dark appeal of Sonnen-berg playing Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas.

After Dance Suite, Sonnenberg joined the orchestra, standing next to the conductor, for Max Bruch’s “Violin Con-certo No. 1 in G minor.” She traded licks with the orchestra, a seemingly docile affair for the wild woman that snapped a bow hair.

Watching her with the Symphonic Orchestra was a nice sendoff but a weak cure for the listener’s hangover, the result of an exhilarating wall of sound Sonnenberg had created in Cuatro Esta-ciones Porteñas.

The orchestra is primed for success, a group of college kids that might have successful careers ahead as session musicians. The way Sonnenberg plays cannot be taught. In her delirious per-formance anything can happen, even a hair from a bow might snap. And that’s no big deal for her. She only bends down to bite the stray hair off and raises her bow again, a toast to the demons that spur her on.

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t was a Friday night. Energy from A&T’s Homecoming stirred on Elm Street while

North Carolina Poet Laureate Shelby Stephenson introduced the 2015 NC Arts Council Fellowship Recipients inside Scuppernong Books.

In the back of the store, nestled in an enclave between a table topped with slices of pie and a pair of couches, David Potorti, director of literature and theater at the state Arts Council, was giving his opening remarks to a room of roughly 25.

The recipients were a group of seven — four fiction writers, two screenwriters and a poet — who will receive a $10,000 grant to further their craft. All of the recipients have agreed to stay in North Carolina for their year as a fellow.

Potorti introduced the fellows with short bios, most of them about living as educators and freshly published writers. Then he introduced Stephenson, the North Carolina poet laureate.

Stephenson’s face is a landscape unto itself. When he takes a moment to choose his words — which he does often — his wrinkles drift into the sides of his face. He moves and speaks slowly. A self-proclaimed farmboy who studied law at UNC- Chapel Hill, Stephenson came into the position in the midst of controversy.

Stephenson was chosen only after the first 2014 Poet Laureate Valerie Macon resigned. Gov. Pat McCrory had originally selected Macon without consultation from the Arts Council. She was a state employee with a thin publishing résumé who was quickly swimming in accusations of being a McCrory-insider and stepped down. Stephenson was a more deliberate pick.

His poems are a lifetime of reflections on growing up in a rural farming family in Benson. Baseball gloves, God and fields are just some of the themes from the poem that he read before allowing the fellows to take their turn.

One of the fellows, Kim Church, like Stephenson, studied law. She read a passage from her first novel Byrd, about a North Carolina woman who moves to California with her boyfriend, gets pregnant and re-turns to her hometown where she puts her child up for adoption. Byrd has been a moderate success, at least enough to make Church an artist fellow. Her work, like Stephenson’s is dedicated to Southern imagery, drawing long country landscapes and the isolation of characters within them. Her words are lyrical as she describes a scene between the protagonist and her

lover, a California musician. The Arts Council does not select fellows but they do

offer criteria that a panel of professionals must adhere to when making the decision. The applicant cannot be enrolled in an academic or degree-granting program and has to submit a list of items the writer may use the grant money for.

The money cannot be used for academic research but can be used to set aside time for work. The Arts Council claims that this is the way to promote cultur-ally significant works in and about North Carolina.

Julie Funderburk is an assistant professor and arts director at Queens University of Charlotte and the only poet at the fellowship recipient reading. She received an MFA from UNCG’s creative writing program. Uni-corn Press, a small-press based in Greensboro, pub-lished her book of poems Thoughts to Fold into Birds in 2014.

“In the bedroom where your parents slept, the hard-wood’s scorched,” she read from her poem, “Slated for Demolition.” “There’s a view through to the sky — this is what happens. At the bay window, the demo permit hangs where sheer curtains used to blow their ghosts.”

Funderburk’s message seemed as elusive as a few of the listeners who had crept back to the bar for an-other drink. Groups of passersby were speaking loudly enough to one another to be overheard clearly inside. And all the while Stephenson sat, his face a landscape not of a city caught in the midst of one of the nation’s largest homecomings but a long narrow stretch of dirt road.

Kim Church, a recepient of the 2015 NC Arts Council Fellowship, read from her novel Byrd. DANIEL WIRTHEIM

Old landscapes with new fellowsby Daniel Wirtheim

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Pick of the WeekHalloWheels Bicycle Festival @ Downtown (W-S), starts Thursday

A bike-in movie screening of ET the Extra Terrestrial, a spooky scavenger hunt at creepy historic sites across Winston-Salem and a final bicycle ride in tweed: HalloWheels is your ticket to having an active Halloween. If nothing else, be sure to catch the scavenger hunt, a non-competitive ride that’s part history lesson and part terrifying. There’s one event a day and a special meeting places for each ride. Visit beersngears.com for times and locations.

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C A&T Universi-ty’s homecoming football game is

typically a pretty big deal in Greensboro. You don’t get the moniker “Greatest Homecom-ing On Earth” for nothing.

A few factors amplified this year’s homecoming celebra-tion.

