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As Greensboro’s bicentennial celebration winds down, I’ve heard little about the historical play, “Lasting Impressions,” which raised its share of skepticism when the project was announced several months ago by the Greensboro Historical Museum.

I was one of the skeptics.

I questioned whether such a production could be interesting (I envisioned suffering through a Clara Edwards-directed pageant on the founding of Mayberry. Or watching paint dry. Or some combination thereof).

And I questioned whether it could be honest about less-savory chapters in the city’s history, such as the Klan-Nazi killings on Nov. 3, 1979.

But having attended the play two weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised. It is packed with facts and dates and compresses 300 years into an hour and 25 minutes ... and it succeeds.

Further, it is funny and entertaining, and does not gloss over the good, the bad and the ugly in Greensboro’s history.

For instance, it touches upon the 1960 sit-ins, the 1979, Klan-Nazi killings and the vision, philanthropy and compassion of the Cone family -- as well as the unhealthy conditions in some of their plants and their sometimes cruel responses to labor organizers.

It also presents a powerful portrait of Josephine Boyd Bradley, the black girl who integrated what is now Grimsley High School.

The play was commissioned by the Historical Museum, “ and was written by Brenda P. Schleunes, producer and artistic director of the Touring Theatre of North Carolina.

She cobbled her script from diaries, newspaper clippings, letters and other documents from the museum’s archives.

And she confronted me before I could enter the building and politely but firmly challenged me to tell what I honestly thought after seeing the production.

The Greensboro Historical Museum people tell me that the play may make return for encore performances throughout the community.

That would be a good thing. More people could benefit from this entertaining and informative production.

Meanwhile another Bicentennial-related play, “Periphery,” debuts tonight and runs through May 18 at the Historical Museum. Tickets and reservations are available at www.ctg.org

... But I have ... graffiti plastered on a tree.

In blue paint, at Cone Boulevard and Summit Avenue.

I keep telling myself to stop ranting about local vandalism (for all the good it does).

But it's hard not to be angry ... and exasperated.

This week's column.

The yellow construction elevator that climbs the face of the new Center Pointe tower creaks and groans as it rises high above the trees and fountains of Center City Park.

It jerks defiantly when it gets to the top, as if it wants to keep going. Then it quivers before finally settling down.

So does your stomach.

You stand there, still shaking and looking for something to grab as Roy Carroll II grins from underneath his hard hat, cool and sure-footed.

You wouldn’t know that the gleaming, black 17-story reclamation project is Carroll’s first high-rise development ever unless he told you.

He seems perfectly at home at Center Pointe, which soon will be his home, at least the top two floors.

This was not supposed to be doable. Conventional wisdom was that it was too risky and expensive. Better to blow it up than try to save what once had been the old Wachovia tower.
But Carroll, 45, had help from Jefferson Pilot, now Lincoln Financial, which sold him the building cheap, and from the city and county governments, which offered incentives that made the tower’s makeover into shops, offices and high-end condos financially feasible. Now more than 50 percent of the units are sold, and “we’re still selling,” Carroll said Thursday.

On a clear day, the 14th floor of the building offers a faint view of the Winston-Salem skyline and a bird’s-eye vista of NewBridge Bank Park (only from this height, the team that plays there really does look like Grasshoppers).

Slightly to the north, you also can see 4.5 acres of bare land that once was part of the old North State Chevrolet dealership.

Now it belongs to Roy Carroll, too.

Carroll has the land under contract and plans to develop it for “high-end” residences that either will be sold or rented. The details are still sketchy, Carroll said, but he does know for sure what he won’t do there. “We are not envisioning student housing,” he said.

Continue reading "Low-key Carroll has high-rise hopes for downtown's rebirth" »

Bill Cosby settled comfortably into an easy chair at the Koury Center Friday night and spun a thread of very funny tales about the foibles of family life.

Wearing a blue and gold Aggies sweatshirt, the legendary comedian and actor was appearing --for free -- to benefit the Cosby Kids initiative at N.C. A&T that will prepare children as early as fourth grade for college careers.

