TCB, Oct. 7, 2015 — Let it grow

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com October 7 – 13, 2015

FREE

Urban gardeners till the Triad Photo essay by Caleb Smallwood, words by Brian Clarey PAGE 16

GSO primary results PAGE 8

Knaves, raving PAGE 22

Laverne Cox at WFU PAGE 10

October 7 — 13, 2015

a

The Artist’s

Progressive,

Garden

destination

and the garden movement 1887–1920

dining, hosPitality &

southern-insPired for

american impressionism

sPecial events

450 North Spring Street, Winston-Salem | (336) 293-4797 | info @ Spring House NC . com | www. Spring House NC . com

SHR.12838.10 PCI_5.25x5.125.indd 1

10/8/14 11:47 AM

The Colors of healing a Solo Art Exhibit by Hollis Gabriel October 16th – October 31st Opening Reception Friday, October 16th 6–9pm

Known for her beautiful and mesmerizing mylar mobiles, Hollis Gabriel recently began her journey into painting on canvas as a way of easing her grief after the recent death of her son Connor. Filled with vivid and vibrant colors, texture and motion, these new works represent the tears shed and the continuation of life. THE COLORS OF HEALING have allowed Hollis to begin her journey towards peace.

“…the best examples of the genre.”

– Philadelphia Magazine

reynolda after hours Thursday, October 15, open until 8 p.m.

Admission after 4:30 p.m. only $5

october 3, 2015–january 3, 2016 reynoldahouse.org | #RHArtistsGarden

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The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement 1887–1920 was organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, with leading support from the Mr. & Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc and the Richard C. von Hess Foundation. The Major Exhibition Sponsors are Bill and Laura Buck, and Christie’s. Additional support from Bowman Properties, Ltd., the Burpee Foundation, Edward and Wendy Harvey, Mr. and Mrs. Washburn S. Oberwager, Pennsylvania Trust, Alan P. Slack, Martin Stogniew, in memory of Judy Stogniew, a lover of art and gardening, the Victory Foundation, Ken Woodcock, and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. Reynolda House is grateful for the generous support of the following sponsors for bringing this exhibition to North Carolina, including Major Sponsors Wake Forest University and Patty & Malcolm Brown.

Detail: Richard Emil (or Edward) Miller (1875–1943), The Pool, c. 1910, Oil on canvas, 32 x 39 7/16 in. Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1988.13. Photo: © Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago

RH_ArtistGardenTCBad10.2.indd 1

10/1/15 3:51 PM

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Schoolwork

by Brian Clarey

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

NEWS

13 Citizen Green: Remembering Grace Lee Boggs 14 IJMW: Gardeners for hire 14 Fresh Eyes: Why Warnersville matters

COVER

OPINION 13 Editorial: Primaries don’t matter

26 Pint-size parkour

GAMES 29 Jonesin’ Crossword

SHOT IN THE TRIAD

16 Let it grow

30 Deutzia Street, Greensboro

CULTURE

8 GSO primary results 10 Trans-awareness at WFU 12 HPJ: Down goes Baptist

GOOD SPORT

20 Food: Coffee klatsch 21 Barstool: Progress for distilleries 22 Music: The Raving Knaves fold 24 Stage and Screen: xoxoxo

ALL SHE WROTE 31 The most interesting man in the world

QUOTE OF THE WEEK Right now, we have to go outside the church walls. We don’t have walls anymore. This is God’s way of making us reach out and minister to the people in the community.

— Burdell Knight, in High Point Journal, page 12

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St., Greensboro, NC 27406 • Office: 336.256.9320 BUSINESS PUBLISHER Allen Broach

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING INTERN Nicole Zelniker

EDITORIAL EDITOR IN CHIEF Brian Clarey

jorge@triad-city-beat.com

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

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

NEST EDITOR Alex Klein

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

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

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

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

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

CONTRIBUTORS

Cover photography

by Caleb Smallwood Stephen Johnson surveys the land at his Greensboro farm.

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

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

I asked him in the car on the way over if he was going to ditch me as soon as we got there.

“Probably not,” he said. But I never put too much stock in the words of teenage boys, who are prone to all sorts of fallacies in their thinking. And sure enough, not three seconds after we entered the Moon Room on Guilford College’s campus, his doofy pals from the guitar program waved him over, leaving me by my lonesome at the end of a pew with maybe enough charge on my phone to get a couple Words With Friends in and perhaps one snarky Facebook comment.

No matter. The guitarist, Johannes Möller, pulled off the road by the Piedmont Classic Guitar Society for the gig, carried the evening with consummate virtuosity.

Möller used all 10 fingers and every inch of the neck of his Martinez on a slate of original music, the most interesting of which he based on five Chinese idioms that he picked up while wandering through that wide country. One of them had to do with flowers, their petals swirling through the air like snow; another attempted to convey the joy of the farmer who grows many types of grapes. Or maybe it was “grains”?

Möller’s tremolo, his dynamic and the purity of his appearance — the guy looks like he was sculpted from butter — were enough to capture most of the 20 or so guitar students on our end of the room; of those I saw, just one was completely checked out and possibly asleep, reminding me more than a little bit of myself in high school.

I tell myself that times were different then, our archetypes shaped more by The Breakfast Club and Fast Times at Ridgemont High than guys like Möller, whose hands moved like dancing birds under the lights in the small performance space.

My high school experience was as mainstream as it got: pep rallies, football and basketball games, the big spring dance. I remember a lot of it, but very few of those memories take place in a classroom.

And there was no classical guitar.

Maybe 100 had made it out that night, on the front end of a rainy weekend, to fall under the guitarist’s spell, share a moment of pure beauty before the first cold front rolled in. It was the best homework assignment I’ve ever been a part of.

We reconstructed the performance in the car on the ride home: the impossible runs, the notes that seemed to spring from nowhere, the potential utility of a properly trained pinkie finger, the strange life of the wandering classical guitarist.

After we got home, I heard the strains of a guitar coming from his room, just a couple minutes of practice before bed.

triad-city-beat.com

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

CONTENTS

The guy looks like he was scuplted from butter.

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October 7 — 13, 2015

CITY LIFE October 7 – 13 WEDNESDAY Paul Fehribach luncheon @ Meridian Restaurant (W-S), noon Paul Fehribach is the owner and chef of Big Jones Restaurant in Chicago and the author of a recent book, Big Jones Cookbook. He’ll be demonstrating his take on Southern cuisine at this special luncheon event. More information at meridianws.com.

by Daniel Wirtheim

THURSDAY

Artist lecture @ Weatherspoon Art Museum (GSO), 6 p.m.

Peter Campus makes video and new media art. His most recent works focus on the history of painting. More information at weatherspoon.uncg.edu.

Telluride Mountainfilm on Tour @ High Point Theatre (HP), 7 p.m.

The Telluride Moutainfilm festival is on tour and stopping by High Point to immerse viewers in a world of adventure. Skateboarding girls, a father-and-son white-water-rafting journey and a trip down the Colorado River are just some of the documentary themes. More information at mountainfilm.org.

Tackling the Stigma @ Aycock Auditorium, UNCG (GSO), 7 p.m.

Former NFL linebacker Keith O’Neil talks about his failures and success while living with bipolar disorder. The event is aimed at educating the public on mental health services in Greensboro.

More information at uncg.edu.

FRIDAY

Shelby Stephenson lecture @ Forsyth Tech (W-S), 11 a.m.

North Carolina Poet Laureate Shelby Stephenson is offering a public lecture. Themes throughout his career involve growing up in Benson and the natural beauty of our state. Find Forsyth Tech on Facebook for more information.

Art Lives Here silent auction fundraiser @ Revolution Mill Gallery (GSO), 6 p.m.

The silent auction is hosted by Hirsch Wellness Network, which gives 100 percent of its proceeds towards free creative programs supporting emotional needs of cancer survivors and their caretakers.

There will be live music and food. More information at hirschwellnessnetwork.org

Brown Bag Lunch Book Discussion @ Central Library (GSO), noon Bring a lunch sack and any thoughts for A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, which was recently adapted for film. More information at greensborolibrary. org.

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TEdxGreensboro Salon @ Upstage Cabaret (GSO), 5:45 p.m.

TED Salons are like appetizers between the main TEDx events. Expect the same idea-driven dialogue at a salon but this time join in. Participants are encouraged to engage in the conversation. More information at TEDxGreensboro.com.

Cold Salem 3: Halloween Art Show! @ Reanimator Records (W-S), 6:30 p.m.

Reanimator’s Halloween community art show is taking off with two live bands and lots of energy. Join the third annual Halloween Art Show by finding the page on Facebook.

Second Saturdays @ 205 Collaborative Art Studios and Gallery (GSO), 10 a.m.

Learn how to make knifes, charcoal and turn wood at this Second Saturday event.

Get all the details at 205collaborative.org.

Unity Festival @ Washington Street (HP), noon The Washington Street Business Association is getting businesses and professional people to make the Washington Street District a better place. They’ll have kid-zones, music and food trucks. More information at highpoint.org.

Playing October 9 — 15

TV CLUB PRESENTS “The Walking Dead” Season 6 Premiere! 9 pm Sunday! Free admission with drink purchase!

triad-city-beat.com

SATURDAY

Boruto: Naruto The Movie

US PREMIERE! Daily Showtimes: 12 pm and 7 pm Saturday through Thursday! Tickets are $10 each!

Woody Allen’s “Irrational Man” Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone. Daily Showtimes 12 pm and 7 pm. Tickets are $6 each!

Wes Craven Double Feature:

“Nightmare on Elm Street” & “Scream” 7 pm on FRIDAY! Tickets are $10 act!

Ash vs. The Evil Dead Trilogy: “The Evil Dead” (1981) Daily showtimes at 2:30 pm and 10 pm* (*10:30 pm only on Friday) $6.50 ticket includes a FREE BUTTON! TV CLUB SATURDAY:“Doctor Who” ALL NEW EPISODE! 9 pm Saturday. Free Admission With Drink Purchase!