For one, the university heads into its 125th year of existence in 2016. That long and storied academic his-tory produced the A&T Four, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and ill-fated astronaut Ronald McNair.

It’s an excellent legacy for a historically black univer-sity, steeped with civil rights activism.

But perhaps the biggest draw to the Oct. 24 home-coming game was that the Aggies kick ass at football this year.

While the program has produced talent in years past — including NFL Hall of Fame defensive end Elvin Bethea — A&T’s football teams have rarely dominated, especially in recent memory. But over the past four seasons, the Aggies have clinched winning seasons, with the last year culminating in a five-way tie for the head of the Mid-Eastern Atlantic Conference.

Coming into the homecoming game, their record stood at 5-1, the only loss coming against the Tar Heels, who currently tout a venerable one-loss season of their own.

Tickets sold out — and kept selling. A&T wanted everyone to see this game; they wanted everyone to be

there who could possibly get in. And hell, no one worth their pudding would miss this game.

More than 22,000 fans crowded into Aggie Stadi-um, literally overflowing onto the track and into the surrounding parking lots.

Of course, many fans found the scene outside the stadium quite welcoming.

Tailgating at any sporting events is de rigueur. But, again, you can’t call your homecoming the greatest on Earth by keeping things simply at par for the course.

The acrid smell of hot dogs and burgers cooking on the grill wafts through the air, sure. But add to that the oily odor of frying catfish, the spiciness of fried chicken, the sizzle of porter-house steaks and visions of mac & cheese, cole slaw, green beans and other delights, all in heaping portions. And it’s accompanied by the polyphonic cacophony of everything from old-school funk and disco to the freshest trap, em-anating from PA systems, boom-boxes and dozens of car stereos.

Aggies roll hard with tailgating.The marching band doesn’t fool around, either.The Blue and Gold Marching Machine’s reputation

precedes this column; it’s practically insulting just to point that out. From their route starting point at Murrow Boulevard, they arrived at Aggie Stadium at around 12:30 p.m., accompanied by the A&T Golden Delight dancers, the legendary drum line and a rear echelon of former band members. Even after that long

march, the brass section possessed the pipes to cause temporary tinnitus for fans sitting on the visitors’ side.

The Aggies faced the Howard University Bison, a longtime MEAC rival. The Bison hadn’t won a game and recorded some embarrassing losses against Appa-lachian State and Boston College.

Despite all odds, Howard didn’t look half bad in the first quarter, even in the face of crippling penalties and withering defensive play by the home team. They strode onto the field in the second quarter tied 7-7, even leading momentarily after freshman wide-out Guy Lemonier set up a short-scoring drive by returning a punt to the A&T 12-yard line.

But then the Aggies turned on, and they turned down for nothing.

I recall diminutive sophomore running back Tarik Cohen showing his stuff during the spring game, but he played a red-letter perfor-mance against Howard. He consis-tently slid and slammed through the Howard defensive line, includ-ing a 31-yard touchdown run to

put A&T back on top after that momentary loss of the lead. He may be small, but he played with the heart and power of a six-footer.

He’d be named Player of the Game with two other touchdowns, rushing for 137 yards on 17 carries.

Right before halftime, A&T kicked a field goal, set-ting the score at 30-14 in their favor.

And then the announcer came over the PA.“Attention: If you are sitting in the Howard band sec-

Striving for greatness at A&TGOOD SPORT

by Anthony Harrison

N

The Aggies thumped the Howard University Bison 65-14 at this year’s homecoming game.

The A&T Aggie Bulldogs walk the promenade.ANTHONY HARRISON ANTHONY HARRISON

A&T’s next home game pits the Aggies against Delaware State on Nov. 14 at 1 p.m. For more information, visit ncataggies.com.

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Winston-Salem’s BeersNGears planned three days and nights of Hallow-een-themed festivities all centered on biking. On Thursday, bikers ride from SECCA to A/perture Cinema to watch ET: The Extra-Terrestrial. There will also be a spooky scavenger hunt at Twin City Hive at 7 p.m. on Friday, and bring your finest tweed to the Millennium Center for the HalloTweed ride on Saturday morning. For more info, visit beersngears.com.

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tion, please vacate your seat,” he calmly requested. But with a hint of a smile, he said, “They are coming back.”

Disgruntled Aggies had taken over the whole section. Police officers’ requests to leave went unheeded until the Howard band returned from their halftime routine.

Returning to the field, the football team would not grant Howard Universi-ty any similar courtesy.

The Aggies decimated the Bison in the third quarter. A&T scored four touch-downs, and the defense shut down any attempts by Howard. Redshirt junior defensive end Angelo Keyes even recovered a fumble for a touchdown. The special teams rose to the occasion

as well, with sophomore defensive back Jeremy Taylor blocking and recovering a punt attempt and sophomore wide receiver Khris Gardin returning another punt for a touchdown. Aggie second stringers came on the field, and Howard never scored again.

The final score: 60-14.A parking attendant across the street

off Bessemer Avenue asked me: “How was the game?”

