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“Swing and Miss” by McKenzie Peterson is part of a new exhibition on display at Eno Mill Gallery in Hillsborough, p. 12

VOL. 39 NO. 13

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ORANGE COUNTY ARTS COMMISSION

CONTENTS NEWS 6

A network of Durham organizations supports people returning from prison.

BY GRACE ABELS

8

The Piedmont's first conservation cemetery is rethinking burial.

BY ZELLA HANSON

10 COVID-19 cases are down across the state, but a new variant currently spreading in Europe looms. BY ELIZABETH THOMPSON & MONA DOUGANI

ARTS & CULTURE 12

In a new exhibition, local artists reckon with pressing questions around home, safety, and belonging. BY MICHAELA DWYER

14

Retiring Hillside High School teacher Wendell Tabb has taught generations of young thespians. He'll be a tough act to follow. BY THOMASI MCDONALD

16 Talking with folklorist William Ferris about a live adaption of his Voices of the Mississippi project. BY NICK MCGREGOR 18

Review: The Tragic Assembly brings engrossing free jazz to its new release, Instability. BY DAN RUCCIA

THE REGULARS 4

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CORRECTION: In our cover story on rising rents in Orange County from last week, we mistakenly reported that Greystar is the owner of Regent Place. In fact, Greystar manages the duplexes; the owner is California-based Folsom Gateway Associates L.P.

COVER Photo by Brett Villena

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BACK TA L K

Last week for print, Jasmine Gallup wrote about how the local housing crisis, in Orange County specifically, is displacing residents who can’t afford to pay as landlords up rents all over the Triangle.

Our readers on Facebook and Instagram had thoughts.

“No one’s building clean apartments with functioning appliances in a decently safe neighborhood,” wrote Facebook commenter TIMOTHY ROBERT. “It’s either luxury or low end student housing. I don’t need a damn pool or tennis courts; just fix the leaks/fridge and keep it well lit.”

“Not only that, landlords are not being held accountable for breaking the housing code in more affordable housing,” wrote commenter SOPHISTIGRACE on Instagram. “Everyone is in trouble, everything is taking advantage of us. At NCCLO [NC Congress of Latino Organizations] we are trying to fight for this!”

“It’s the same story all over the country,” wrote Instagram commenter LEHCARFFOH. “And it’s not so much growing populations but greedy landlords, Ab&b businesses, and a general lack of affordable housing. Welcome to capitalism in the 21st century.”

Also for print, Gallup interviewed Michael Oakes, an NC State engineering student who is running for the state House of Representatives as a libertarian.

Instagram commenters had a lot of thoughts.

“A 21 year old engineering student is a libertarian.

More after the breaking story about the Pope being Catholic,” wrote commenter INFAMOUSCORYJ. “New rule: you can’t run as a libertarian if you are still on your parents cell phone plan,” wrote commenter SARASEESYOU. “New rule#2 - you can’t be a libertarian if you stayed on your parents health plan because of the ACA,” SARASEESYOU added.

“Can’t wait to hear his spicy take on age of consent laws and crypto,” wrote commenter NRCWEBER. “The libertarian part raised some alarms but his housing stance is kinda good?” wrote commenter ALIEN GHOST on Twitter. “His understanding of libertarianism hints at the non aggression principle, though. I wonder what his views are on property rights and government regulatory agencies.”

Also on Twitter, commenter MAX VON SHINEDOWN had this to say: “Feel like i could toss a rock at any college campus and hit 20 of these guys lol.”

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Cary

e

15 MINUTES

PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

Isaac Lund

How did you collect electronics, and how are you getting them to Honduras?

Junior at Cary’s Green Hope High School and founder and president of Service Beakers

The Triangle is really well connected, and there’s plenty of phenomenal businesses and start-ups, and technology serves as the backbone for many of them. So we knew that there was an excess of devices, and we assumed that a lot of them were just getting thrown out. So with that in mind, we started reaching out to various businesses, and we found that we were exactly right. We reached out to probably over 100 businesses and only got a few responses back, but it was those responses that ultimately fueled this massive stream of devices. We’ve gotten over 800 devices, including laptops, TVs, monitors, PCs, you name it—and we’ve been going through them to refurbish the ones that need refurbishing, and any other ones, we recycle their parts to actually be used.

BY BRIAN ROSENZWEIG backtalk@indyweek.com

Service Beakers is a high school volunteer organization that brings free, hands-on science lessons to Triangle area students.

This year, Service Beakers has worked to collect over 800 electronic devices to send to a school community in Honduras, with hopes of improving technological access and lessening opportunity gaps.

What inspired the work of Service Beakers?

My dad got diagnosed with ALS about seven years ago. He was initially a physician in the army, and he was forced into retirement.

And mental-health-wise, that was pretty challenging for me, but eventually, being able to push through it I felt made me stronger.

And it ultimately compelled me to want to similarly help other people if they’re going through challenges. So in November 2019, me and some friends launched Service Beakers, and the whole idea was to provide a more refreshing, hands-on learning experience for kids across the Triangle. For the past two and a half years, we’ve taught over 4,000 students through Service Beakers.

Why did you decide to expand from work in the Triangle to this project in Honduras?

I’ve been involved in St. Michael Church, which is based here in the Triangle, and they actually provide resources and materials to a sister parish in Honduras. And with the success we had with Service Beakers and empowering students, when I recalled this initiative that St. Michael had, I thought, “Hey, we’re having so much success in the Triangle, but there are students abroad that are also struggling, if not even more.”

We’re fortunate enough that [St. Michael] actually has an annual transport of resources that they bring to Honduras, so luckily, we don’t have to handle a lot of those logistical details. We’re hoping to get that shipped out if not [by the] end of this month, around mid-April.

What do you hope the impact will be?

I certainly hope that the students take this whole empowerment idea and run with it.

The whole goal is to really get their curiosity sparked and hopefully build aspirations not only for themselves on an individual level but also [for] their communities as a whole—to recognize the opportunities and see how much they can grow. W

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Durham

Coming Home A network of Durham organizations supports people returning from prison.

BY GRACE ABELS backtalk@indyweek.com

O

mar Guess was dropped off by his parole officer in front of the homeless shelter on a Friday afternoon. After four years in prison, Guess was finally a free man.

On the car ride back from prison, the officer looked at him through the rearview mirror and asked him what his plans were.

“I’m gonna get my life together,” said Guess, 48 at the time.

“If I had a dime for every person that done told me that,” replied the officer, as Guess recalls.

But Guess’s determination was sincere.

He had gone back to prison before, but he had spent the past four years preparing for this moment.

“I made up in my mind that I was going to do the right thing,” Guess said. “I was going to stay close with the right people.”

From prison, he wrote letters to reentry programs across the state and got connected to the Criminal Justice Resource Center in Durham. The county-funded program supports residents in the community who have had contact with the local criminal justice system.

For Guess, it was going to be his lifeline.

But first, he needed to make it to Monday.

Guess, who was four years sober, survived the long and difficult weekend at a shelter where other residents were using drugs. First thing on Monday morning, he walked to the resource center and demanded help. “I cannot stay in there,” he said.

“I’m not giving myself a chance.”

That afternoon he was moved into a transitional house.

Guess’s first four days of freedom highlight a few of the many challenges people released from incarceration face. In addition to finding a job and housing (both hard to obtain with a criminal record), oftentimes people coming home are treat6

March 30, 2022

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ing substance abuse disorders and undiagnosed mental health issues. They also often lack healthy support systems. But in Durham, a growing network of community organizations—the Durham Local Reentry Council (LRC), Welcome Home, Jubilee Home, and the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham—are all trying to address the struggles of reentry and give people a second chance.

“We create these insanely high barriers for reentry. And then we’re surprised when people fail,” said Drew Doll, reentry coordinator at the Religious Coalition.

In Durham, approximately 700 people return home from incarceration every year.

Statewide, around 38 percent of those who are incarcerated are reincarcerated within two years. “The fascinating thing to me is not that half of the people are rearrested in three years but that the others aren’t,” Doll said.

“It is tougher out here coming home than it is in there,” Guess said.

The first 48 hours The challenges begin the moment you step foot outside the prison. With $45 in your pocket, you have 48 hours to meet with your parole officer. With no ID, no phone, and maybe no place to stay, you have to figure out where your officer works and find transportation.