Cosby has caused a stir now and again for a being a grumpy elder statesmen who isn't hesitant to tell it like it is about the state of black folk in the country. Even when the truth hurts.

But the only pain he dispensed Friday to a packed ballroom containing people of all races, ages and walks of life, was from them possibly laughing too hard.

The humor was gentle but hilarious, told in such a natural, effortless way, that even a malfunctionuing mike didn't knock Cosby off his stride. He'd just pause and jiggle the switch, and continue with stories about playing Spin the Bottle as a kid and getting beatings (in the North) and "whuppins" (in the South) and going to the dentist.

Once in while, he'd move out of the chair onto all fours on the floor, to dramatize a particular narrative.

He displayed the same kind of rare comic genius that Richard Pryor and only a few others could achieve, and he didn't cuss even once.

Some who may have been hoping for one of his patented, headline-making social diatribes may have been disappointed. He may have been saving that for today's commencement address for A&T.

But if they were, I couldn't tell. Everyone seemed to leave smiling and entertained.

Hillary Clinton has a run a good, hard race and now she needs to pack it in.

But she remains not only uninterested in the facts, which show her with absolutely no chance to win the Democratic presidential nomination, she is downright defiant, in her words and her deeds -- and apparently determined to take the rest of her party down with her as the Good Ship Clinton slips into the abyss.

Even a former Reagan speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, can see that.

"The Democratic Party can't celebrate the triumph of Barack Obama because the Democratic Party is busy having a breakdown," Noonan writes today in The Wall Street Journal.

"You could call it a breakdown over the issues of race and gender, but its real source is simply Hillary Clinton. Whose entire campaign at this point is about exploiting race and gender."

Noonan cited Hillary's desperation ploy to use race as a wedge issue to salvage her candidacy, most recently her USA Today interview.

Clinton said in part, reports USA Today: "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on." She then cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she added.

Noonan's response:

"White Americans? Hard-working white Americans? 'Even Richard Nixon didn't say white,' an Obama supporter said, 'even with the Southern strategy.'

"To play the race card as Mrs. Clinton has, to highlight and encourage a sense that we are crudely divided as a nation, to make your argument a brute and cynical 'the black guy can't win but the white girl can' is -- well, so vulgar, so cynical, so cold, that once again a Clinton is making us turn off the television in case the children walk by."

Indeed. Clinton has had her chance. She has moved the goal post in her bid for the nomination several times. Her Hail Mary pass, it appears, is her whiteness.

As for how the most loyal bloc of Democratic voters, African Americans, must be feeling right now, I agree with The Washington Psot's Eugene Robinson.

Robinson writes: "As a rationale for why Democratic Party superdelegates should pick her over Obama, it's a slap in the face to the party's most loyal constituency -- African Americans -- and a repudiation of principles the party claims to stand for. Here's what she's really saying to party leaders: There's no way that white people are going to vote for the black guy. Come November, you'll be sorry.

"How silly of me. I thought the Democratic Party believed in a colorblind America."

Clinton defends her comments by saying they merely state the obvious.

"These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election," she said. "Everybody knows that."

And she knows that her choice of words seems calculated to divide and conquer.

Only there is no conquest to be had. Not for her at this point.

"This nomination fight is over," says ABC's George Stephanopoulos, a former member of the Bill Clinton administration.

Obama has overtaken her in superdelegates.

Obama has won the most pledged delegates.

He leads in the popular vote.

But Clinton soldiers on. Now, apparently, Obama isn't white enough in her book.

The Clintons traditionally have occupied a special place among African Americans. That's in jeopardy now, if not totally eroded already.

She is hardly endearing herself to to the Democratic Party at large right now, either.

What can she be hoping for?

That the Rev. Jeremiah Wright will say something else?

That Obama will be revealed to be as space alien?

That a lost cache of uncommitted superdelegates will be uncovered in Al Capone's vault?

Hillary is like a basketball team that's 20 points down with 15 seconds left but still keeps calling timeouts.

Give it up, Hillary

Let the clock run out.