Twelfth Night Through the Park(ing Lot) @ High Point Public Library (HP), 5:30 p.m.

Travel through a dynamic performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in British Rocker fashion. Music that mixes the Rolling Stones with Shakespeare will be the soundtrack in this is moving version of an English classic. More information at sharedradiance.org.

SUNDAY

Second Sundays on Fourth @ Fourth Street (W-S), 3 p.m.

Making Movies is the headliner of this installment of the recurring Fourth Street music festival. Join them for the last Second Sunday event of 2015. More information at sso4.com.

Triad Orchid Society’s Orchid Auction @ Greensboro Science Center (GSO), 1 p.m.

Get your hands on the most rare orchids and learn how to care for them, too. The event will raise money for monthly speakers. More information at triadorchidsociety.org.

TV CLUB PRESENTS: “American Horror Story: Hotel” Starring Lady Gaga! Series Premiere! 10 pm Wednesday Free Admission with Drink Purchase!

Beer! Wine! Amazing Coffee!

2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro geeksboro.com •

336-355-7180

Wear your Art...

Join Katrina Guilford for the unveiling of the fall collection by Chloe + Isabel.

Enjoy an afternoon of beautiful jewelry & fabulous art by local artist AMY GORDON. Refreshments can be enjoyed.

Sunday, October 11th 12:30 – 3:00 pm

Spontaneous Combustion @ Home Moravian Church (W-S), 2 p.m.

Jazz and classical music collide in the best way the Moravian Church. Get ready for music

by Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven and all the classics with a jazz-infusion. More information at homemoravian.org.

2105-A W. Cornwallis Drive • Greensboro

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October 7 — 13, 2015 Up Front News

Avoidable deaths What an outrageous story, from beginning to end [“Addicted to pain pills and pregnant, Jen McCormack landed in jail. 21 days later she was dead.”; Sept. 30, 2015; by Jordan Green]. Prescribing opiates. Jailing a pregnant woman (or anyone else) who is in treatment. Taking her freedom away, but not providing even a bare minimum of medical care. Limiting her family’s visits because she was “in custody” (but claiming she did not die in custody). And finally, not ordering an autopsy. Two lives lost and the public, let alone this poor woman’s family, are not owed a medical explanation? Keep digging, Jordan.

Lorraine Ahearn, via triad-city-beat.com

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Good Sport

Culture

Cover Story

Opinion

Really and truly one of the finest examples of journalism anywhere.

Billy Ingram, via triad-city-beat.com

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Thanks for an article that does not strain to add drama or pathos to a story that is just so sad with an ending that did not have to happen. And we all know that this happens without notice or fanfare to so many non-white and non-college educated human beings.

Abby Karp, via triad-city-beat.com Corporate vultures Just wanted you to know that Luna Lounge is being threatened with lawsuit because SubQ did covers mentioned in your article [“It can get intimate and weird at Luna Lounge”; Sept. 23, 2015; by Jordan Green]. Corporate BS. So sad.

Fred Hall, via triad-city-beat.com There’s the rub In a previous [issue] you had five noteworthy things started in the Triad [“The List: 5 noteworthy things started in the Triad”; Sept. 23, 2015; by Daniel Wirtheim]. No. 2 was Vick’s VapoRub. I have an interesting story about the creation of this product. Lunsford Richardson hired my great-grandfather Neuma Marsh to work with him. According to my great-grandfather’s sisters, who are still alive, Neuma Marsh helped create what would become Vicks VapoRub. Then Lunsford Richardson got a patent, which he didn’t share with Neuma Marsh.

I, unfortunately, have no way to find out the truth about this incident but it is something that I have often thought about over the years. I have even thought about doing a documentary on the life of Neuma Marsh because he had a lot of interesting things happen to him. If you should ever do an article about Lunsford Richardson, please mention Neuma Marsh. He wasn’t there when Vicks VapoRub was patented, but he was there when Vicks VapoRub was created.

Chuck Mann, Greensboro Then again, maybe not And what they accomplish? [“It Just Might Work: Tiny bars”; Sept. 30, 2015;

by Daniel Wirtheim] Bars don’t create wealth, rather they rely on the wealth and disposable income of the local citizens in order to thrive. The idea that bars and restaurants create a vibrant city economy is backwards — they are the end result of such and which can only be derived from a local industrial/manufacturing base that provides living-wage jobs for its citizens.

Steve McLeoad, via triad-city-beat.com

6 questions about Martian water

by Daniel Wirtheim

1. Whose water is it?

You can bet there’s some corporate exec who just can’t wait to get his quivering little hands on Martian water. But the fear of corporate control of the water is not as real as political control. According to an article by the Guardian, in 2018 Russia plans on sending a rover to Mars that has a giant drill fit for water excavation.

Space exploration has always been political but now we have real stakes: water and a possibility of bacterial life.

2. Who would be the first to go to Mars?

Most likely NASA has already cultivated a group for their 2030 Mars exploring missions. There’s going to be a lot of media coverage on this — to say the least — so these guys and gals are going to be public figures. Hopefully the first group of explorers won’t be the try-hards, those who only dream of having future Martian streets and post offices named after them.

3. How much of The Martian is based on scientific fact?

According to NASA there’s a surprising amount that’s based on of their own plans to send people to Mars in 2030; they even call it ”collaboration.” The one thing they really threw the BS flag on was the sandstorm, which couldn’t be that intense because Martian air is very thin.

4. How many blockbusters can we get out of this?

The Martian was sort of endorsed by NASA — at least they provided some tips.

Now that the Mars colonization thing is catching on we can expect to be flooded by literature from nerds all over Earth.

5. Do we really want to go to Mars?

The Japanese have a term pronounced mono no aware, which roughly translates to the appreciation for the transience of life. It’s an appreciation for things like the cherry blossom, which blooms for a short period of time and then dies. It’s a sad tree, the cherry blossom, but its beauty comes from its ephemeral life. Why push the boundaries on the human experience?

Mars looks like a pretty terrible place with nothing but problems. Can’t we all just agree that Earth is a really sweet deal?

6. Is that just something we tell ourselves because we’re jealous of Mars explorers?

Let’s face it: The inner nerd within us all really wants to go to Mars, but because we’re not perfectly fit and operationally minded people we’re not going. We should probably be excited that the human race is taking great strides to explore the universe, but for now we grudgingly watch Matt Damon eat feces-potatoes on Mars.

Take charge of your mind, body and spirit Test pH balance, allergies, hormones Balance diet, lifestyle and emotions Create a personalized health and nutrition plan

(336) 456-4743 • jillclarey3@gmail.com www.thenaturalpathwithjillclarey.com

triad-city-beat.com

Which candidate do you back in District 3?

Eric Ginsburg: As the reporter covering this election for Triad City Beat, I plead the Fifth. But I do live in District 3, and I voted.

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Readers: Our readers who participated in this week’s poll chose Kurt Collins and Justin Outling in equal numbers (39 percent each), while Michael Picarelli dropped to third place with 23 percent of the vote. If this were the primary, he’d be cut as the two frontrunners advanced to the general election. Read the actual Election Day results from Tuesday on page 8. Nobody left a comment explaining their vote for Collins, though backers Eugenia Brown and Lindsay Burkart added their thoughts about why supporting Outling and Picarelli respectively makes sense.

60 50 40 30 20

Cover Story

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39%

Kurt Collins

39%

Justin Outling

22%

Michael Picarelli

Good Sport

13th Floor Elevators

by Jordan Green

All She Wrote

son’s feral howl is uncontained, far outside of the musical conventions of the time. Stacy Sutherland’s relentless, amp-turned-up-to-10 guitar playing is a blueprint for punk rock. Tommy Hall’s amplified jug — an instrument that sadly has not been replicated in rock — gives the music a siren-like, alien quality that made the band utterly unique.

The lyrics hold a double meaning appropriate for the song’s role as a bridge from garage to psychedelia. At first listen, this could be just another angry teenage lament about unrequited romantic affections. Or it could be a declaration of mind-expanding independence from the drab world of conventional expectations.

“You’re gonna wake up one morning as the sun greets the dawn,” Erickson promises in the opening lyric. By the end, when he concludes, “I’m not coming home” and breaks into an orgasmic wail, you know that from this point forward things will never be the same.

Shot in the Triad

plate for much of indie rock today. Their frenetic energy, acid-drenched guitar and genuinely strange melodic sensibility would find echoes in the late-’70s punk explosion, along with the angst, sonic experimentation and freak-folk leanings of the current indie-rock scene. I put them in a category with the Velvet Underground, Love and the MC5 — three other late ’60s bands that were mostly overlooked in their day, but reshaped the vocabulary of rock.

Music writer Parke Puterbaugh, who lives in Greensboro, changed my life when he exposed me to the 13th Floor Elevators. I was in my car on Wendover Avenue listening to his radio show, “Rock and Roll Study Hall,” on WQFS, the campus station at Guilford College when he played “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” the Elevators breakout song from 1965. As Puterbaugh aptly noted, the song marks the transition from garage rock to psychedelia.

The opening chords bear the hallmarks of the early Rolling Stones and a rockabilly sensibility, but Roky Erick-

Games

The 13th Floor Elevators celebrated their 50th anniversary with a reunion show in Austin, Texas earlier this year.

You, of course, know about the 50-year celebration of another seminal American rock band, the Grateful Dead — with a trifecta of mega-concerts simulcast out of Chicago over the Fourth of July weekend.

The Dead may have had a longer run — and I say this as a huge fan, as regular readers know — but the Elevators were the first. They were the first psychedelic rock band, and arguably they made just as big an impact on popular music as their San Francisco counterparts.

The Elevators came out of Texas, which in the ’60s was a fairly repressive place, but they were in Austin, a university town, so they got some exposure to Eastern religion.