At that first meeting, your parole officer will hopefully provide you with information about Durham’s numerous reentry support programs. Congrats, you have made it through the first 48 hours.

The LRC at the Criminal Justice Resource Center (CJRC) is typically the first point of contact. Grant-funded, the council works as a networker, providing assistance and

Drew Doll is reentry coordinator for the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham PHOTO BY JOSIE VONK connecting people to support services and employment opportunities.

The reentry council is most effective when it can contact inmates before they leave prison. Prior to the pandemic, it received a list of names from the NC Department of Public Safety detailing who was about to be released. The council would write letters, assess what services inmates needed in advance, and build relationships before the tough challenges began. During the pandemic, those lists stopped coming, making it harder for reentry organizations to do their job.

After incarceration, the most immediate need is housing. About 50 percent of people leaving prison have no home to return to and request housing. The reentry council can pay for 60 days at transitional houses across the community, giving them a chance to get back on their feet.

“It’s hard to ask an individual to go look for work when he doesn’t know where he is going to sleep,” said Demetrius Lynn, who runs the LRC. Once settled, clients work with the council to devise plans that fit their needs.

The council connects them with mental health services, substance disorder treat-

ment, job training, and other reentry support programs.

Need work boots? The council can help buy them. Need forklift training? It can pay for a class at Durham Tech. Need healthcare? The council will get you connected.

Because of the CJRC and the reentry council, Durham has some of the best reentry support in the state, said Doll. According to Lynn, out of 140 intakes in the county in 2021, only two have returned to prison.

Lynn was formerly incarcerated himself.

When he was released, his college degree was useless because no one would give him a job. Years later, Lynn gets frustrated because, at age 48, he is still talking about mistakes he made at 24 years old.

“We have to stop looking at the charge and look at the individual,” Lynn said.

For many of his clients, the social isolation that often follows release can be debilitating. One client, who had just served 32 years, said to Lynn, “Man, I just rather go back to prison …. Everybody looks at me like I’m an alien. Nobody understands.’”

Lynn’s solution is to build a network of people you don’t want to let down. “If you are standing behind me, and if I fall, you are probably gonna catch me? Then I’m not as hesitant about falling,” Lynn said.

A cruel bureaucratic cycle Welcome Home is a city-run program that offers immediate support after release. It provides a box containing some perishable food, toiletries, and a cell phone paid for six months. But according to program creator Chuck Manning, the most valuable service it provides is 30 hours of “peer support.”

Peer support is a form of counseling that centers around lived experience. To be trained as a peer support specialist, you must have had contact with the criminal justice system yourself.

In reentry, it is important to talk with people who know what incarceration feels like, explains Manning, a peer support specialist himself. “You have individuals who can identify with not only the emotional but the mental strain of being away from your family and your loved ones and reacclimating yourself back into society,” said Manning.

Manning was in and out of the justice system from age 11 to 34. In total, he lived seven years of his life behind bars.

After spending 14 months in jail only for his charges to be dismissed, he swore he would never go back. When he was released in 2015, no one would hire him. To make money, he started his own catering company and worked as an anti-violence activist with Bull City United, a violence interruption program that works to stop shootings in Durham. Four years ago, the City of Durham’s Innovation Team hired him to work on reentry in Durham and he started the Welcome Home program.

For Welcome Home, he manages a caseload of 15-20 people for whom he provides peer support. In addition to running the program, he heads his own nonprofit, Locked Up to Living Life, which focuses on reentry, violence interruption, and outreach. If that weren’t enough, Manning is currently in the process of contacting every program manager at the 57 prisons across North Carolina to tell them about Welcome Home.

For people involved in the program, the recidivism rate drops to 13 percent, says Manning.

In the first few weeks home, peer support specialists are key to navigating the numerous logistical issues people face after release.

The first is documentation. To get a job, you need a state-issued ID and social security card. To get an ID, you need a social security card. To get a social security card, you need a birth certificate. And to get a birth certificate, you generally need a state-issued ID.

“If you are standing behind me, and I fall, you are probably gonna catch me? Then I’m not as hesitant about falling.”

Manning is currently working with a 19-year-old who has been incarcerated since he was 10 years old and who has never had any form of ID. “We don’t even know where to start with him. Which one do you get first?” Manning said.

It is a cruel bureaucratic cycle, and even with help, it can take weeks to get all the papers together. Which means four to six weeks before it is even possible for someone to find employment.

For at least nine months, you still owe $40 a month to your parole officer, or you risk being in violation of your parole.

“The day you come out again, nobody tells you this, but you’ve moved from no one expect[ing] you to make decisions, to where everybody expects you to make decisions,” Doll said. “They just expect you to understand that it is now your responsibility to take care of all this stuff.”

Manning wishes that the state, which has all the information, would help inmates gather all this documentation prior to release. “You know, it’s kind of odd that you wouldn’t want to place someone back into society with the best chance of success,” Manning said.

This is home Jubilee Home, on the corner of East Umstead and Dawkins Streets, looks innocuous from the outside. Inside, its bright green doors, creaky wooden floors, and pinball machine in the living room make it feel warm and homey. The nonprofit provides supportive housing for residents who have been impacted by the criminal justice system. The home, which started in January of 2020, grew out of the vision of its founder David Crispell.

As a Duke Divinity student, Crispell worked as a chapel intern in a youth facility. In his final weeks, two teenagers he had grown particularly close with were facing release. One attempted suicide and the other assaulted an officer in order to remain incarcerated, Crispell said.

He was initially angry and frustrated with them.

“Now I recognize that they both looked at the two paths ahead of them. One that’s going home, and one that’s staying incarcerated.”

The two teenage boys were already high-ranking gang officials. That suggests they were likely made to be drug mules from a young age, explained Crispell.

“They recognized that going home was either a path to death or more incarceration.

And they chose the easier, or safer, path.”

After finishing school, Crispell dreamed of creating a community that those two young men could have joined. Jubilee Home’s initial mission was to serve men ages 17 to 24, but as soon as the pandemic began, the program removed its age restriction and started taking people in.

Jubilee Home has six beds and 24-hour peer support on staff. Three out of five people working on the team are peer support specialists and have dealt with incarceration or substance abuse themselves.

Jubilee Home has a lower barrier to entry than other transitional housing. The program does not have a zero-tolerance use policy for drugs and it accepts people with mental health diagnoses. If Lynn at the LRC thinks someone would be a good fit, he will call Crispell. About once a month, the home has an empty bed available. Most people stay three to four months, but people can stay up to a year.

“We try to make people feel like this is home,” said David Logan, who lives in the house as a 24-hour peer support specialist. “You try to help people learn how to live a normal life.”

Radical forgiveness Reentry isn’t just about getting a license, a job, and a place to live. It is about rebuilding community. That is what the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham is working toward through its reentry faith teams.

Faith teams consist of three to five volunteers from a congregation and a person going through the reentry process. Distinct from many other services, the goal of these groups is not to fix a problem.

The goal is to simply “be with.”

Faith teams gather every other week to eat food, play board games, cook meals, and spend time together.

“We’re not trying to fix anybody,” Doll said. “We’re not intentionally trying to change anybody. We’re not trying to do anything other than develop really, really tight friendships. When you’re building friendships, you’re building a network of support.”

At the heart of this work is the value of radical forgiveness. “Infinite belonging says no one is disposable …. And boundless compassion says no one has sinned so greatly they are outside the grace of God,” Doll said.

In 2009, after being released from incarceration, Doll was supported by a faith team himself. After a year, he stayed on as a volunteer. He now manages all 22 faith teams across Durham and Orange Counties.

The impact goes beyond those who are reentering. Jim Petrea, who leads the faith team at Trinity Avenue Presbyterian Church, started this work because he wanted to get uncomfortable. At first, making friends with a stranger was a challenge, but now “I don’t have a better friend in the world,” Petrea said.

I told you so Omar Guess has been out of prison for four years now. He is currently working for the county as a supervisor for the Department of Solid Waste. In February, he began taking classes to get his HVAC certification.

Guess knows the importance of maintaining structure. With the help of his faith team, he recently moved into the apartment above a church. He is eight years clean.

He knows his challenges are not all behind him.

“Everybody is not going to welcome you in with open arms, because you are a convicted felon,” Guess said. “You know, that’s a big F on your report card.”