I reported the score. “It was a blowout,” I added. “It was a

great game.”He just shrugged and smiled, saying,

“Hey, it’s homecoming! Greatest on Earth!”

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Quotes,” from a 1982 film18 Shake your hips20 Drum kit components21 Sluggish22 Musical notes after mis25 Dropbox files, often26 Schwarzenegger movie based on a

Philip K. Dick story30 Tight-lipped31 Sentiment akin to “Ain’t no shame in

that!”32 Phrase in French cookery33 Pkg. measures36 Lets in a view of37 Photographer Goldin38 Coaching legend Parseghian39 Hairpieces in old portraits41 Type of card for a smartphone42 Travel widely46 Actor Lukas of “Witness”48 “Can’t Fight This Feeling” band ___

Speedwagon

49 Berkshire Hathaway headquarters50 Skateboarding 101 jumps53 Some Emmy winners54 Ralph Bakshi movie that was the first

X-rated animated feature58 Arkansas governor Hutchinson59 Long-term aspirations60 D.J.’s dad, on “Roseanne”61 Solid yellow line’s meaning, on the road62 “___ Came of Age” (Sarah Brightman

album)

Down1 Dope2 Setting for a 1992 Fraser/Shore comedy3 Pepsi Center player4 Boarding pass datum5 Source of a Shakespearean snake bite6 “Whatevs”7 That thing, to Torquemada8 Wrestling victories9 Animals in the game “The Oregon Trail”10 “___ to Be You”11 Like some buildings with arches and

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apt genus Pulmonaria33 Clean34 Dress rehearsal35 2006 appointee, to friends40 “Brave New World” feel-good drug43 Best Western competitor44 Some long-haired dogs, for short45 Coca-Cola bottled water brand47 Ground-based unit?51 Cornell of Cornell University52 Fr. holy women53 “Consarnit!”55 Some printers56 He played “The Ugly” opposite Clint’s

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The Marching Rams of Northeast Guilford High School at the Greatest Homecoming on Earth.

East Lindsay Street, Greensboro

PHOTO BY CAROLYN DE BERRY

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t’s 8:30 p.m. on date night at one of downtown Greensboro’s most vener-

able restaurants and the joint is so empty the steak knives are blowing a keening, metal whisper. The staff is low-talking about an early close and I’m trying to convince them to join me for the crescendo of NC A&T University’s 125th homecoming just a

few blocks away.The activities began a week earlier with the coronation of

Mr. & Miss A&T, daily events, lectures, parties, comedy shows, step shows, luncheons and dinners throughout the week, while culminating in the legendary Saturday parade and the homecoming football game against the Howard University Bisons. A host of Sunday activities round out the week, but the real party is Saturday night when alumni and GHOE tour-ists pack downtown Greensboro tighter than a lycra dress on Gabuay Siddobay.

Young Dro, Rae Sremmurd, Wale, Fetty Wap and Future were rapping at the Greensboro Coliseum, and Gladys Knight was crooning the night before at Koury Convention Center. But the real party and after stretched from South Elm to Mur-row Boulevard and beyond.

It’s 9 or so and the waning waitstaff demurs my invitation, citing a rare “off” Saturday night. I notice as I make my way down Elm that a few other normally lively establishments have flickering signs indicating dimming power and being closed.

The real action is centered around Churchill’s, where the queue to enter is like an anaconda in a basket. The ladies are decked in everything from cutout dresses that look like they’ve been attacked by Siegfried & Roy’s tigers all the way to ensembles that would make Cookie Lyons do a double take. The men are just as plume-worthy with Sunday best suits, tightly tailored hipster gear, explosions of color, layering and bling and refined casual wear. The mood is lively, but tense. It’s definitely a party — but it’s a private one, and this white girl was an outsider.

I’ve been here before — the outsider. In the early ’90s one of my first jobs as a journalist was as a reporter for the Carolina Peacemaker, founded in Greensboro in 1967. I worked for the legendary civil rights activist and Publisher John Marshall Kilimanjaro and the venerable Editor-in-Chief Hal Sieber, who served as a speechwriter for John F. Kennedy and authored sev-eral books about civil rights.

They threw this cub up against the likes of local light-ning-rod activist Ervin Brisbon, put me in a room with Jesse Jackson, gave me Coretta Scott King’s home phone number and sent me to pick up Toni Morrison at the airport. I covered murders, moments in history, fights for historic buildings and neighborhoods, political feuds, racial profiling issues and even a Klan meeting — all in the name of opening the lines of com-munication in this racially divided city.

Twenty some years later as I gave a eulogy at Hal Sieber’s funeral and looked out at the room, I was impressed at the rainbow turnout, this community of people shaking hands and telling stories and realized that this is exactly what Hal had been fighting for his entire life. It’s what we should all be fight-ing for every day and in every human interaction we have.

by Nicole Crews

Greatest Homecoming on Earth (GHOE)ALL SHE WROTE

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TCB — Oct. 28, 2016: Shattered

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