Those are ingredients that are likely to produce some pretty weird music. While the Dead’s music eventually morphed into a panoramic reinvention of Americana, the Elevators’ short-lived career from 1965 to 1968 set a tem-

Culture

New question: Which planned Triad brewery are you most eagerly anticipating? Vote at triad-city-beat.com!

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Opinion

Jordan Green: Sorry, I’m going to recuse myself from this one. Although I’ve boogied down with Michael Picarelli at the Blind Tiger for the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary celebration, I honestly don’t feel like I know any of the three candidates well enough where it counts — governing philosophy and political

90

News

Brian Clarey: I’m not gonna answer that one because of a conflict — I still have to cover the general election, and sell campaign ads to whomever makes it through the primary. Anyway, I don’t live in District 3, so the question is somewhat moot. I will say that the edge in this primary belongs to incumbent Justin Outling and Michael Picarelli, who has political and fundraising experience.

Sorry, Kurt Collins — maybe you should have run at large.

judgment. I want to preserve my latitude to write about any of these three guys in the future without someone calling me out on favoritism — or ignorance.

Up Front

Tuesday marked the primary election day in Greensboro, and with only two contests on the ballot, we wanted to hear our readers perspective about the more contested race. Here’s what our readers and editors said — see if it matches up to the election results on page 8.

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October 7 — 13, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

8

NEWS

Incumbents triumph in Greensboro municipal primary

by Eric Ginsburg

The incumbents win big in Tuesday’s Greensboro City Council primary, with Devin King and Kurt Collins trailing significantly but still advancing in the mayor’s race and District 3 respectively.

With only two contests on the primary ballot for the Greensboro City Council election on Tuesday, the results couldn’t have been more different.

As expected, Mayor Nancy Vaughan ran away with the election, throttling her competitors with 87.6 percent of the vote. Devin King, her challenger, survived the primary with just 7.3 percent of the vote, carrying just one precinct — an area in southeast Greensboro where a mere seven people voted.

Incumbent Justin Outling enjoyed a strong lead in District 3 as the results came in, finishing with 60.2 percent of the ballots cast, but the two other contenders traded second place all evening.

With two precincts reporting, Michael Picarelli and Kurt Collins were tied with 45 votes each, then Collins pulled ahead slightly 115 to 110, but with 6 of the district’s 22 precincts tallied, Picarelli held a 33-vote lead. That changed once 14 precincts in District 3 reported, with Collins on top 356 to 300.

Collins and Picarelli — like Vaughan and three more city council members who won’t be on the ballot until November — watched the results come in at a side room at the old Guilford County Courthouse where the board of elections is housed. The two conservative District 3 contenders sat on opposite sides of the Blue Room, and with 14 of 22 precincts in, Collins started smiling.

Picarelli could feel the election slipping through his hands.

“If [precincts] 21 and 22 are in, he’s got it,” Picarelli said. The results scrolled on a projection screen at the front of the room, but the details didn’t include which precincts were in. If the area around Kirkwood and Irving Park had reported already, like precinct 22 where he lives, Picarelli said he was in trouble.

“I don’t think I can make up the deficit,” he said, standing and leaning with

both arms on the chair in front of him, staring at the screen.

Collins seemed coolly confident, saying that he would be fine either way and had enjoyed the process.

“I know I worked my tail off,” he said, adding that throughout the day he visited 18 of the district’s 22 precincts and didn’t see anyone working the polls for other candidates. He had 10 volunteers reaching out to incoming voters at polling places, he said, but his strategy had relied on starting in the northern part of the district and working his way south, assuming that Outling enjoyed a base of support near downtown and Picarelli would carry areas near his home turf.

Minutes later the county elections website updated, and Picarelli knew it was over even with a few precincts unreported. Collins was up by nearly 100, and Picarelli quickly made his way over to shake Collins’ hand and concede.

Collins appeared surprised, saying it wasn’t over yet, but Picarelli could tell, and promptly headed for the door.

All told, Collins received almost 23 percent of the vote to Picarelli’s 16.8 percent — or in raw numbers, 551 votes to 403. Outling, meanwhile, came away with 1,443 votes totaling 60.2 percent.

Despite previously serving as the head of the Guilford County GOP, Picarelli said part of the reason he fell behind is due to Republican and tea party support of Collins. Both men serve on the city’s human relations commission.

As the lowest vote-getter in the race, Picarelli was eliminated and Collins and Outling will face each other in the general election next month.

Even if Collins picks up Picarelli’s voters, he still has about a 20 percent gap between himself and Outling. He believes his grassroots campaign efforts can make the difference.

Noting that Outling has raised about 10 times as much money, Collins said he will try to win by getting in front of people, adding that he believes a higher turnout rate will help him.

“It’s just a straight grassroots campaign, and that’s what the people really want,” he said, adding that he may pay

Incumbent Mayor Nancy Vaughan took 87.6 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s primary, while Kurt Collins advanced by 148 votes against Michael Picarelli to face Justin Outling in District 3.

for door-hangers, mailers and possibly a robo-call to help get out the vote in addition to knocking on doors.

Outling, who walked into the Blue Room after most attendees had left, said he was encouraged by the results.

Though he was appointed to fill the remainder of Zack Matheny’s council term this summer when Matheny resigned to run Downtown Greensboro Inc., Outling had never run a campaign or won an election before.

“This is my first time around, you know,” he said. “I’m just excited.”

In the mayor’s race, two first-time candidates squared off against Vaughan, who has served on council off and on since the mid-’90s. Her last primary, in 2013 against incumbent mayor Robbie Perkins, was a nail-biter. This year the contest for second place in the race wasn’t ever particularly close.

With the endorsement of Conservatives for Guilford County in his pocket, newcomer Devin King walked away with 518 votes overall, considerably less than Vaughan’s 6,212 but still a few clicks better than Sal Leone’s 362. But Vaughan isn’t resting easy.

ERIC GINSBURG

“The general election can be a completely different animal,” she said. “It depends on who comes out to vote.”

Vaughan pointed to the voter turnout percentage for the primary — a mere 3.8 percent of registered voters, the worst rate in recent memory — calling it “abysmal.”

“That means 96 percent of the city is letting 4 percent of the people decide the fate of the city,” she said.

Primary turnout rates are always lower than the general election, though usually hovering around 10 percent even in a slow year. Two of the five district races will be uncontested on the November ballot, which may contribute to a level of voter apathy, but the addition of Districts 1 and 2 as well as the at-large contest should draw a much higher number of people to the polls.

That’s why even with close to 90 percent of the vote and a relatively unknown challenger, Vaughan plans to crunch numbers and develop a strategy to win in November before the week is out.

Collins and Outling are both attuned to the same unpredictable reality.

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October 7 — 13, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

10

Actor Laverne Cox talks about trans rights and racial justice

by Jordan Green

The transgender star of “Orange Is the New Black” explains the intersection of racism and transphobia before a capacity crowd at Wake Forest University.

Laverne Cox, the acclaimed transgender actor and advocate told a capacity crowd at Wake Forest University’s Wait Chapel on Monday that one of the biggest obstacles facing the trans community is the view some hold that no matter what, “we are always and only the gender that that we are assigned at birth.”

Then, with a triumphant flip of her luxuriant blond tresses, the actor who portrays Sophia Burset on “Orange Is the New Black,” proclaimed, “Yet, ain’t I a woman!”

The refrain, attributed to abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth from a speech in 1851, formed a leitmotif of Cox’s presentation in Winston-Salem. As Cox noted, historians doubt that Truth actually said those words, but they succinctly captured a theme of her speeches.

Cox, who is immersed in the radical feminist theory of bell hooks — emphasizing the intersection of black, queer and female experiences — relished telling a story about Truth. Suffragettes were often accused of being men, Cox said, so Truth opened her shirt and flashed her breasts to silence one particular male heckler during an appearance in Indiana.

“Now, I’m not going to reveal my breasts tonight,” Cox teased. “Sorry to disappoint some of you.”

Cox guided her audience through an account of her upbringing as one of a set of twins born to a single, black, working-class mother in Mobile, Ala. Though the story was harrowing, Cox’s telling was not without flashes of humor. She told of being chased by other kids who said she “acted like a girl” and wanted to beat her up, and internalizing shame when her mother asked her, “What are you doing to make them treat you that way?”

During puberty, when she realized she was attracted exclusively to boys, the passing of Cox’s grandmother precipitated a suicide attempt. Imagin-

ing her grandmother’s disappointment, Cox swallowed an entire bottle of pills from the bathroom, and went to bed.

Fortunately, she woke up with only a stomachache.

Getting accepted into an arts program for low-income kids in Mobile in third grade saved her life, Cox said.

“My mother told me that I could take dance classes, but I could only take tap and jazz, not ballet,” she recalled. “‘Ballet is too gay.’ This is according to my mother. I’m not entirely sure what her rationale was, maybe something about the tights or something, I don’t know.”

Studying dance set the stage for Cox’s acceptance to the Alabama School of Fine Arts, then to Indiana University and, finally, to Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, followed by an informal education in the 1990s club scene.

“Club kids were these kids who got paid to dress outrageously, and their creativity would astound you,” Cox said.

“They would dress in forms of drag and gender nonconformity. They got paid to get dressed up and go to clubs and parties. How awesome is that?”

Getting ushered past the velvet rope with lines around the block and admitted into clubs for free was affirming.

“It was the first time that my gender expression was looked on as something that was valued, that was special, and not something that I was made to feel shame about,” Cox recalled.

Too many transgender people are “in a state of emergency” in the United States, Cox said, citing statistics indicating trans people are vastly over-represented among murder victims, the unemployed and children bullied at school.

She recalled an incident in lower Manhattan on the Fourth of July a dozen years ago when two men accosted her. One of the men who appeared to be Latino tried to hit on her, and the other who appeared to be black ridiculed his friend by saying Cox was a “n****” — essentially a black man. The two men went back and forth, arguing about whether Cox was a “n****” or a “b****.” The misogyny and trans-phobia that the men displayed illustrates the

Actor and advocate Laverne Cox spoke at Wake Forest University on Monday.

aphorism that “hurt people,” Cox said.