But he tells people his story because he hopes to inspire others in the same position. “I’m a walking testimony,” he said.

He occasionally runs into his old parole officer at his job, who tells him how proud he is of Guess.

And Guess gets to say, “I told you so.” W This story was produced through a partnership between the INDY and 9th Street Journal, which is published by journalism students at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy.

INDYweek.com

March 30, 2022

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Orange County

Resting Place The Piedmont’s first conservation cemetery is rethinking burial. BY ZELLA HANSON backtalk@indyweek.com

M

aybe you’re chemical conscious and can’t imagine contributing to the 827,060 gallons of carcinogenic fluids buried in the ground each year.

Maybe you want your children and grandchildren to be able to enjoy your final resting place as more than a cemetery—as a place for recreation, refuge in, and reverence for nature.

Whatever the reason, you’ve decided you’re interested in conservation burial.

You’re in luck: Heidi Hannapel and Jeff Masten are bringing the nation’s 13th conservation cemetery right here to the Piedmont.

It’s called Bluestem.

Bluestem practices green burial—which Hannapel says is “just a new name for how we used to bury long ago, how many cultures still bury, where there’s no embalming, no vaults, and biodegradable materials instead of metal caskets and steel.”

Current burial norms took shape during the Civil War, when wishes for the bodies of deceased soldiers to be returned home in preserved condition led to the development of embalming technology. But because only licensed embalmers could offer this service, families who wanted embalming could no longer bury their own: they needed the help of morticians and funeral homes. Decades progressed, and families increasingly laid their loved ones to rest in steel caskets and concrete vaults beneath monoculture lawns kept green with pesticides.

The status quo—of clear-cutting and manicuring the land, making space to barricade our dead selves from the earth—has reigned for seven score and seventeen years (or so). Now folks like you are searching for something new.

To reach Bluestem, you navigate roads that weave and wind through rolling hills and quaint farmhouses until you arrive at Hurdle Mills Road, where Bluestem sprawls across 87 acres of Cedar Grove in Orange County.

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You bounce along the dirt road and roll to a stop in what Hannapel calls the “anteroom” of the cemetery. It’s the first of Bluestem’s “outdoor rooms.” You’re greeted by Hannapel, who wears her hair cropped and a stud in her nose, and Masten, who sports a red cap embroidered with the Bluestem logo. Both have kind eyes etched by years of laughter.

Together, you stroll toward the cozy cabin that serves as Bluestem’s office. The cabin is a ripe 140 years old, and Bluestem’s choice not to renovate or expand it is a conscious one, Hannapel says. “We’re trying to promote that idea that nature is enough, so we don’t need to bring a lot of human impact to develop.”

Bluestem took 12 years of dreaming, five years of building. Now they’ve found land and are set to open this June.

Bluestem is a conservation project at heart, so choosing its home was something Hannapel and Masten did with “great intention and respect.”

“Restoring these agricultural fields back to grassland is a key attribute of our project,” Masten explains. Monoculture, the cultivation of one crop in a certain area, is efficient for food production but can lead to damaged soil and loss of biodiversity over time. With the help of volunteers, the project will work to heal the land by planting grasses native to the Piedmont region— including bluestem grass, for which the nonprofit is named.

“The grassland habitat will be a huge refuge for pollinators, for diversity of wildlife,” Masten says. “There are migratory birds that fly through, looking for seed sources along the way. Bluestem will provide that.”

The grasses’ root systems will sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide and reach some five feet into the ground. “So the grass actually serves as a large carbon sink,” Masten says.

Bluestem Conservation Cemtery.

PHOTO BY MILENA OZERNOVA

“This is part of our ethos of thinking globally, acting locally. We’re not moving a world needle on climate change. But maybe we’re getting people to be more cognizant of how we’re impacting the world.”

You want a tour of the property, so you follow Masten and Hannapel out of the cabin and through the “anteroom” to the barn. It’s as old as the cabin and equally picturesque. Delightfully anachronistic. The barn serves as the Information Center, as well as a place people can gather with their loved ones or host their faith communities during the burial process.

“It’s an invitation to any faith communities to come and hold services,” says Hannapel.

“But also, for people who don’t have a particular faith, this can be a reverential space to come into nature and have your own spiritual experience. To feel one with nature.”

Hannapel and Masten lead you on the pedestrian trail, where you tread on damp amber oak leaves and occasionally brush against a spindly branch. The trail system spans four miles, looping around a glassy silver pond and unfurling into distant woods. But now you’ve reached the middle of a clearing.

You stop, throw your head back, and look up.

Green leaves dotting slender branches swirl and play in endless fractals across

deep blue sky. It’s almost like stained glass.

Like you’re in a cathedral.

You see what Hannapel was talking about: this really does feel like an outdoor room.

And something else, too. Since you left the barn, you’ve traveled about 70 feet downhill. The hill shields you from the last vestiges of sound from the road. All you can hear is birdsong and quiet.

“This land sang to us,” says Hannapel.

Beyond the pond is a sweeping field, where the horizon reveals itself. “It’s like the big sky of the West,” says Masten.

“When you come out here, you can let go of all the city life that you carry,” Hannapel says. “You arrive here, and the sky opening up … it’s a release.”

“This place will be able to carry the souls of the people who will be buried here. And we think of that as an incredibly healing opportunity.”

You emerge from the forest and amble down a dirt road. Then Hannapel stops, sweeping an arm in the direction of the large field that fans out in front of you.

“This is our big, wide-open field for grassland burial.”

At Bluestem, one can choose between grassland burial in the fields and woodland burial among the trees.

“We’re trying to limit those things that have a sizable environmental impact,” Mas-

ten says. So for grassland burials, “we won’t be mowing pathways to each grave.”

These aren’t comfortable ideas for everyone. When trying to find a home for Bluestem, Masten says many potential neighbors “shook their head or turned white or talked about zombies.” Others worry about whether animals will dig up graves. (“Our colleagues have not had a problem with that whatsoever,” Hannapel says.) You can’t put up a bench, or that traditional veteran marker with the flag: headstones are welcome, but they’ll have to be flat to the ground. If you choose a woodland burial, a tree might fall on your spot and it might have to stay there.

“It will challenge a lot of people,” Masten acknowledges. “But our philosophy is that it’s less about the individual space, because the whole of Bluestem is the memorial to each individual here. You become integrated into it.”

Masten explains that the grasses help to hold soil in place. “So when someone is buried, nothing is removed from the site. All of the soil that comes out will go back in the same hole, so it will be mounded. And over time, as decomposition occurs, it will subside and become flat again.”

A tangible reflection of incorporation into the earth.

You stroll on until you’ve passed the large field, and you stand, looking out at another field for grassland burial. It’s bordered by a distant forest, where woodland burials will take place.

Before Bluestem, Hannapel and Masten led careers in conservation: Masten worked as conservation director at Triangle Land Conservancy and Hannapel as the Southeast program manager for Land Trust Alliance, and the two later joined forces to launch a local conservation consulting firm, Landmatters. Then Masten met Billy Campbell, cofounder of the nation’s first modern conservation cemetery. Campbell spoke of cemeteries where each burial supports the conservation of the land.

“With conservation burial, you’re not burying your wealth,” Hannapel says.

“Instead, it’s going into preserving a living, healing space.” (And the price tag doesn’t hurt: what you’d pay to be buried at Bluestem—sans embalming, fancy cas-

kets, and vaults—is about half the cost of traditional burial.)

Campbell inspired them, but starting their own cemetery still felt out of reach.

In 2006, Masten says conservation burial still seemed “a little bit ahead of its time for the Triangle.”

Then in 2015, Hannapel’s mother was diagnosed with a glioblastoma. She didn’t have long. Hannapel dropped everything to take care of her.

Shortly after, Masten’s father was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and Masten became the caregiver for his father.

“After we helped our parents to their end, we realized that the way our parents chose to be for their final disposition … it wasn’t what we wanted,” Hannapel says.

Masten agrees. “We thought, there’s another way for us to think about this.”

Heading back, you ascend what you now realize is a slight hill. Hannapel and Masten point out additional fields that will some-

day be used for burial. Until then, they’ll be filled with wildflowers.

Choosing a conservation burial means participating in the ecosystem financially, in body, and in spirit. Hannapel and Masten have already spotted 32 species of birds on the property. It’s a peaceful thought, to think of yourself as contributing to this community of grasses and wildflowers and birds.