Obama has won by the rules. Let him win or lose in November on the merits of his message and his campaign.

I am (pleasantly) shocked and flabbergasted.

The school construction bonds passed.

The GTCC bonds passed.

The jail bonds passed.

The Eastern Guilford bonds passed.

This, despite opposition from a number of quarters in the county, including the Simkins PAC, three African American school board members, and a number of other candidates and elected officials.

In fact, according to unofficial results, the general school bonds even slightly outperformed bonds for the reconstruction of fire-ravaged Eastern High School.

The school bonds won 54.8 percent to 45.2 percent. The Eastern bonds won 53.94 percent to 46.06 percent.

Eastern was expected to pass fairly easily and the other school bonds not at all.

Go figure ... later. I'm going to bed.

I'm not sure I understand the rationale for black school board members opposing Tuesday's school bonds. Or their strategy of coming forward on the eve of the election to say so.

That certainly doesn't allow much opportunity for dialogue.

They cite concerns over the classroom performance of black students and the lack of business for minority contractors.

While I understand their concerns, I question their timing. And while I hold the school district accountable for the performance of all students, I also hold the larger communitiy even more accountable.

Maybe these school board members have got a point ... maybe they haven't. It's hard to tell at the 11th hour.

Right now this feels wrong, like a political sucker punch.

This week's column.

If you haven’t used one of Greensboro’s myriad walking and jogging trails, you really ought to.
One trail threads its way from North Elm Street at Moses Cone Hospital to Wesley Long Hospital … and beyond.

Along the way is a shady apple tree, grassy fields where children play soccer and a meandering creek with fish in it.

Past Latham Park the paved trail stretches past tennis courts and the chain-link outfield walls of two ball fields where youthful sluggers in bright uniforms swing away and parents cheer from the bleachers. You could get lucky and catch a homer.

Then you pass the edge of Green Hill Cemetery, which can be a little spooky after nightfall.
Further on the trail crosses Battleground Avenue and winds along the edges of the Westerwood neighborhood. On a not-too-hot Saturday afternoon you’ll see pickup basketball games on a concrete court to your right, volleyball games on open fields to your left. And more tennis courts.

Even the ominous power lines strung between massive towers seem to blend into trees and bird song.

Finally, the trail ends at a bench and a water fountain off Friendly Avenue.

It’s long enough for a good, brisk jog and but not too long for middle-aged knees.

The biggest allure of the urban setting is that it provides so much interesting stuff to see.
That’s why the idea of an ambitious new downtown greenway plan sounds so captivating even as it also sounds extravagant.

Twenty-six million dollars?

Continue reading "Downtown greenway will cover a lot of ground -- and take a lot of green" »

A schoolmate of mine from UNC, Dr. Naurice Frank Woods, director, is stepping down after 13 years as director of the Afircan American Studies program at UNCG.

Frank has done much to build the program he heads, as an engaging, imaginative teacher, as a scholar and as an administrator.

He can speak with equal fluency about the Harlem Renaissance and the cultural significance of P-Funk, and he has consistently challenged and excited his students.

It surprised me a little bit that Frank wound up being so popular and comfortable in the classroom. He was more than a little bit shy when we were in Chapel Hill.

I remember him then as an art major who created extraterrestrial dioramas and Plexiglas sculptures. He'd amaze the rest of us with matter-of-fact tales of having to paint live nude models in class (we were young and silly back then).

He could draw and paint with such grace and ease.

He also had a black belt in Taekwondo .

Most importantly, he gave us rides home to Greensboro in his little brown and yellow Toyota Celica so we could have home-cooked meals and get our laundry done.

In return, I helped him make long drives to Alligator, N.C., to see his girlfriend, Sadie, who became his wife. (OK, it was not purely a selfless act; she had a sister.)

At UNCG, Frank clearly loves what he does.

Fortunately for the students and the university, Frank will continue to teach.

I wish him only the very best.

Bill Moyers says in a thoughtful essay that the Jeremiah Wright flap dramatizes a racial double standard.

He then compares Wright to controversial white men of faith.