She said she doesn’t believe for a minute that black people are more transphobic, but that it’s important to recognize that the historical emasculation of black men in the United States through lynching and other humiliations has left a lasting legacy of collective pain.

“Often the experience of being discriminated against, being marginalized is so deeply painful that we don’t know what do with it,” Cox said, “so we take it out on each other.”

The actor and advocate said she wants to find out how to creates spaces of healing so people don’t take their pain out on each other.

JORDAN GREEN

Jade Boston, a Winston-Salem trans woman who works for American Airlines, said after the program that many of her fellow employees knew her before she began her transition. But having a proud, black trans woman in position of prominence “opens up a window where people are more comfortable to have a conversation.”

But, as Boston mentioned during the question-and-answer session with Cox, her father still doesn’t accept her.

“Trans folks and LGBT people have been creating our own families for years,” Cox said. “Go where it’s warm.

Go where people love you and accept you and respect you.”

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HIGH POINT JOURNAL

Congregation of historic black church looks to uncertain future

by Jordan Green

After the city tears down one of its oldest black churches — a historic landmark on Washington Street — the congregation struggles to discern its future.

Two of the three buildings in the Washington Street Historic District of High Point that are listed as historic properties on the National Register of Historic Places are now gone.

First, the Kilby Hotel collapsed during a storm last year. And now, as of Sept. 28, First Baptist Church is little more than an excavated basement and a few remaining bricks.

Double D Construction of Winston-Salem pushed the 108-year-old Gothic Revival-style sanctuary down in four hours with a John Deere Excavator, the culmination of a condemnation process initiated by the city and a reckoning by the congregation that they could not raise enough money to save the building.

William Penn High School is the last remaining property on the National Register of Historic Places on Washington Street, a commercial corridor that thrived as a center of the black community during the segregated Jim Crow era from roughly 1900 to 1965.

Glenn Chavis, a retired pharmaceutical sales rep who is regarded as the foremost historian of black High Point, remembered his Boy Scout troop meeting at First Baptist in the early 1950s.

Back then, First Baptist and St. Mark Methodist Episcopal Church (now Mt. Zion Baptist Church), competed as the two most prominent black churches in High Point.

“Both churches were very involved in the community,” Chavis recalled.

“We couldn’t go down to City Hall to ask for things like Halloween. Whites went there and got money for functions on Main Street; they had a ball. We couldn’t do that. It was up to the black churches and the black merchants on Washington Street. They were the ones that brought in the flatbed trucks so that we could have music. We walked up and down the street and had a ball.

“The ministers in the black community were very respected,” he continued.

“Everybody knew them; they stayed in the community and they were very outspoken. They wore suits. The preachers and the teachers wore suits, and the women wore dresses. That’s who you wanted to be like. Most of the men in my community wore overalls and they worked hard. At First Baptist and St. Mark you could put on your Sunday best, and you went to worship with your God. That was something else.”

Burdell Knight, who now chairs the church’s trustee board, started attending First Baptist in about 1945. The Rev. William F. Elliott, the pastor at that time, was also the president of the High Point NAACP, and the church played a leading role in the civil rights movement.

“Most of the quote-unquote professionals — teachers and doctors — who were brought in during the 1920s and 1930s, a lot of those people went to First Baptist,” Knight said. “It kind of became a cultural center in the black community…. Anytime something was discussed that had impact on the black community, it was discussed in First Baptist.”

In 1960, the church became a center of strategizing for civil rights marches and sit-ins, according to the church’s application for the National Register of Deeds, which was prepared by Beth Keane in 2008. The Rev. Elton B. Cox and Dr. Otis Tillman organized students from William Penn High School, and several members of the congregation joined the demonstrations and went to jail. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. visited the church in 1966, according to Keane’s report. As an indication of the level of racial tension at the time, Knight said King’s visit was not publicized because of concerns for his safety, and the application reports that “a number of skirmishes between blacks and whites” took place at the gateway to the Washington Street district at Centennial Street.

Founded by an emancipated slave named the Rev. Harry Cowans, First Baptist is one of the oldest black congregations in the city.

A work crew was still hauling away debris from the former site of First Baptist Chuch on Monday.

Groups of Baptists and Methodists began meeting in 1869, alternating services in the same building, according History of the Negro in High Point, North Carolina, 1867-1950, a document compiled by the High Point Normal and Industrial Club that is on file at the library. First Baptist was organized there in 1871.

First Baptist in High Point was one of 50 churches that Cowans organized in North Carolina, according to Keane’s research. Born in Mocksville in 1810, Cowans served as a body servant to Gen. Joseph Johnston in the Confederate States Army. In 1866, following his emancipation, Cowans organized Dixonville Baptist Church in Salisbury, and Keane writes that the church leader was estimated to have baptized about 8,500 people.

The Romanesque-style brick sanctuary, later remodeled with a Gothic Revival-style façade, was the church’s second building when it was erected in 1907.

Knight said when the Rev. Michael Robinson, the current pastor, came to First Baptist in 2010, church leaders started talking about renovating the sanctuary. Architects and engineers brought in to assess the structure informed the congregation that the east wall was swaying. In 2012, the engineers declared that the sanctuary was unsafe,

JORDAN GREEN

and members moved downstairs to the fellowship hall to worship. At a minimum, the church would have needed to spend $236,000, just to shore the wall up, Knight said.

“One of the first things we did was send out letters in High Point,” she said.

“We had advisors; these were people who were very well known in the community. We still didn’t get any response.

We were trying from 2012 right up to last year to save the building. We knew we couldn’t keep it. Even with some grants, we couldn’t raise enough money.

We did everything except turn ourselves inside out.”

The congregation is now meeting down the street in the Ritz Theatre, and exploring the possibility of sharing a building with another church, Knight said. To carry on the kind of civic engagement that has always been important to First Baptist, Knight said members are looking to forge relationships with predominantly white congregations.

Knight said at first it was hard to come to grips with losing the building.

The congregation had embraced a mantra of “I don’t think He’s brought us this far just to leave us here.”

“Our pastor is considered a change agent,” Knight said. “He is a visionary: He can see what we can’t see. We have to work towards his vision. We talked.

“We feel so emphatic about it,” she added. “Never forget. Never forget what it brought to us and what it gave us. And we want to hold onto that even from generation to generation.”

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We prayed. We fasted. Finally, he said, ‘Maybe God is answering our prayer by not doing anything. Maybe this church has come as far as it can come.’ In order for us to move and make changes — that’s one of the hardest things to do — sometimes in order to make the change, you have to purge what you have so that there is nothing left. This is a way for God to tell us that.

“Right now, we have to go outside the church walls,” Knight added. “We don’t have walls anymore. This is God’s way of making us reach out and minister to the people in the community.”

While the congregation has let go of the building, Knight said the church is committed to growing into a new life.

“We’re going to have a light on a hill again,” she said. “It may not be this hill, but it will be a light.

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OPINION EDITORIAL

When primaries don’t matter The Greensboro City Council election is our favorite election, even in years like this when the slate lacks any drama or intrigue and voter turnout promises to be on the low end.

We’ve got the results of Greensboro’s primary on page 8, but in this space, before press time, we’re preemptively putting the participation level at just 6-7 percent.

It’s a favorite because we’ve been covering it for more than a decade — our staff goes back five mayors in Greensboro — and everybody takes our phone calls. We understand how the precincts fall and how the at-large candidates should fare.

Plus, the Greensboro City Council election is the only game in town in odd-numbered years — for now. Ideally, all city elections would be held in odd-numbered years.

Here’s why: Your city council has a greater effect on your life than anyone elected to represent you in Washington, DC — we’re talking garbage collection, police and fire departments, water and sewer services, property taxes and values. Voters should be more focused on these elections than any other, though the numbers don’t bear that out. In 2012, the year of President Barack Obama’s re-election, Forsyth County had a 71 percent voter turnout, while the Winston-Salem municipal election of 2013 drew just below 11 percent of eligible voters.

Winston-Salem begins holding its city election in even years in 2016, the product of a bit of partisanship rammed through the legislature by former state Rep. Dale Folwell in 2013. It’s good for overall voter-turnout numbers, but it scuttles the municipal races down to the bottom of the ballot, diluting their importance with obscure judicial contests, the House and Senate undercards and the main event, which soaks up most of the available attention bandwidth.

Winston-Salem will move its city elections to even-numbered years in 2016. High Point switched in 2008. So right now the Greensboro City Council election is the only game in town.

Another key difference between the cities: Winston-Salem’s city council election is a partisan contest, meaning that candidates run on a party slate. Because most districts generally lean one way or the other, all the action is in the primary, which drew about 7 percent of the electorate last time around. The Republican primary for the Southwest Ward was won by just four votes, and even then the guy didn’t stand a chance against the incumbent, Dan Besse, who in the general election captured more than 81 percent of the vote.

That’s not an election. That’s a farce.

CITIZEN GREEN

Remembering Grace Lee Boggs One of the life-changing experiences of my life was taking a trip to Detroit in the summer of 1997 with Ann Filemyr’s environmental reporting class at Antioch College.

Impressions that remain

by Jordan Green from that trip include meeting a group of neighborhood activists who described hauling soil onto vacant lots and growing tomatoes to make “Kwanzaa-Q” sauce, and repurposing an abandoned crack house as a hayshed. We visited a cultural center, where the staff taught us how to play “Amazing Grace” on steel drums made out of oil cans salvaged from the Detroit River. And that trip was my first exposure to the Heidelberg Project, an entire block that artist Tyree Guyton has transformed over the years into an outdoor art park exploding with polka-dots, stuffed animals and vinyl records.