Hannapel and Masten say Bluestem will serve as a living memorial to the souls that dwell there.

“It’s something that’s not just after the fact,” Masten says. “It’s not a feeling of ‘Oh, I’m choosing a place where my remains will be.’ It’s choosing a place that I want to be when I’m alive. And for my family, when they come to visit after I die.”

Hannapel agrees. “We don’t have to be terrified of death. We can make space for the fact that we’re all impermanent. And so, when that time comes, why not become part of this gorgeous place?”

You like the sound of that. W This story was produced through a partnership between the INDY and 9th Street Journal, which is published by journalism students at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy.

us

ke up w a W i

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“We don’t have to be terrified of death.

We can make space for the fact that we’re all impermanent.”

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INDYweek.com

March 30, 2022

9

N E WS

North Carolina A storefront in Chapel Hill where masks are required PHOTO BY ELIZABETH THOMPSON

a 5 percent increase in the last 14 days, according to the World Health Organization Epi Database.

This is a cause for caution in the United States, which tends to lag a couple of weeks behind Europe’s COVID trends.

North Carolina DHHS secretary Kody Kinsley said North Carolina tends to be six weeks behind COVID trends in Europe, during a press conference on March 17.

Though cases are rising in some European countries, in the past month, travel restrictions have started to ease throughout most European nations.

The United Kingdom, France, Greece, Romania, and other nations have begun lifting requirements for entry such as passenger locator forms, COVID-19 entry restrictions, and proof of vaccination.

However, most countries in the European Union enforce policies regarding the use of face masks while indoors or using public transit.

Loosen up?

The Next Wave COVID cases are down across the state, but a new variant currently spreading in Europe looms. BY ELIZABETH THOMPSON AND MONA DOUGANI backtalk@indyweek.com

N

orth Carolinians are currently faced with choices and confusion about which personal protective measures they should take against COVID-19, as Gov. Roy Cooper released guidance encouraging schools to make masks optional starting March 7 and the state’s remaining counties with mask mandates ended them.

These changes follow a drop in cases across the state, as the Omicron surge appears to be on its way down, but they have left North Carolinians with questions: To mask or not to mask? Stock up on COVID tests? Is COVID over?

Experts are even unsure, as the pandemic enters yet another new phase.

North Carolina saw a sharp decrease in COVID cases following the surge of the highly transmissible Omicron variant across the world in December and January.

At the height of the Omicron surge, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported almost 45,000 COVID cases, dwarfing pre10

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vious surges. That number is now down to fewer than 2,000 daily cases.

Some public health experts—such as Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s top adviser on the pandemic—predict an “uptick” of COVID cases as a result of the BA.2 subvariant of the Omicron variant, which is causing an increase in cases in Europe.

U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy urged Americans to remain prepared for whatever COVID has in store, in an interview on Fox News Sunday.

“We’re in that mile 18 of a marathon,” Murthy said. “We can’t quit, because COVID’s not quitting.”

COVID increase in Europe As of March 21, the collective number of COVID-19 cases in all of Europe has risen to 194.4 million, roughly

While cases are low, John Wiesman, professor of the practice in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, said North Carolinians should enjoy this time.

“We are at a place where community transmission is much lower,” Wiesman said. “And we do have this pentup demand to want to do things we haven’t been doing, whether it’s going to the movie theater, whether it’s doing some traveling, whether it’s seeing people in our family who we haven’t seen for a long time.”

That doesn’t mean COVID is over though, Wiesman said.

Thomas Holland, associate professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, hearkened back to the first COVID curveball, the Delta variant.

“Last summer when we had really low case counts,” Holland said, “and around June, July time, I felt pretty confident that we wouldn’t see another big surge until the winter— sort of traditional respiratory virus season, and that was wrong, right? Delta arrived around that time, and then we had a big surge even during the warm summer months.”

Even as North Carolinians enjoy this time, Wiesman said, they shouldn’t let their guard down.

“I think the keyword here is we just need to remain vigilant,” Wiesman said.

Remaining vigilant Wiesman recommended consulting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention community-level transmission data to assess your risk. Wastewater data is also one way to detect COVID transmission early, Wiesman

“The places that I still wear a mask are the places where I don’t really know the vaccination status of the people around me.” said. North Carolina Health News previously reported on how wastewater works as an early detection tool.

It’s not up to just individuals to remain vigilant, Wiesman said, but also governments.

“We need to make sure that our public health systems have the resources they need to track these variants and viruses,” Wiesman said.

A key part of that vigilance is for Congress to pass the supplemental pandemic funding that has been stalled in Washington. Biden asked Congress for $22.5 billion in his National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan, but so far that package has received pushback on both sides of the aisle.

Governor Cooper, DHHS’s Kinsley, and other North Carolina officials urged the importance of continued federal aid at a press conference on Thursday, North Carolina Health News previously reported.

“I am most concerned about our supply of testing in the private markets and the unique ability of the federal government to maintain those levels of supply by pushing and propping up that market,” Kinsley said Thursday. “So I hope we will see that funding come. We need it to stay prepared. It’s not the time to take a step back.”

Federal funding would help provide for some of the newer tools to fight against COVID, including the new antiviral medication Paxlovid, which has been shown to dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalization if taken early in a COVID infection, and the long-acting antibody combination Evusheld, which can be used for pre-exposure prevention against COVID. For months, supplies had been limited, but now doses of the drug are sitting on pharmacy shelves and in federal stockpiles.

There are things that individuals can do to prepare for whatever curveball COVID might throw next.

Taking action now Wiesman encouraged taking this time to get vaccinated or boosted if you have not yet.

It’s also a good time to have some rapid tests at home. Biden announced earlier this month that people can order four more free rapid tests after the initial program was

rolled out in January. Insurers are now also required to reimburse for the purchase of as many as eight rapid tests per month.

Especially as pollen season starts in North Carolina, using a rapid test can help determine if that runny nose is the result of the yellow stuff floating in the air or if you have a runny nose because you’ve caught COVID. Rapid tests are especially important if you want to spend time indoors or in close proximity to someone who is at risk of a bad outcome if they catch the virus.

You can also take action to help yourself and others by having a mask handy, Holland said.

“The places that I still wear a mask are the places where I don’t really know the vaccination status of the people around me,” Holland said. “Like going in the grocery store. Or in stores. I still mask up for that whether it’s required or not.”

Just because mask guidelines have loosened up for now does not mean that masks don’t work, Holland said. A well-fitting mask—such as an N95 or a KF-94—helps to reduce transmission of the coronavirus.

In some cities in Europe, such as Madrid, Spain, the use of face masks is mandatory for individuals both indoors and outdoors where distancing cannot be maintained.

People wear masks when walking outside, on the subway, in classrooms, at work, and sometimes even in cars. COVID testing sites are also widely available, and pharmacies carry take-home tests that cost the equivalent of about $6 to $8.

Though the vaccination rate has hit 85 percent in Spain, with 87 percent of people having at least one dose, lawmakers are still enforcing safety measures, and individuals are still taking precautions to ensure health and safety.

If cases start to pick up again in the United States like they are in Europe, Holland said it would make sense to mask up again and limit travel and interactions.

“We are still in an uncertain time,” Wiesman said. ”Just be aware of that.” W This story was originally published by NC Health News, an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit, statewide news organization dedicated to covering all things health care in North Carolina. Visit NCHN at northcarolinahealthnews.org.

Durham County Board of Elections

NOTICE OF DURHAM COUNTY PRIMARY AND ELECTION Tuesday, May 17, 2022 The Primary and Election for Durham County will be held in Durham County, NC on Tuesday May 17th. All Durham County precincts will be open from 6:30 am until 7:30 pm.

17-year-old Durham County voters who are registered and will be 18 years old on or before Nov. 8, 2022, may vote in Durham’s Primary. 17-year-olds are not permitted to vote in School Board or Town of Cary elections.

Party primaries will be open to voters registered with that respective party. Unaffiliated voters may vote a non-partisan ballot that will only include the School Board Election and Town of Cary (if applicable) OR choose to participate in either the Republican or Democratic primaries. Registered Libertarians will be given a non-partisan ballot.

The following contests will be on the Durham County ballots*: • US Congress • NC Supreme Court • NC Court of Appeals • NC General Assembly • NC District Court • Durham County Sheriff • Durham County District Attorney • Durham County Clerk of Court • Durham County Board of Education (Final Election) • Town of Cary Council (Final Election – Cary residents only) *Offices will only appear on your ballot if you are eligible to vote for the respective contest.

ABSENTEE ONE-STOP (EARLY VOTING) LOCATIONS South Regional Library 4505 S. Alston Ave., Durham

North Regional Library 221 Milton Rd., Durham

Durham TechNewton Building 1616 Cooper Street, Durham

The River Church 4900 Prospectus Dr., Durham

East Regional Library 211 Lick Creek Lane., Durham

NCCU Law School 640 Nelson St., Durham

Durham County Eno River Unitarian Main Library 300 N Roxboro St., 4907 Garrett Rd., Durham Durham

Early voting schedule: Thursday, April 28, 2022 – Saturday, May 14, 2022 Hours are consistent at all four early voting sites.

• Weekdays: 8:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

• Saturdays: 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

• Sundays: 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

ELECTION DAY POLLING PLACE LOCATION CHANGE • Precinct 25, previously located at Northern High School has moved to Lucas Middle School, located at 923 Snow Hill Rd., Durham.

VOTER REGISTRATION DEADLINE: The voter registration deadline for the Primary and Election is Friday, April 22, 2022 (25 days prior). Voters that miss the registration deadline may register and vote during the Absentee One-Stop Voting Period (Early Voting). Voters who are currently registered need not re-register. Registered voters who have moved or changed other information since the last election should notify the Board of Elections of that change by April 22, 2022. Party changes are not permitted after the voter registration deadline.

SAME DAY REGISTRATION: Voters are allowed to register and vote during early voting. It is quicker and easier to register in advance, but if you have not registered you can do so during One Stop voting with proper identification. This same day registration is not allowed at polling places on Election Day. Information regarding registration, polling locations, absentee voting, or other election matters may be obtained by contacting the Board of Elections.

Website: www.dcovotes.com Phone: 919-560-0700

Email: elections@dconc.gov Fax: 919-560-0688

PAID FOR BY DURHAM COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS

INDYweek.com

March 30, 2022

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A RT

HOME? AN ARTISTIC EXPLORATION OF HOUSING IN THE TRIANGLE

Opening reception on Friday, Apr. 1, 6-9 p.m. | Eno Mill Gallery, Hillsborough

House of Cards In a new exhibition, Triangle artists foreground the experience of home as a dance between permanence and loss. BY MICHAELA DWYER arts@indyweek.com

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t the center of the technicolor print “Reach for the Stairs” is an image of a house. From the outside, it has all the features to compel a Triangle landlord or real estate agent to describe it as “charming”—paneled siding, latticed windows—but everything’s a bit off. Collaged limbs protrude from the structure; lines of blue-gray and chartreuse strike through “radiation” in all caps.

Locals may immediately recognize the style of Ron Liberti, the Carrboro artist and musician well known for more than two decades for his vibrant screen-printed band and concert posters around town. This piece is more personal. Created over the years in “every house” he’s been subsequently “rented out of,” the work, Liberti writes, “represents my dream of being able to afford to own my own home/studio here in Orange County, where I’ve lived and worked since 1991.”

“Reach for the Stairs” is one of the 100 artworks on display in the exhibition HOME?: An Artistic Exploration of Housing in the Triangle, which opens this Friday at the Eno Mill Gallery in Hillsborough. (Sixteen original prose works are part of the showcase as well; the writers will give a live reading at Friday night’s opening.)

The exhibition, a unique collaboration between the Orange County Arts Commission (OCAC) and the Department of Housing and Community Development (OCHCD), functions both as a creative prompt for artists and writers to consider the intertwined personal and political resonances of “home” and “housing” and as a vehicle for community aid: proceeds from the exhibition’s art sales will jump-start a permanent housing relief fund and fundraising effort for artists living and working in Orange County.

This fund represents a fusion of separate relief efforts begun early in the pandemic when OCAC director Katie Murray and her board administered the Orange County Arts Support Fund, partly in response to venue closures, while the OCHCD, led by Corey Root, pooled resources from Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough to administer an emergency housing assistance fund. (Since March 2020, Root says, the fund has delivered close to $10 million in rent and utility assistance.)

Applicants to the Arts Support Fund frequently mentioned housing needs, Murray says, citing everything from unforgiving landlords to rising rents; many of the applicants to the emergency housing fund also self-identified as artists. This speaks to the historic makeup of the Triangle, where many artists are also dually employed as service 12

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workers. During the pandemic, the sudden loss of work laid bare artists’ overlapping needs. “[The Triangle housing crises’ effect on artists] was something I knew,” Murray said, “but running the relief grant program really put it in front of me.”

The diverse array of visual and literary works on display in HOME? aims to do the same. In the artist call, applicants were invited to consider four questions: What does the idea or experience of “home” mean to you? What has your experience of “home” been as an artist and person living in the Triangle? Is “home” a place of comfort, safety, and warmth, or something else? Is “home” positive, negative, or something in between?

Like Liberti’s piece, many of the cross-genre works foreground the experience of home as a dance between permanence and loss. Katie Bowler Young’s poem “Path” expands home outward in a land acknowledgment to the Occaneechi, the original stewards of what’s now known as Hillsborough; she forecasts her eventual absence in environmental terms, her “longest shadow” disappearing between flora. In two separate but thematically similar paintings, Renzo Ortega’s “Orange County” and Georgia Paige Welch’s “Gimme Shelter,” someone’s arms encircle the structure of a house in a fight to retain refuge.

Throughout the exhibit, there is an unmistakable political commitment, even in the subtler treatments of “home.”

That commitment channels OCAC board chair and poet Fred Joiner’s associations with the word.

“I cannot think of any formation of home and not also think about homelessness, displacement, broken treaties, colonialism and neocolonialism, gentrification, Manifest Destiny, imperial expansion, and greed,” says Joiner, who led the selection of HOME?’s literary works.

All of these forces underpin the Triangle’s current housing crisis: a perfect, unregulated storm of inflated rental and property prices (compounded particularly by outside investors and impending tech moves), gentrification, and stagnant wages. County workers like Root, tasked with macro-level affordable housing advocacy and micro-level maintenance of immediate-need housing helplines, find themselves “swimming upstream to create and preserve affordable housing across the Triangle.”

The Triangle is now the least affordable it’s ever been, and its artists and artist advocates are well aware of the twisted irony here.

“Our creative community, which is so vital to the area, has helped build this region’s reputation as a fantastic,

“Reach for the Stairs” by Rob Liberti PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ORANGE COUNTY ARTS COMISSION

invigorating and inspiring place to live,” Liberti writes in the artist statement for “Reach for the Stairs.” “I only wish the talented and hardworking artists and musicians, whose backs this reputation was built on, had more affordable housing options so we can remain calling this place our home.”

On the county side, Murray and Root say their departments are sympathetic to the conceptual and material exploitation of area artists and are eager to pursue new collaborations that are mutually beneficial across the community: not only artist-specific housing relief but ways for the arts to be more broadly accessed across income and generational groups. The new permanent housing assistance fund, initiated by the HOME? exhibition is one immediate inroad; longer-term, Murray would love to see the county “allocate land and create affordable artist housing.”

There are limitations, of course, to what an arts commission or even the Department of Housing can do.

(Poet Diane di Prima’s observation in Revolutionary Letters is apt here: “No one way works, it will take all of us / shoving at the thing from all sides / to bring it down.”)

What an exhibition like this can do, however, is offer a unique freeze-frame of a quickly, and violently, changing moment—before it changes again.

Sabrina Cali drives this sentiment home in her prose poem mapping her priced-out shuffle between living situations: “I packed the last box today; we move again tomorrow.” W

INDYweek.com

March 30, 2022

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STAGE

Curtain Call For three decades, Wendell Tabb has brought theatrical acclaim to Hillside High School.

He’ll be a hard act to follow.

BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com

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uke University men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski’s storied career ends this season with a kind of fairy-tale moment: a Final Four game against the Blue Devils’ archnemesis, the UNC Tar Heels.

Krzyzewski, who may well crown his retirement with a sixth national title, has been the subject of well-deserved accolades befitting the winningest basketball coach in Division I history.