The intellectual force and personality at the center of this cultural milieu was a dynamic Chinese-American activist and thinker named Grace Lee Boggs. In a meeting with our class, Boggs talked about the experience of being devalued as a girl growing up in a family that operated a Chinese restaurant in New York City in the 1920s and about working with James Boggs, an African-American man from rural Alabama whom she married in 1953 and with whom she collaborated to organize working people. She traced a connection from the revolutionary upheaval of the 1960s to the more small-scale, community activism that engaged her later years.

I took away an admiration for Boggs’ searching intellect, genuine interest in what other people had to say and unflagging optimism. Her very life was a testament to the fact that people can forge deep and meaningful relationships across lines of race, gender, generation and cultural background if they are courageous enough to live honestly and authentically.

Boggs died on Monday at the age of 100 in Detroit.

I got the opportunity to hear her speak again in 2012 during the Association of Alternative Newsmedia convention, which also featured an electrifying talk by MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer about prison reform. Boggs’ displayed the same thought-provoking, empathetic and optimistic disposition as she had the first time I saw her 15 years earlier. If you wanted to find two people who embody the resiliency and creativity of Detroit, you probably couldn’t do much better than these two.

Boggs championed ideas of nurturing capacity for social change through relationships at the community level and building economic vitality through self-sufficiency in urban centers struggling with massive divestment.

Those ideas seemed far outside the mainstream in the mid-1990s, but since the onset of the Great Recession, they’ve come into vogue. Even relatively stable cities have stopped putting all their stock into economic incentives to try to lure big employers, and are looking to indigenous assets like community gardens and local enterprise to improve their vitality and durability.

Poverty, inequality and disinvestment, ironically, have only deepened in the city to which Boggs dedicated her life, which in a sense makes her optimism all the more remarkable. Her struggle to shore up the local assets of urban Detroit in the last 25 years of her life, of course, was a response to the waves of closures in the auto plants from the 1980s on. The downsizing of the auto industry there — like the textile plants in the South — was a cruel blow, especially for activists like Boggs who had dedicated themselves to the struggle of fighting racism to open up industrial jobs to black workers. We’re always trying to catch up with history.

“In the heyday, she and her husband were on the forefront of linking the issues of workers in factories with the issues of racism and the fact that black workers were treated in a profoundly different manner,” Sheila Cockrel, a former member of the Detroit City Council, told the Detroit Free Press. “The two of them were major intellectuals that literally shaped a generation of progressive leadership in the city of Detroit.”

Shea Howell, a journalism professor at Oakland University who is also quoted in the Free Press obituary, succinctly captures the essence of Boggs life, transcending the major historical epochs that she straddled.

“I think Grace has stood for the belief that our central question is how to become more human human beings, and the understanding that that happens when we work together on trying to create a world that is sustainable, that’s loving, that’s productive,” Howell said. “I think she’s understood that humanity is called out particularly at this time from people who have been left out of much of modern life.”

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quiet, very quickly.

On two big screens, James Griffin was looking into the camera and remembering how the government tore his neighborhood down. An aerial shot panned out to show the extent of the destruction, acres of scraped dirt where houses, businesses and churches once stood, with the downtown skyline glinting in the background.

The 56-year-old Griffin, soft-spoken but purposeful, has been a driving force behind the campaign to celebrate Warnersville’s heritage. And on this late-August night there was plenty of celebration — old stories retold, old friends reunited. But there remained a lingering question: How do you mourn something when the world doesn’t acknowledge your loss?

Decades after the razing of Greensboro’s oldest African-American community, both the insult and the injury still sting. A richly historic neighborhood that deserves a place of honor in this city’s story of itself was wiped from the landscape in the 1960s, and then scrubbed from civic memory. It just wasn’t something discussed in polite conversation.

Urban redevelopment, they called it. But in Warnersville, and other neighborhoods across the state and around the country, it was more like urban warfare.

Families and businesses that had endured for generations were displaced. Much of the replacement housing was soulless, lovable only to bureaucrats. A vibrant landscape was bulldozed into its own unmarked grave.

There may have been some good intentions behind the massive program. Parts of the century-old neighborhood — its unpaved roads and outhouses symbols of Jim Crow inequity — could have used genuine renewal, and many people were happy to be relocated.

But nobody was asking for the erasure of an identity or the diaspora that followed.

This was big government at its worst. This was white privilege and cultural cluelessness on steroids. This was something done to the people of Warnersville, not for them.

You want to find a root cause for the distrust in Greensboro politics, you could start with the gutting of the old commercial district along Ashe Street, Warnersville’s main drag. You want some subtext for the uproar several years ago over the sale of the old JC Price School, understand that the building where generations learned to read and write was one of the

few physical legacies of the community left standing.

Please know that these are my words, not those of James Griffin. Know as well that I was not an unbiased viewer of that short documentary: Lisa Scheer, who produced and wrote the 12-minute film in collaboration with Harvey Robinson and Carolyn de Berry of Monkeywhale Productions, is my wife. So I know something about the effort that went into the movie, the depth of research, the trust-building and relationships that made it possible (you can see an edited version online at vimeo.com/136967822).

I flatter myself that I am an amateur historian of my hometown, but I learned a ton from Lisa’s work. About the founding of the neighborhood by a Philadelphia Quaker named Yardley Warner, who after the Civil War helped former slaves buy their own land and establish their own businesses in the settlement south of town that would take his name. About Warnersville’s great tradition of educators, preachers, athletes and gamblers, the house-proud families and the community center and the juke joints, the planning of the Woolworth sit-in. About the play-outside-until-dark childhoods and dense kinship networks that remind me of my own, very different Greensboro roots. And about the long battle by Griffin and many others to keep the memories alive.

I started to feel a sense of loss for this place I never knew. A sense of impatience, too, as official Greensboro plays catch-up to its own history. The city council, after years of inaction, recently named Warnersville a Heritage Community; not enough of the old neighborhood remains to qualify for designation as a historic district (it was good to see Mayor Nancy Vaughan and councilmembers Sharon Hightower and Marikay Abuzuaiter among the elected officials attending the dinner).

And it is important that the city-run Greensboro Historical Museum has mounted an exhibit about Warnersville. But the show (which grew out of Lisa’s work with James Griffin, the late Otis Hairston Jr. and others) is less than it could have been. Stuffed into a cramped third-floor space, right next to an inexplicably vast permanent display of Confederate arms, it veers toward sentimentalism and shies away from fully addressing the hard parts of the story.

Remembering history as it really happened is about a more than honoring the past and salving old wounds.

Inequality and redevelopment are topics of the moment in Greensboro. Maybe if we can look back with some clarity, we can get it right this time.

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The crowd was still settling in after the dinner break at the Warnersville Community Coalition dinner, murmuring and pushing away plates as a movie started to play. Then the packed ballroom at Bennett College got very

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I’ve got a patch of earth in my backyard tucked into the southeast corner that was once intended to be a vegetable garden.

In the spring of 2009 I dug up the grass and tilled it with manure and sod, raked it

by Brian Clarey into rows and planted seeds: tomatoes, peppers, maybe some cukes… I don’t really remember. Because after doing all that work on the front end, I pretty much forgot about my garden except to look at it guiltily as I cut the grass nearby. I think I got a couple tomatoes out of it before the weeds, bugs and rabbits took it over.

Let’s face it: Keeping a garden is a pain in the ass, unless you absolutely love it, which I apparently don’t.

I blamed it on the lawn, which took up every ounce of my tolerance for yardwork. But really, even if I had a fulltime lawn crew to handle my yard, I likely wouldn’t be out in the garden on my knees. And that’s when it hit me.

People pay big bucks — $40 a pop and up — to have their lawns maintained, which serve no actual purpose other than to increase a home’s curb appeal and soak up water. Why not take that same cash and hire an actual gardener to plant the beds and bring in the crop every season?

It makes financial sense: A backyard garden can yield a summer’s worth of vegetables, which even at a farmers market can run a good $20 a week. Throw in the earlyand late-fall crops, and you might even end up ahead of the game.

There was a time when every home had a garden out back, and while the expertise to tend them has been passed down in some families, others (like mine) passed down less essential skills like drinking and card-playing.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t all have fresh vegetables from our own backyards. Some of us just have to be willing to pay for it.

Why Warnersville matters

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Photo essay by Caleb Smallwood, words by Brian Clarey

It’s not the patch of ground you’re given; it’s what you do with it.

Soil can be enriched and tilled. Space can be devoted as a place for growing.

Water flows everywhere.

If you can grow a lawn, you can probably grow food. But you can’t eat grass.

Urban farmers are increasingly taking back the land, starting in their own backyards and branching out to community gardening spaces. They do it for food, sure, for themselves and the tables of those in need. They do it for the sheer love of planting something in the ground and watching it grow. They do it because they can: Little patches of ground are everywhere, ready to spring forth with edible life.

In the cities of the Triad, not so far removed from our state’s agricultural roots, these five urban gardeners ply their craft. They make little impact on the land or the supermarket’s overall effect on humanity’s food chain, but together they make a case for self-sufficiency, and a stand against hunger in the places that need it most.

Bobbe Wright

Year-round grower, Greensboro Bobbe Wright’s divided the growing space on his Greensboro property into three climate zones, allowing him to grow tropical fruits like bananas, citrus fruits and pomegranates. He also tends Malibar spinach, an off-season perennial that grows leaves all summer and comes back every year.

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Stephen Johnson Craft farmer, Greensboro

Stephen Johnson took in his first harvest of sweet corn when he was just 11 years old at his boyhood home in Perth, Australia. “Food isn’t getting any cheaper,” he says, and farmers are going broke trying to keep up with Walmart’s bottom line. Home-growing isn’t necessarily cheaper, he says, but is more about the lifestyle and the craft. He goes as far as to make his own compost, free of broad-leaf pesticides that he says prevents his tomatoes and peppers from growing.