Here in the Triangle, there are accolades, too, for the pending retirement of a public school theater teacher: Wendell Tabb, a Tony Award–winning Durham Public Schools teacher who will retire this year after serving more than three decades as director of the drama department at Hillside High School.

Hundreds of community members along with well over 100 of Tabb’s former students turned out to honor him this month and celebrate two plays he directed and staged that served as punctuation marks at the end of a sterling 35-year career.

The plays Tabb directed this month are literal storybook endings featuring two classic African tales. The first, Why Mosquitoes Buzz, is a virtual adaptation of the 1975 children’s book Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears by Verna Aardema. The second is a wonderfully staged adaptation of John Steptoe’s Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters: An African Tale, first published in 1987.

“Both plays are set in West Africa,” Tabb, always resplendently dressed in a dark, three-piece suit, told a capacity audience that had gathered in the John Gattis–Wendell Tabb Theater on Sunday, March 20, while he stood in front of the closed curtain of the Wendell Tabb Stage.

“I wanted to go back home, for the ancestors, to bring the spirits of where it all start14

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ed,” Tabb explained, before paying tribute to his late parents and his sister, wife, and son. Tabb honored his mother’s memory and told the audience that she had sat in the same seat in the theater for more than a decade while attending every school production he had directed.

Tabb’s decision to direct two West African plays—whose themes include kindness, humility, and an origin legend about cause and effect—is not surprising.

The productions pay homage to his study of the art form at NC Central University’s Department of Theatre (this writer was a college classmate) and honor the legacy of Hillside High School, which is one of only four historically Black high schools in the state that survived after segregation, along with West Charlotte, E.E. Smith in Fayetteville, and Greensboro Dudley.

Coach K’s teams traveled all over the country to display their athletic excellence. Meanwhile, Tabb, in 1995, developed an international professional student exchange program that enabled his budding thespians to study and perform on six continents and all over New York and Los Angeles.

“I consider this to be one of my greatest accomplishments,” he said in the program.

His “next greatest accomplishment,” Tabb said, was starting a Celebrities in the Classroom program that allowed students to participate in acting workshops with some of the industry’s most notable artists. Over the years, Hillside drama students sat at the feet of Danny Glover, Bill Cobbs, Obba Babatundé, Phylicia Rashad, and Margaret “Shug” Avery, along with the likes of famed choreographer George Faison and Hillside graduates such as fashion icon André Leon Talley and legendary gospel recording artist Shirley Caesar.

Veteran drama teacher Wendell Tabb onstage in the theater at Hillside High School PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

Tabb’s cultivation of the theater discipline and his nurturing of aspiring artists have yielded impressive fruit. His former students include Academy Award–winning film director Kevin Wilson Jr.; actress April Parker Jones, who has a recurring role in the new Peacock drama series Bel-Air; Lauren E. Banks, who plays Siobhan Quays in the Showtime series City on a Hill; and Santron Freeman, a dancer who has worked with Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, and Mariah Carey.

Another one of Tabb’s students, Joshua Suiter, is a 2018 Hillside graduate and current theater major at Greensboro’s NC Agricultural and Technical University.

Suiter, who plans on moving to Atlanta after graduating in May, says Tabb has been a key part of his decision to pursue an acting career. Most recently, Suiter had the honor of being a trophy presenter during Sunday’s Academy Awards, an evening that became infamous, with a slap heard round the world, when Will Smith mounted the stage and confronted Chris Rock after the comedian made a joke at the expense of Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who suffers from alopecia.

Suiter said that after the incident the main goal backstage was “to try and keep the energy going, and not try to take away from the great production, instead of reflecting on that one moment.” (Suiter added that Will Smith, in response to 2015 criticism from Jada Pinkett Smith and oth-

ers that the Oscars are not inclusive, was responsible for his and fellow A&T classmate Zaria Woodford’s appearance at the event to represent historically Black colleges and universities. “Our goal was to make sure [Smith’s] dream stayed alive,” Suiter adds.)

“Another proud moment for Hillside,” Tabb wrote in a text to the INDY this week, in reference to Suiter’s Oscars participation.

“He wasn’t just a teacher,” Suiter says about Tabb. “He devoted his time, his soul, and money. He pushed us as actors.

I overcame my fear of singing and he cast me as the Tin Man in The Wiz. Ninety percent of us weren’t even theater students.

He’s a key part of a lot of people’s success, not just mine.”

T

he veteran educator’s tenure at Hillside has not been without its rough moments.

In 2017, Tabb filed a federal lawsuit against Durham Public Schools, alleging racial discrimination and retaliation. Over more than a decade, he claimed to have been cheated out of tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid wages. This wasn’t merely the result of difficult school-funding choices, his lawsuit insisted. Tabb said he was subjected to payback after he sued the school board in 2006 over the mistreatment of his son, who has cerebral palsy.

“So often, Black and brown children are minimalized. So often, Black and brown children are sidelined.

Wendell Tabb recognized what God has placed in them.”

At the crux of Tabb’s lawsuit was the allegation that, in addition to serving as director of Hillside’s drama department, he also functioned as an unofficial, unpaid technical director, with a workload that included hanging lights, creating sound designs, and building sets.

“Despite the success of the Hillside High School Drama Program,” Tabb’s complaint says, “[the school board has] failed to provide Hillside High School with the same level of staffing and funding that it provides at comparable drama programs in high schools that are not predominantly black.”

The case, Tabb tells the INDY, is still pending.

Tabb is a native of Louisburg. While a student at NCCU, his studies included a deep dive into all forms of the discipline, including the technical aspects of the craft and its history. He learned that theater, at its greatest, reflects the greater society. There was the study of modern playwriting masters like Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, and Eugene O’Neill; the importance of Black voices in the American mix with the works of Lorraine Hansberry, Vinnette Carroll, and August Wilson; and the appreciation of a global view while studying and performing the works of the African writers Wole Soyinka and Athol Fugard, along with the European works of Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, and of course, William Shakespeare.

Tabb says that while enrolled at NCCU, he had no idea that a semester of student teaching in 1984 at the old Hillside High, just across the street from the university, “would later lead to 35 years of pure educational and artistic satisfaction.”

That artistic zeal helped to make a difference in the lives of thousands of students who attended Hillside over the decades, and thousands more across the state who attended the school’s educational matinee series to witness the pure magic of live theater.

“To witness the excitement of their faces gave me the desire to come back year after year to repeatedly live those moments,” he stated in the program before the final staging of the two plays. The phrase “pure magic” aptly describes the Hillside cast of more

than 100 young technicians, actors, dancers, and singers who performed Why Mosquitoes Buzz and Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters.

Why Mosquitoes Buzz was filmed virtually, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and made history as the school’s first cinematic production. In addition to superb casting, there was a delightful, albeit surprising musical soundtrack created by Xavier Cason, a former school board member, who was the school’s longtime band director.

Meanwhile, Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, with its take on the old Cinderella morality tale, was magnificent in every aspect— lighting, costuming, set design, character development, et al. (The choreography of Toya Chinfloo and Mekhi Burns deserves a special shout-out, too.) The level of professionalism, artistry, and beauty executed by the youthful, energetic dancers was astonishing and inspiring.

Before the Sunday afternoon performances, Hillside High principal William Logan said Tabb’s work—which began at the school’s old location in 1987 when he directed his first play, I Just Wanna Tell Somebody—is “a vision that came to fruition.”

Logan said the greater community did not witness the “fights behind the scenes to ensure the theater had everything it needed,” including a $1 million lighting system and recently opened musical studio.

“So often, Black and brown children are minimalized,” Logan said. “So often, Black and brown children are sidelined.

Wendell Tabb recognized what God has placed in them.”

Logan added that the day’s performances marked the dedicated educator’s final curtain call, but that every goodbye ain’t gone forever.

“He’ll be back,” Logan said. “I don’t know in what capacity, but he’ll be back.”

At the end of the day’s film and stage performances, well over 100 of Tabb’s former students gathered on stage with him for a final curtain call.

Tabb, who had a little piece of a jump shot in college, is an avid ACC basketball fan.

“Do you think,” he texted me afterward, “I had more former students to return than Coach K?” W

30 th Bi-Annual

RECORD SHOW CARRBORO CD AND

Sunday Apr. 3 rd from Noon till 6PM

Century Center 100 North Greensboro St. FRE E ADM ISS ION

Early shopping OK 42 tables of new & used CDs, vinyl records and music memorabilia!