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October 7 — 13, 2015 Cover Story

Sumpter Smith

Sustainable lifestylist, High Point Between the chickens, the vegetable bed and the aquaponic system, Sumpter Smith puts something from his yard on his table every day. “Nothing makes you want to share more than having a huge crop.” he says. “I think people should get involved by growing their favorite vegetable in small scale and take it one year at a time.”

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Tinece Payne

Natural-food forester, Greesboro “Healthy Food is a right that many of us take for granted,” says Tinece Payne, who donates most of what she grows on two different sites at her Healing Springs farm to shelters and food pantries. “I would love if we all could connect to feed ourselves sustainably and promote a true sense of unity and togetherness through one of the most important commodities to foster a healthy life.”

Lorraine Mortis

Community gardener, Winston-Salem Among the plot-holders at Simon’s Green Acre Community Garden is Lorraine Mortis, who used seeds from the county co-op extension and a small grant to build a sustainable effort against hunger in her community. All her produce is grown in the organic tradition — she makes her own insecticide and compost — and everything, including her prize-winning jalapeños and white eggplants, gets donated to the hungry.

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CULTURE Providing a Framework for pour-over

by Eric Ginsburg

randon Swiderski flips up a metal panel on the floor behind the driver’s seat of his truck, revealing grass below. Yellow and blue wires ascend out of the exposed engine, and cracks radiate across a portion of the front windshield. Tires and other debris clutter the back of the bluish grey 1956 Ford Boyertown Vanette truck.

It’s pouring rain, and Swiderski is standing inside the 12-foot-long truck parked in his friend Roy Nilsen’s backyard amongst a bounty of other fixer-uppers.

As time allows, Nilsen is helping Swiderski repair the truck that the two men found in Hickory.

When it’s done, Swiderski says as he gestures, there will be a long window along the right side of the vehicle, and another one cut in the back. He already has a color palette picked out and some ideas where he’ll park it, but more importantly, he has a name for his first venture into self-employment: Framework Coffee.

Swiderski is approaching five years as a server at Sticks & Stones in Greensboro, a gig that has served as an avenue for getting to intimately know a cross section of the city. His girlfriend, who is moving here from Charlotte, has a nickname for him because he seems to know someone everywhere they go, and is inclined to chat them up: Mr. Rogers.

Swiderski considered pursuing his vision of a coffee truck on the West Coast, but despite his love affair with places like San Francisco, where he first learned to appreciate pour-over coffee, he wasn’t sure he’d have the means to pull it off, and the market might be oversaturated anyway. But here, Swiderski realized, he has already put effort and care into developing relationships, and he could take advantage of that network to lift him off the ground.

It will be a while until the hulking truck — which looks like it could star as an anthropomorphic evil villain in a kids’ movie or an alternate Batmobile in a throwback flick — is operational. He’ll probably need a loan, rather than chipping away at the cost periodically as he’s able to save up, Swiderski says. But in the meantime, he’s set up shop sans truck at the Corner Market in front of Sticks & Stones and at the National Folk Festival.

His friend Jay Bulluck, who runs Local Honey hair salon, invited Swiderski to set up in his lot for the festival. Swiderski wasn’t sure he felt ready to make his debut, and without the outfitted truck, he needed to borrow equipment. But over several rainy hours on the Saturday of the folk fest last month, Swiderski was so busy he only had time for a quick bathroom break and to snack on some French fries.

The Framework Coffee truck will likely include drip coffee, but Swiderski wants to focus on pour-over, a method that allows carbon dioxide to escape and avoids over roasting or burning beans, he says.

“You’re getting all of the flavor profiles that are supposed to be tasted,” he says.

B

It will likely take a loan to finish work on the Framework Coffee truck that Brandon Swiderski is assembling.

Pour-over isn’t a rarity on the national scene, though nobody is really dedicated to it in Greensboro, at least commercially, Swiderski says. Some people think that signals that the city isn’t ready for a coffee purveyor focused on the style, but Swiderski sees it as an opportunity.

“I’m going to make the market for that,” he says, adding that as he’s able to convince people to sample it, building a base isn’t too challenging. But he wants it to be more than a niche market or a novelty.

His timeline can be somewhat unpredictable; two weeks after he started looking for a truck earlier this year, he had found and purchased one. Other aspects take longer, but Swiderski is eager. Pointing to a jagged lightning bolt surrounded by what looks like a cog decorating the truck’s steering wheel, Swiderski says he can’t wait to add the image to his extensive tattoo collection.

Coffee isn’t the thing, just what he hopes will be his full-time next chapter. He imagines he won’t spend de-

ERIC GINSBURG

cades on the truck, instead viewing it as a piece of the picture. Kind of like the tattoo, finding its place among the other facets of what forms Swiderski’s identity.

The time-intensive process of retrofitting the truck has its own perks, he says — the effort and time required make Framework Coffee a more significant and meaningful venture. There have been investment offers, but Swiderski wants to maintain control over his first solo enterprise.

That way once the truck is ready, the future might be uncertain, but it will be up to him.

Pick of the Week Paul Fehribach luncheon @ Meridian Restaurant (W-S), Wednesday Fehribach is a great chef on the upswing.

And he’s going to demonstrate to the public how modern chefs butcher a pig. The table is set at noon. Find more details at meridianws.com.

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Progress for distilleries

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Greensboro Distilling Co., which signed a lease for a space just behind Triad City Beat’s office, is not open yet.

Until then, Winston-Salem controls the local distillery scene, especially after Broad Branch hit ABC store shelves in August. Just a couple months earlier, Sutler’s Spirit gin had arrived to such excitement that finding it in stores required diligence and perseverance.

There are currently about 30 legit distilleries in North Carolina, a state where legends of moonshiners racing out of the hills and the legacy NASCAR still dominate local imaginations. Not surprisingly, in-state products trading on this history abound, like Midnight Moon from Piedmont Distillers up in Madison. The best, at least that I’ve tried, is Broadslab’s moonshine whiskey.

Some of the state’s liquors are better than others; Cardinal gin from Southern Artisan Spirit, the Brothers Vilgalys’ Lithuanian-style Krupnikas spiced honey liqueur, Defiant whisky and Covington’s vodka made from sweet potatoes are among my favorite. Sutler’s Spirit easily ranks on the list as well — there are two bottles in my modest liquor cabinet now.

I can’t speak to Broad Branch Distillery’s Nightlab 1.0 yet. But as the company expands its footprint to more local bars, checking it off will be easier. Better yet, I’ll be able to add it to my home stock after stopping into the Trade Street business directly rather than running around to various ABC stores, hoping to catch a bottle on the shelf.

Opinion

We talk a decent amount of trash in these pages — and rightfully so — about the North Carolina General Assembly, a body dedicated to making me facepalm at least once a week while it’s in session. But there’s at least one nonpartisan thing this cabal of legislators has accomplished that pretty much anyone can applaud: slightly less stringent liquor laws.

This past weekend, distilleries in North Carolina welcomed a new era that began Oct. 1, selling one bottle per person per year onsite. It may sound small, but the step is significant for distillers, who otherwise must route all spirits through the state-run ABC board.

To call the existing process cumbersome and restrictive would be an understatement, but let’s focus on the positive: The direct sales could lead to significant revenue generation for distillers. That’s because selling a bottle to someone immediately after they finish a tour greatly increases the chances they’ll end up consuming the product at home, rather than counting on a costumer to remember to snag some on their next liquor-store run.

Sutler’s Spirit, the first legal distillery in the Triad’s Three Cities in several generations, and Broad Branch Distillery — also in Winston-Salem — celebrated with a weekend of tours. Sutler’s gin and Broad Branch’s Nightlab 1.0 whiskey are the only legal liquors made in the Three Cities (though there are a couple more made not too far away), and now visits to either can end with a tangible

ERIC GINSBURG

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Scot Sanborn, of Sutler’s Spirit in Winston-Salem, is one of the distillers now offering tours and bottles for sale on-site.

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CULTURE The Raving Knaves fold after eight years on the scene

by Jordan Green

eated behind the drum kit, Adrian Foltz belted out the first song in the Raving Knaves’ set at Greenhill gallery in Greensboro — a song guitarist David McLean wrote about him called “Drums Along the Mersey.”

With the lead phrase “3,000 miles from my home,” in the soaring vocals, the song celebrates a Grimsley High School grad who migrated to Los Angeles, where he played in glam bands on the Sunset Strip and sold hair-care products. Like the vast majority of the Raving Knaves’ repertoire, the song was performed with fiercely channeled energy, concise bursts of sonic instrumentation and ornamented with vocal harmonies.

Too melodic and not quite angsty enough to fit a contemporary definition of punk, the Raving Knaves would have been right at home among the glam and pub-rock bands that laid the foundation for the genre in the mid-1970s.

And as the title of the song implies, the sound is firmly rooted in the mod-rock sound of the Who, the Jam and the Clash.

“When I started playing in bands in 1979, it was important to me that it needed to be fun and danceable,” McLean, one of the band’s founding members, said at the Oct. 2 show. “Punk rock was a lot more fun than it became. It was a way for a 19-20-year-old to meet girls — for a guy who had been geeky in high school. I was into [Bob] Dylan in high school, but I gravitated to a style of music that was more high energy.

“Punk rock was the counterpunch to what rock had become — grandiose with these long, extended guitar solos,” he continued. “My first band was called Rick Ronco & the K-Tels. We did covers of Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs. It always struck me that three minutes is too long for a song; two and half minutes is perfect. It has always been an intention of the Raving Knaves to be a concise band.”

There had been a last-minute reshuffle of the lineup.

When Foltz recently announced he was quitting, the band brought in Phil Holder to fill in on drums for a final string of retirement gigs. Then Foltz decided he wanted back in, so the band kept Holder on drums and put Foltz back in as frontman. At the conclusion of “Drums Along the Mersey,” Foltz stepped out from behind the kit, and Holder, dressed in red jumpsuit with an oversized crucifix necklace and moustache, slid into the seat and hit the final beat before the band launched into its second number.