For info contact gerrycw51@gmail.com or Call 919-260-0661

INDYweek.com

March 30, 2022

15

M U SIC

VOICES OF MISSISSIPPI ft. William Ferris, Cedric Burnside, Shardé Thomas, and Luther & Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi All-Stars

Memorial Hall, Carolina Performing Arts, Chapel Hill | Wednesday, April 6 | 7:30 pm, $15-$40

The Mother Lode The folklorist William Ferris brings his Voices of Mississippi work to life at Memorial Hall.

BY NICK MCGREGOR music@indyweek.com

W

illiam Ferris’s reputation and résumé make him the preeminent scholar of folklore and the American South.

He founded the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, cofounded the Center for Southern Folklore in Memphis, and spent decades at the Center for the Study of the American South here at UNC-Chapel Hill. He chaired the National Endowment for the Humanities for four years. He even won a Grammy for Voices of Mississippi, the 2018 box set that collected his life’s work.

Still, Ferris, who is 80, is far from done yet. He’s spent the last two years collaborating on a live adaptation of Voices of Mississippi, combining his sound recordings, photographs, and documentary footage with original music performed by the descendants of the Mississippians with whom he worked in the 1960s and ’70s.

After a hometown debut in Oxford, followed by four shows at Lincoln Center in New York City, the multimedia Voices of Mississippi event comes to UNC-Chapel Hill’s Memorial Hall soon, courtesy of Carolina Performing Arts.

“Being here at UNC is special for me,” Ferris told INDY Week over the phone on a recent Tuesday morning. “My archive is here. This is the mother lode of what I do as a teacher and scholar.”

The following conversation with Ferris about the work has been edited for length and clarity; a longer version is available online.

at Rose Hill Church. I learned to sing the hymns, but as I grew older, I realized that there were no hymnals in the church. All the music was sung from memory, meaning that when those families were no longer there, the music would stop. So I began to record, photograph, and later film the church as a way of preserving that very personal experience.

Then, in the sixties, I began to see this as a political act. These were voices that had been left out of history—there were no books that captured their lives. At Northwestern University, the English department told me I could not study this music as literature. But I had a fellowship from the Rotary Foundation at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and over breakfast one day I met a visiting folklorist named Francis Utley. He was the chairman of the English department at Ohio State, and I complained to him that English departments were not open enough to allow me to study these voices that I thought should be studied alongside our writers.

He smiled and said, “You should be in folklore.” That changed my life. I applied and was accepted to the University of Pennsylvania, and when I arrived in the fall, I met my adviser, Kenneth Goldstein. I brought a box of my tape recordings and photographs and said, “Dr. Goldstein, can I continue to do this work here?”

He smiled and said, “That, my boy, will be your dissertation.” The work I’d been doing as a sort of instinctive love now had an academic foundation that gave it legitimacy.

INDY WEEK: What motivated you to start recording Voices of Mississippi as a young man? And what helped you realize that it could eventually be a vocation?

WILLIAM FERRIS: It started as a young

In addition to recording music, you committed to collecting everyday stories, jokes, asides, and explanations. How important is that?

child, when I was four or five years old, 16

March 30, 2022

INDYweek.com

It’s central. Everyday things, the spoken words that pass that we barely notice—

An archival image of William Ferris at work. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SUBJECT what the French call la vie de quotidienne— are the foundation of life itself. They’re also the foundation of our region’s literary achievement and the backbone of music in the 20th and 21st centuries.

For me, seeing these voices not only recorded but transcribed in the Voices of Mississippi book was a major step. Ironically, it’s very rare that you can read the text of music and stories and feel like you can see the quality of language as you would in a novel or a short story. This is the wellspring of our language as Southerners and as Americans.

You always placed your subjects in their appropriate social and cultural contexts.

But does the context of the farm you grew up on in rural Mississippi feel long gone to you today?

Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Faulkner talked about the old truths and verities that you learn,

whether it’s on a farm, in a ghetto, or in Chapel Hill and Durham. Growing up, you learn the basics. Alex Haley referred to it as “you were raised right.” You were taught to deal with life.

Those are lessons that in the South are very important. You learn politeness, to respect elders, to define and understand the society in which you live so that you can survive. Our nation is moving from a dominant white male culture to a much more diverse culture that reflects the world. And these Voices of Mississippi are a celebration of the life and culture in which we live, along with an affirmation that earlier generations will not be forgotten but will continue to live and speak to us.

Where do you see folklore going in the future? How will today’s voices speak to us tomorrow?

Our students [at UNC] are on a mission. They come here essentially break-

“That’s how I’ve seen my work: embracing and walking in the shoes of others that are different from you but have much to teach you.” ing out of the traditional confinement of academia, seeing the field of folklore as a liberating body of knowledge. These students cut to the quick. They go deep into the music, food, and lives of the people with whom they work.

They are also helping elevate the voices of what we might think of as the New South. Diverse Hispanic, Asian, Indian, and Native American families are transforming the face of North Carolina. A lot of work is being done to study those worlds by UNC’s folklore students. It’s the perfect place to find a home within the academy that allows you to also work in the dynamic, changing world around us.

In Voices of Mississippi, you mention being driven by an “ interest in understanding this different world.”

How critical is that kind of empathy in today’s polarized America?

It’s absolutely critical for the future of our nation. That’s how I’ve seen my work: embracing and walking in the shoes of others that are different from you but have much to teach you. Rather than being threatened by differences, we should celebrate them. One of the things that makes us great is our newly arrived families from all over the world—some fleeing the Holocaust, some fleeing despots in South America, and some now fleeing the violence in Ukraine. When they find their way to our shores, you can be sure that they’re going to contribute in ways that we desperately need to survive as a people. W

Durham County Board of Elections

RESOLUTION TO ADOPT A POLLING PLACE CHANGE IN DURHAM COUNTY At a meeting duly called and held on the 10th day of March 2022, at the Board of Elections Operations Center (2445 S. Alston Avenue), the Durham County Board of Elections passed the following resolution: WHEREAS the county board of elections shall have power from time to time, by resolution, to establish, alter, discontinue, or create such new election precincts or voting places as it may deem expedient, under G.S. 163-128(a); WHEREAS Precinct 25 Polling Place was located at the Northern High School, located at 117 Tom Wilkinson Road, Durham, NC 27712; WHEREAS the location at Northern High School has accessibility/voter access issues and offers limited space in the available voting enclosure; WHEREAS Lucas Middle School, located at 923 Snow Hill Road, Durham, NC 27712 has agreed to allow usage of their facility as a polling place for Precinct 25; WHEREAS Lucas Middle School is within the prescribed boundaries of Precinct 25, and is permitted for use as a polling place consistent with G.S. 163-128(a); WHEREAS a Polling Place Accessibility Survey has been completed for the new site and was found to be ADA compliant; and WHEREAS the Board of Elections shall notify all voters of the polling place change.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Durham County Board of Elections hereby unanimously approves the relocation of Precinct 25 Polling Place from Northern High School to Lucas Middle School located at 923 Snow Hill Road, Durham, NC 27712.

This the 10th day of March 2022.

—Dawn Y. Baxton, Chairman INDYweek.com

March 30, 2022

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M U SIC

TRAGIC ASSEMBLY: INSTABILITY | HHHH

[Self-released; March 18]

Free Flowing On Instability, all three Tragic Assembly musicians fill up the sonic space. The collective results brim with transparency and clarity.

BY DAN RUCCIA music@indyweek.com

F

ree jazz is often pigeonholed as a decidedly unsubtle art form, too often stereotyped as a bunch of people peeling the paint off the walls with the expressive force of their unrelenting, full-volume squalls.

And yes, there is plenty of that kind of free jazz, and it can be positively thrilling.

But more thrilling, I would posit, is the more understated flavor of free jazz, the kind that foregrounds melody and texture and the full range of instrumental timbres. Tragic Assembly makes that kind of free jazz on its debut album, Instability.

The trio consists of three Triangle improv veterans: reed player Crowmeat Bob Pence, bassist Phil Venable (The Paul Swest), and Charles Chace (The Paul Swest, Speed Stick) who, for this band iteration, trades in his usual guitar for drums. Album opener “Best Static” proves to be a kind of mission statement in the creative potential of restraint. Even though all three play lots of notes and fill up the sonic space, there is transparency and clarity to the collective results.