After a short break for a sponsorship plug for Greenhill’s patron, the band launched into another McLean original, “All the Pretty Planets,” showcasing Holder’s galloping drums, McLean’s circumscribed, ska-like riffing, Daniel Bayer’s thundering and nailed-to-thegroove bass playing. Then McLean introduced Foltz.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “the man who saved the Raving Knaves in 2008.”

At the time, McLean and Bayer were trying to decide

S

The Raving Knaves, including Daniel Bayer (left), David McLean (right) and Adrian Foltz were joined by Phil Holder on drums at Greenhill on Oct. 2.

the band’s future, following the departure of Chris Micca and Andy Foster. Foltz was recommended to the band by a friend, Nancy McCurry, who played in McLean’s former band, Sin Tax. “My brother had died, and my father’s health was failing,” Foltz said, explaining the circumstances of his return from Los Angeles.

For McLean, 2008 was a challenging year that tested his resolve, and ultimately propelled the band into action.

“My dad died, the stock market crashed, and I got cancer,” he recalled. “I felt this need to do this wild rock-and-roll band.”

He received treatment, and the cancer is now in remission. He said he feels fine. McLean runs regularly, and his energy as a performer betrays no hint of the chemotherapy treatments. He strode into the audience during solos, windmilled power chords, and at one point during the set dropped to his knees with Bayer to churn out a guitar-bass duel.

McLean and Bayer, who are respectively 56 and 47, agreed that the only way they would play in a band was if they made a concerted effort to appeal to young people.

“I wanted to compete with the younger bands,” McLean said. “We were successful at getting the twentysomethings. I don’t think they were laughing at us.”

They shared bills with bands like the Nondenoms, the Leeves, Rough Hands and Switchblade 85, and regularly played an underground venue on Grove Street called Seven Day Weekend with a busted AC one sweltering summer. Despite the humbling circumstances of ill-equipped venues, they took the band seriously.

JORDAN GREEN

“I went into a second adolescence,” McLean said. “I would get miffed if we weren’t invited to play somewhere.”

The Raving Knaves plays its final show on Oct. 27 at the new Urban Grinders coffeeshop and art gallery in Greensboro. The band’s breakup was precipitated by Foltz’s decision to leave, which he said is for personal reasons unrelated to the band. McLean said he didn’t want to break in another drummer.

A marketing professional who has run King’s English in downtown Greensboro for 20 years, McLean said he wants to turn more attention to his business and “remake myself professionally.” He feels like the Raving Knaves accomplished what they set out to do.

He expressed deference to Foltz, who has played in a string of successful bands in LA like the Return, Guzzler, Sugarspun and the Droogs, and Bayer, who runs sound for concerts around the Triad. Bayer already plays with another band called Empire for Rent.

“He’s got the most experience of any of us,” McLean said of Foltz. “For me, it’s always been a night job, an avocation. Danny’s got more skin in the game; he does sound. My ego is in it.”

Pick of the Week Fem Fest @ The Garage (W-S), Friday and Saturday This Fem Fest has a pretty eclectic lineup. There’s folk-tronic sounds of Anda Volley and Winston-Salem’s honky-tonk girl Billie Feather. Punk rockers like Wahya’s from Greensboro and Pie Face Girls from Raleigh are also on the bill. The festival starts at 9 p.m. Find showtimes and details by searching the Facebook page.

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CULTURE Kindness stronger than wit in bout with life and death

by Daniel Wirtheim

The words of 17th Century poet John Donne are projected onto the main stage, casting the silhouette of a frail and dying Vivian Bearing, who sporadically lectures on the genius of Donne’s metaphysical connection to death.

It’s a turning point for Bearing, who’s beginning to understand that the intelligence she’s worn like armor has kept her from embracing life’s lighter and sometimes more meaningful moments. It’s also the moment when Wit, presented by Baptist Hospital, draws the audience’s first tears.

Kate Goehring plays the demanding role of Vivian Bearing, a distinguished professor of metaphysical literature diagnosed with stage IV metastatic ovarian cancer. She wears a baseball hat and clinical gown throughout the entire one-act play. Her hair and eyebrows are shaved, leaving the focus on her soft blue eyes that alone tell a story of suffering.

She addresses the audience as if lecturing a class of undergrads. Like the poetry of Donne that has become her life’s work, her speech is full of meta moments. She tells us that one scene is not long enough, that this is just a play and that she’s going to die in the end.

At times Goehring’s performance seems a little forced, especially in the beginning when she calls on audience support. But it goes to illustrate the awkward nature of being alone in a cancer treatment clinic. And once Goehring gets deeper into the narrative it’s clear that she’s done her homework. Her fever-chills are hyper-real and moments of agonizing pain are compelling, often terrifying. But it’s the words of Margaret EdKnown for being a staunch intellectual, Vivian Bearing only wants kindness in the face of death. COURTESY PHOTO son, the playwright who won a Pulitzer Prize for Wit in 1999, that give Bearing a self-reflective quality and lets some humor into her otherwise calculated speech. give the entire set a very clinical feel that contrasts She revisits a lecture in which she humiliated one Part of Wit’s genius comes from its ability to exquisitely with the final scene, when a nude Bearing student and shot down another who suggested that condense a lifetime of emotion into 90 minutes. The walks through an immaculate white light.

Donne’s perception of the world was “too complex.” action is quick-paced and punctuated. We understand The technical direction plays a powerful role in Wit. While the students sit frozen in time Bearing addresses that the entire play takes There’s a lot of movement the audience, commenting on how shrewd she had place just a few moments happening on a tiny stage and often been. Goehring a brings striking intensity to Wit plays at the Hanesbrands before her death and that it’s all executed seamlessly. these moments that highlight the paradox of Bearing’s what we see, moments from condition and the futility of her life as a staunch intelTheatre in Winston-Salem through To shepherd her through the childhood or lectures, is only movement, Bearing has her lectual in the face of certain death.

Oct. 17. Visit rhodesartscenter.org a digression of thought that’s IV station that she wheels She’s grappling with her paradox as one of Donne’s for more information. happening to her on the around, a talisman of the holy sonnets casts a silhouette of her frail and dying deathbed. Despite the bleak death that surrounds her. But form across the stage. She lingers for a bit, short of subject matter, use of space Wit, as the handbill suggests, words for the first time since the play began. and time is be pretty fun in Wit. is much more than a cancer play.

“All we can do is disappear,” she finally says.

In one exciting moment, hospital staff sweeps a lecThere’s a touching scene in which Vivian Bearing turing Bearing up from a wheelchair to hospital beds shares a Popsicle with Susie, her unassuming nurse, Pick of the Week across the stage as lights from above project CT-scans who is played with a human touch by the well-castTelluride Mountainfilm on Tour @ High Point Theatre, across her body. The rhythm builds until a mighty red ed Mari Vial-Golden. It’s an oasis away from the cold Thursday laser hovers over her body like a beam of alien technolworld of the cancer clinic, where doctors are beginning Sure to be an inspiring event, Telluride Mounogy and Bearing squirms to deliver one of her lines on to see Bearing’s terminal condition as research. The tainfilm is all about exploration and overcoming Donne’s reasoning with death.

Popsicle moment with Susie is a pivotal moment for obstacles.

It’s heartwarming but at the same time Lighting Designer Norman Coates, whose resume Bearing who after accepting the inevitability of death, extreme. The event starts at 7 p.m. Find tickets and includes Broadway credits and work on the Who’s focuses on reconciling with the isolation that her intelmore information at mountainfilm.org.

Tommy tour, is on point with Wit. Fluorescent lights lectual pursuits have imposed upon.

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GOOD SPORT Pint-size parkour hristian Anderson — no relation to Hans — dragged two lowslung balance beams across the blue tumbling mat.

“We kind of have to build, since we don’t have anything concrete,” Anderson told me,

by Anthony Harrison arranging the beams in parallel lines about five feet apart in the upstairs practice space at Tumblebees Ultimate Gym in Greensboro. “But a lot of what we have works out, especially if you reinforce it with a wall or something.”

The kids’ parkour program at Tumblebees just started this summer and has steadily picked up nearly 30 students, but hasn’t been established long enough to warrant a stationary obstacle course.

Then again, parkour depends on improvisation.

For the uninitiated, parkour is basically street gymnastics: Free-runners use elements of the urban environment as obstacles over which they jump, vault and climb.

“We all kinda start doing it as kids,” Anderson laughed.

The discipline began in France in the late ’80s and broke into the mainstream over the past decade.

Anderson first heard it while in high school.

“I kept seeing all these videos like ‘Russian Climbing’ and David Belle’s chase scene in District B 13,” Anderson said. “Once I figured out it was an actual thing, I started training that day. I set up a laundry basket and started practicing jumps.

“Once I got to college, I took some people under my wing,” Anderson continued. “That’s what cultivated the teaching aspect.”

Four kids scampered in around 3:30 p.m., three boys and a girl. Anderson lined them up in pairs and had them rush their respective beams on all fours.

“One or two in each class, you can tell they know what they’re doing,” Anderson told me prior to the class. “Some are very aware and trying to decode and understand technique.”

When the kids were instructed to crawl sideways towards the beam, the girl, Chloe, asked Anderson, “We doing this on the beam, too?”

Anderson confirmed her hunch. She nodded and proceeded to beat the other kids forth and back.

While technique definitely plays into parkour, instinct and risk lie at the heart of the art.

One of the boys, Elijah, dressed in a light-green shirt, quite literally threw himself into the risky side of the discipline with manic abandon.

As the class proceeded, Anderson’s obstacles grew more complex, incorpo-

C

rating a jumping platform, a trapezoidal vault and a large, padded block serving as a makeshift wall. Elijah would wipe out with aplomb, throwing himself over the vault, scaling the wall with his knees.

Once, he took a swan dive off the large block, hitting the extra folding mat with a heavy smack.