Anchored by Chace’s skittering, meterless beats, Venable and Pence overlay different kinds of melodies, rarely overlapping but always flowing in complementary swirls.

Even when Pence abandons pitches in favor of pops and splatters, the group still maintains the sangfroid of those early Ornette Coleman albums.

On “A Person Followed,” Pence switches over to bass clarinet and luxuriates in long lines. The song reaches a subtly frenetic peak when Venable picks up his bow to complicate the texture even further. The album gradually builds up steam, closing with some near freakouts in “Stilted Transmission” and “That Vacation Friend,” but even those feel somehow reserved (especially compared to what all three are capable of).

If I had one quibble, it would be that the album is mastered a little low; I had to turn the volume up a bit higher than normal to fully experience its soundworld. But that certainly doesn’t diminish the range of engrossing sounds this group unleashes. W 18

March 30, 2022

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C U LT U R E CA L E NDA R

Please check with local venues for their health and safety protocols.

The Magic of African Rhythm performs at The Carolina Theatre on Saturday, April 2.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CAROLINA THEATRE

Matthew Perryman Jones $14. Sun, Apr. 3, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Nashville Stories Tour with Autumn Nicholas and Madeline Finn $12+.

Sun, Apr. 3, 7 p.m.

The Pour House Music Hall, Raleigh.

Rare Music Series Sun, Apr. 3, 7 p.m.

Nelson Music Room at Duke University, Durham.

music Beatles vs.

Stones: A Musical Showdown $30+.

Wed, Mar. 30, 7:30 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Blends with Friends (Open Decks) Wed, Mar. 30, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Cavetown SOLD OUT. Wed, Mar. 30, 7:30 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Choir Boy $14.

Wed, Mar. 30, 8 p.m.

Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Gabriel Richard and Jean-Frédéric Neuburger Wed, Mar. 30, 8 p.m.

Nelson Music Room at Duke University, Durham.

Leif Vollebekk $17.

Wed, Mar. 30, 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

mssv: Haru Tour 2022 $15. Wed, Mar. 30, 9 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

KALEO: Fight or Flight Tour $42. Fri, Apr. 1, 8 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Music Education Tour Featuring Niito & DuPont Brass $20. Wed, Mar. 30, 9 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Thao $22. Fri, Apr. 1, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

The Dip $17. Thurs, Mar. 31, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Drug Church $16.

Thurs, Mar. 31, 7:30 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Les Filles de Illighadad $10+.

Thurs, Mar. 31, 8 p.m.

Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Shakey Graves Was Here $30. Thurs, Mar. 31, 8 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Duke New Music Ensemble Fri, Apr. 1, 8 p.m. Baldwin Auditorium at Duke University, Durham.

John Craigie SOLD OUT. Fri, Apr. 1, 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

CID + Dillon Nathaniel Warehouse Party $20. Sat, Apr. 2, 10 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

Family Saturday Series: The Magic of African Rhythm $5.

Sat, Apr. 2, 11 a.m.

The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Griffin House $22.

Sat, Apr. 2, 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Indecision $17+.

Sat, Apr. 2, 8:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Kate McGarry/ Keith Ganz Quartet $25. Sat, Apr. 2, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Kuumba Community Drum Lab with Robert J. Corbitt III Sat, Apr. 2, 12 and 1 p.m.

NCMA, Raleigh.

Lane 8: Reviver Tour $31. Sat, Apr. 2, 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

North Carolina Symphony: Fairy Tales & Dragons $27+. Sat, Apr. 2, 1 and 4 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Quator Danel $5+.

Sat, Apr. 2, 8 p.m.

Baldwin Auditorium at Duke University, Durham.

Queer Agenda! $5. Sat, Apr. 2, 10 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Soft Kill $15. Sat, Apr. 2, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Brian Dunne $12.

Sun, Apr. 3, 8 p.m.

Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Dexter Moses and Brandon Mitchell: The Music of John Coltrane $15+.

Sun, Apr. 3, 2 p.m.

Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Ciompi Quartet Mon, Apr. 4, 12 p.m.

Goodson Chapel at Duke University, Durham.

Tues, Apr. 5, 5:30 p.m. Horse & Buggy Press, Durham.

The Brian Horton Trio Tues, Apr. 5, 9 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham.

Dirty Honey & Mammoth WVH: Young Guns Tour $30. Tues, Apr. 5, 8 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Disney Princess: The Concert $35+.

Tues, Apr. 5, 7 p.m.

DPAC, Durham.

Jack Symes $12.

Tues, Apr. 5, 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Lucky Daye SOLD OUT. Tues, Apr. 5, 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Moonchild $24+.

Tues, Apr. 5, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Cavetown performs at Cat’s Cradle on Wednesday, March 30.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT’S CRADLE

art Guided Tour: Explore the Ackland’s Collection and Peace, Power & Prestige Thurs, Mar. 31, 1:30 p.m.

Ackland Art Museum, Raleigh.

First Friday Spotlight Opening Reception: Karin Neuvirth Fri, Apr. 1, 5 p.m. Bev’s Fine Art The Centerpiece Gallery, Raleigh.

Guided Tour: Peace, Power & Prestige: Metal Arts in Africa Fri, Apr. 1, 1:30 p.m. Ackland Art Museum, Raleigh.

International Slow Art Day Sat, Apr. 2, 11 a.m. The Nasher, Durham.

Radical Jewelry Makeover Artist Project Pop-Up Sat, Apr. 2, 3:30 p.m.

NCMA, Raleigh.

Docent Endowment Lecture: Alison Saar Sun, Apr. 3, 2 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

Visiting Curator Talk: Ralph Rugoff Tues, Apr. 5, 5:30 p.m. The Nasher, Durham.

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C U LT U R E CA L E NDA R page Berkley Hudson: O.N. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South Thurs, Mar. 31, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Carbon Footprints & CIA Spies: A Book Reading and Conversation with the Authors Thurs, Mar. 31, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Leah Angstman: Out Front the Following Sea Sat, Apr. 2, 2 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Kristy Woodson Harvey: The Wedding Veil Sun, Apr. 3, 2 p.m.

Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Martha Waters: To Marry and to Meddle Tues, Apr. 5, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

stage Small Mouth Sounds $15+. Mar. 18–Apr. 2, various times. Honest Pint Theatre Company, Hillsborough.

The Dresser $24+.

Mar. 25–Apr. 10, various times.

Theatre in the Park, Raleigh.

Oklahoma! $30+.

Mar. 29–Apr. 2, various times.

DPAC, Durham.

A Wrinkle in Time $20+. Mar. 30–Apr. 17, various times. Playmakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill.

The Comedy Experience Presents: Matt Ruby $10. Wed, Mar. 30, 8 p.m.

The Fruit, Durham. $10. Thurs, Mar. 31, 8 p.m. Clouds Brewing, Raleigh.

The SpongeBob Musical $32. Mar. 31–Apr. 10, various times. Titmus Theatre at Frank Thompson Hall, Raleigh.

Henry Rollins: Good to See You 2022 $34+. Thurs, Mar. 31, 7:30 p.m.

Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Trevor Wallace: Are You That Guy? Tour $29+. Fri, Apr. 1, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Gary Gulman: Born On 3rd Base $25+. Sat, Apr. 2, 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

CrankGameplays Presents: I Have to Do This Show SOLD OUT. Sun, Apr. 3, 8 p.m.

Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

screen Cosmic Rays Film Festival $5+.

Mar. 31–Apr. 2, various times. The Forest Theatre, Chapel Hill.

April Fool’s Day & Bloody Birthday $10. Fri, Apr. 1, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Hot Fuzz: 15th Anniversary Movie Party $18. Fri, Apr. 1, 7:15 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Raleigh.

LOCAL ARTS, MUSIC, FOOD, ETC.

in your inbox every Friday

A Hard Day’s Night Brunch $10.

Sat, Apr. 2, 11 a.m.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Raleigh.

Special Film Event: River of Gold Sat, Apr. 2, 2 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

the Triangle’s Arts & Culture Newsletter

TO SUBSCRIBE, VISIT indyweek.com/newsletter-signup

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this week’s puzzle level:

© Puzzles by Pappocom

There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box.

The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered.

Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.

If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages.”

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