Needless to say, it was hilarious to watch this kid at work.

“Some have a natural… I don’t know… primalness to let them attack an obstacle,” Anderson told me.

While Anderson does indulge the kids’ boundless energy, he believes that when teaching children to engage in potentially dangerous activity, it’s crucial for them to know safety and fundamentals.

“Because of the environment [in Tumblebees], kids can get used to throwing themselves at obstacles, where outside it might be dangerous,” Anderson said.

“I teach them rolls and falls, and not to do anything you can’t. I emphasize baby steps, but also to keep pushing yourself while not doing anything where you might hurt yourself or others.”

Despite Elijah’s hijinks, Anderson’s safety-first protocols popped up plenty.

As the children performed vaults over the trapezoid, Anderson stated, “You’re leaning back so your hands help keep you safe.”

And when they started climbs, Anderson pointed out to them, “[The] thing about wall runs is you don’t need a huge run-up. Start your sprint pretty close, and maybe at arm’s reach, you jump into it. The more speed you have, the easier you stick to the wall. So slowly start going faster, if that makes sense.

“And this is a lot harder [to climb] than a normal brick wall,” he added.

“It is?” the kids asked, wide-eyed.

“Oh, yeah,” Anderson said. “It’s a lot more slick.”

By the end, Anderson had his students jump from a platform to the beam, then vault over the trapezoidal block and climb the block wall, finishing by jumping off the wall and rolling into the mat.

They finally started getting winded.

“You gassin’ out?” Anderson asked a tiny mop-haired boy. “I can feel you getting tired. Get some water.”

The kids still pushed themselves with friendly competition. Their times improved, with the best of five seconds coming from Derrick, a boy in a dark-green shirt.

“We’re outta time,” Anderson said at the hour’s end.

“Gotta go home.”

Most of the tykes scrambled out before I could approach them, but Ali Marzouk, the mop-topped kid, hung back with his father.

“I was gonna do gymnastics and tumbling, because I’m into breakdancing, and I thought it could help with that,” Marzouk said. “The classes were all full, but I heard parkour was open, so I asked my mom, and she signed me up.”

That came as a surprise. Not only is this kid a breakdancer, he knowingly engages in interdisciplinary study.

With children like Ali involved, it might be interesting to see where parkour will go next.

“The instruction aspect is growing,” Anderson told me. “The heyday in TV and film’s been coming on, but schools and instruction is starting to grow.

“And it’ll always be in movies,” he added.

Correction

A story in the Sept. 30 Good Sport column of Triad City Beat misidentified the stadium at which the Carolina Panthers play. The name of the stadium is Bank of America Stadium.

Pick of the Week Deacon blues University of Virginia Cavaliers @ Wake Forest Demon Deacons (W-S), Oct. 11 Wake Forest’s women’s soccer team lost five games in a row, but they have two chances to turn things around at home in the next few days. The first will come against Virginia Tech on Thursday at 7 p.m., but my pick for this week is to check out the game against the UVA Cavaliers on Sunday at 1 p.m. That gives you a chance to celebrate this nice weather. For more information, visit wakeforestsports.com.

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49 Adam Sandler’s production company, named after two of his films 54 Comic strip frames 55 Nastygrams 58 3/4-time dance 59 “True dat!”

60 2015 Melissa McCarthy comedy 61 Duel preludes 62 Pigeon fancier on “Sesame Street” 63 Clod-breaking tool

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1 “I just realized I messed up” outburst 2 “Be Cool” actress Thurman 3 Spoon companion, in a nursery rhyme 4 Band on a sleeve 5 Toronto Maple ___ (hockey team) 6 Hand sanitizer target 7 ___-Seltzer 8 Wife of Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev 9 “___ Clown” (Everly Brothers song) 10 Palindromic name 11 Palindromic bread 12 Urgent care center alternatives 15 Barely open 17 End a call 20 2008 presidential candidate 23 Monitoring device in some 1990s TVs 24 “If ___ nickel ...”

25 Ephron and Dunn, for two

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26 Stadium display where you’ll see couples smooching 27 “___ World” (“Sesame Street” segment) 29 Groom fastidiously 30 Word after ear or Erie 31 Copycatting 33 Iron source 34 Artist’s rep.

37 Some may be good to set 38 Movie like “Shaun of the Dead” or “Warm Bodies” 43 Prepare for editing 45 Classless?

47 Dermatologist’s concern 48 Challenge for a dog trainer, maybe 49 Icy pellets 50 Faris of films 51 “Call me Ishmael” speaker 52 Judi Dench, e.g.

53 “A Beautiful Mind” mathematician 54 Some Brit. statesmen 56 Fitbit’s was in June 2015 57 Corrosive cleaner

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1 Fizzling firecracker 4 Aquarium growth 8 Crumbly coffeehouse buy 13 “Cheerleader” singer 14 Fishing line holder 15 James Cameron blockbuster film 16 Another name for #, before it became a “tag” 18 Certain VWs 19 Event for someone who displays a “13.1” bumper sticker 21 “Dr. Mario” platform 22 Air France destination 23 Dix + dix 26 Writer Kesey 28 Pet advocacy org.

32 ___ En-lai 33 Crankcase container 35 The Sugarhill Gang’s genre 36 Highbrow monthly that’s the second-oldest continuous publication in the U.S. 39 William McKinley’s First Lady 40 Deletes 41 Baseball’s Vizquel 42 Result of rolling in the dough, maybe?

44 “The Chronicles of Narnia” monogram 45 In an abundant way 46 1978 hit song with notable letters 48 “Doctor Who” airer

Answers from previous publication.

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her dad Joe (my dad was also a Joe) had passed, my heart and pen went out to her.

Me: You know it’s legend that his other former lover Doris Duke had his legendary penis enshrined. I mean Rubio, not your dad.

Christina: Hahahahaha!

Me: We can leave that detail out.

That’s what editors are for.

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Christina: Will you help me with the obit?

Me: Duh, I do my best work with the dead. Want to meet for lunch tomorrow to go over the details?

Christina: Sure. Heading to “Burning Dad” at 11:30. Things you say out loud when planning a funeral: “Do you think the bag pipe player can do ‘Ave Maria’?”

Me: Bwahahaha!

The celebration of life took place on Hurricane Joaquin weekend as friends packed the room at the Green Bean in downtown Greensboro. Red wine flowed as Christina took the mic and toasted, roasted and boasted the life of Joseph Francis Calabria, 81, the Philly native who followed his kids (Christina and stepson Beau Calabria) south after retirement.

Like Christina, Joe was an adventurer at heart. He lied about his age at 17 to join the United States Air Force and served as an airplane mechanic during the Korean War. Upon his return to Philadelphia he studied engineering at Villanova and Penn State universities, respectively, and graduated at the top of his class. He began his aerospace career at General Electric, later to become Lockheed Martin, where he served as a chief engineer and was actively involved in the invention and implementation of global positioning systems until his retirement.

A natural bon vivant, Joe was a passionate sailor, jazz enthusiast, gardener, world traveler, sportscar aficionado and lover of women. He was married to Bunny Wells, the mother of his children, from 1963 to 1983 and an active bachelor in the years hence.

“He was the most interesting man in the world,” says Christina, “He bought Zsa Zsa Gabor’s Ferrari. Rubio [international playboy Porfirio Rubirosa] gave it to her and she couldn’t drive a stick. He actually sold it to buy my parents’ first house!”

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When I first met Christina Calabria, she scared the bejesus out of me. I was fairly new to Greensboro, fresh out of college and she was a late-bloomer coed with a biker boyfriend and gorgeous, tough-girl look that made Chrissie Hynde look like a Chi Omega.

She possessed an attitude that made bouncers a moot point at the dive bar where she slung cocktails. I skirted around her big personality for a long time — in fear of not only an ass-kick-

ing, but also of having to emerge from my crab-like shell. She seemed like the kind of woman who would call you out on… well, being a woman.

Then I think the universe decided that our paths needed to cross and, wow, have they been crossing ever since.

It’s funny to remember realizing that yet another superlative in her roster was that she is always, almost annoyingly, nice.

Yep, there’s nothing that pisses another female off more than meeting a beautiful woman and realize that she’s not the b**** they had wanted her to be.

I’ll never forget one of our first indepth conversations. Christina sought me out because I had sojourned to Spain as an undergrad on two separate stints with the UNC system, lived with a family in Madrid and attended classes at Universidad Complutense. She interviewed me Oriana Fallaci-style and extracted more details from my experience than I even remembered from my journey. Shortly thereafter, she moved to Madrid and lived with the same family. And like I said, our lives have been intertwined ever since.

When I lost my mother this summer, she was the first person at my house the morning after for a “walk it off” hike through the cemetery. She, of course, wore a diaphanous, tie-dyed maxi dress with sandals while the rest of us were in vomity T-shirts, working-girl sneakers and soccer-mom shorts.

So when she called to let me know

Up Front

e: Mother, I know you don’t like to share, but I’d really like to give my friend Christina

by Nicole Crews that furry, conical ski hat you bought in Austria in the ’50s. She’s the only person I know who could pull it off.

Plus she has a vintage coat that matches it and she’s heading to Sundance.

Mother: Are you admitting that you can’t pull it off?

Me: Totally.

Mother: Well considering that this is the first time you’ve ever asked me to bequeath a vintage wardrobe to a friend rather than selfishly coveting it for yourself, I’ll say yes.

Me: You won’t regret it. She will honor it, like I do.

Mother: I know I won’t. You have excellent taste in friends.

M

The most interesting man in the world

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ALL SHE WROTE

COURTESY PHOTOS

Games Shot in the Triad

A bump on a log.

All She Wrote

The South Philly girl with a hippie heart.

Christina and her brother Beau were surrounded by family and friends during the send-off for Joe.

The gorgeous and irrepressibly kind Christina.

Hurricane Christina – Category 5

Cool Joe and his girl.

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Illustration by Jorge Maturino