How one Raleigh chocolate store readies its handmade, small-batch candies for the big day.
by Jasmine Gallup, p.22
VOL.
NEWS
5 This Valentine's Day, a different kind of love story. BY
THOMASI MCDONALD6 The Dix Edge Area Study is complete after three years, but it's going back to a committee for further review. BY
JASMINE GALLUP8 Seniors and disabled residents in a Durham Housing Authority building were left without power around Christmas. It was days before anyone checked on them.
BY CHLOE NGUYEN10 NCSU students and faculty say it's time to rename some campus buildings.
BY HANNAH MOXEY12 Talking to Angel Olsen about dream journals, outlaw country, and Big Time
BY SARAH EDWARDS20 Four-star reviews of Scivic Rivers' new self-titled album and The Veldt's Entropy is the Mainline to God
BY JORDAN LAWRENCE AND BRIAN HOWE22 Talking with Escazú Chocolates owners Danielle Centeno and Tiana Young as they prepare for chocolate's biggest day of the year.
BY JASMINE GALLUP24 An interfaith production of My Name is Asher Lev tells a story of spiritual turmoil, while Burning Coal’s Mlima’s Tale tackles a different kind of reckoning
BY BYRON WOODSCORRECTION In our story about Kidznotes afterschool music program last week, we incorrectly identified Kidznotes founder Lucia Powe's husband, E.K. Powe III, as the namesake for Durhan's E.K. Powe Elementary School. In fact, the school was named for Powe's grandfather, Edward Knox Powe, who was the original manager for Erwin Cotton Mills and a philanthropist with an interest in public education.
PUBLISHER
John Hurld
EDITORIAL
Editor in Chief
Jane Porter
Managing Editor
Geoff West
Arts & Culture Editor
Sarah Edwards
Staff Writers
Jasmine Gallup
Thomasi McDonald
Lena Geller
Copy Editor
Iza Wojciechowska
Interns
Chad Knuth, Lia Salvatierra
Nathan Hopkins, Sarah Innes
Contributors
Spencer Griffith, Brian Howe, Kyesha Jennings, Jordan
Lawrence, Glenn McDonald, Nick McGregor, Gabi Mendick,
Mol Sullivan plays at Rubies on Five Points on Weekday, Thursday, February 9. (See calendar, page 25.)
Shelbi Polk, Dan Ruccia, Rachel Simon, Byron Woods
CREATIVE
Creative Director
Nicole Pajor Moore
Graphic Designer
Izzel Flores
Staff Photographer
Brett Villena
ADVERTISING
Publisher
John Hurld
Sales Digital Director & Classifieds
Mathias Marchington
CIRCULATION
Berry Media Group
MEMBERSHIP/ SUBSCRIPTIONS
John Hurld
INDY Week | indyweek.com
P.O. Box 1772 • Durham, N.C. 27702
Durham: 320 East Chapel Hill Street, #200
Durham, N.C. 27701 | 919-286-1972
Raleigh: 16 W Martin St, Raleigh, N.C. 27601
EMAIL ADDRESSES
first initial[no space]last name@indyweek.com
ADVERTISING SALES
advertising@indyweek.com
Raleigh 919-832-8774
Durham 919-286-1972
Classifieds 919-286-6642
Contents © 2023 ZM INDY, LLC
All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced without permission.
Last week, we published an op-ed that criticized local police departments’ use of tasers that have resulted in the deaths of a number of Triangle residents. We also published a news story detailing the Durham Sheriff’s Department’s lack of resources, which is compromising the department’s ability to serve protective orders on perpetrators of domestic violence. A reader who identified themself as R.W. from Durham sent us the following email:
“I found it to be ironic that on page 4 of the 2/1/23 edition you allow two authors to attack police and their use of tasers and on page 6 how sheriffs don’t do enough to stop domestic violence. I do agree that our nation’s police need to find a better way of taking down suspects who flee or fight when arrested, especially those who are on drugs or have mental illnesses. However, there needs to be some mention given to the public that resisting arrest is NOT intelligent and can lead to more trouble. The authors of the page 4 piece offered zero solutions on how to deal with those who resist arrest.
“As for sheriff shortages, with publications like Indy and many others derailing police/sheriffs in general, the incentive to serve in those positions is waning. Domestic violence is the number one killer of law enforcement servants when dealing with this issue. It’s not easy. It would be nice for Indy to promote/celebrate positive police encounters and success stories that go on a daily basis out there. Are there bad cops? For sure and they need to be culled from the force. Best practices should be shared by those departments that are successfully engaging the public and reducing ‘bad arrests’. I wouldn’t want to be a cop in 2023 America.
“Generally speaking, there are sheep (like me and most of us), wolves (the bad guys who take criminal advantage of the sheep), and sheepdogs (police/ military who protect us from the bad
guys). The sheepdogs cannot become the wolves, for sure. But, without good sheepdogs, the wolves will eventually use ruffian tactics and destroy the sheep. I just thought it was ironic that on one page the Indy goes after cops for overdoing it and then on the next page they go after cops for not doing enough. I just don’t get it.”
On a lighter note, Lena Geller wrote a piece about Isaac’s Bagels, a local enterprise with a cult following that’s opening a brick and mortar location this fall. Fans flooded our Facebook page:
From commenter RACHEL BLOOMIE: “As a Brooklyn transplant nothing else in the triangle remotely compares. These are so, so good and everyone who works there is so nice!”
From commenter LINDA BOWERMAN: “So good! We needed this so much!
“I’m tired of stores selling buns with holes in them and telling me they’re bagels!”
From commenter MEGS HERON: “Congratulations! So great to see a new business created! I love here in Durham, but originally from NY/NJ where while in HS and college worked at bagel stores for years. One of my favorite jobs! Let me know if you’ll be hiring when your store opens in the fall!”
From commenter DAN GILVARY: “I want to do an internship here. My bagel making sucks.”
When
BY CLAYTON ALFONSO backtalk@indyweek.comNorth Carolina House Bill 43, if passed, would make it illegal for any medical professional to provide gender-affirming medical or surgical care to any minor in the state of North Carolina. This bill also provides a civil penalty for providers who perform such care. This bill goes against the current medical standard for these patients, and I strongly oppose it.
Research has continually demonstrated that gender-affirming care of adolescents is vital and lifesaving work. Suicide is the second leading cause of death in all young persons, and LGBTQ youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide compared to their peers.
The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health showed that 45 percent of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide
in the past year, with nearly one in five transgender and nonbinary youth having attempted suicide. The Trevor Project also showed that rates of attempted suicide are significantly lower for LGBTQ youth who are provided with gender-affirming spaces and health care. Statistics like this, which show improved outcomes of our youth, make me question why our North Carolina legislature would want to ban this lifesaving care for my patients.
The Trevor Project’s 2022 survey also demonstrated that more than 75 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth experienced significant anxiety, and nearly 66 percent experienced significant depression.
In 2021, an article published in the Journal of Adolescent Health examined mental health among transgender and nonbinary youth who received gender-affirming hor-
mone therapy. This survey evaluated nearly 12,000 youth and showed that the use of gender-affirming hormone therapy was associated with lower odds of depression and anxiety compared with youth who wanted, but could not obtain, gender-affirming hormone therapy.
Other similar surveys have affirmed these results, as well. The World Health Organization in 2021 affirmed its stance on adolescent mental health, stating that “the consequences of failing to address adolescent mental health conditions extend to adulthood, impairing both physical and mental health and limiting opportunities to lead fulfilling lives as adults.” Again, I ask myself the question: Why is our legislature trying to legislate against our adolescents?
Every major medical association in the United States—the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, and the American Psychiatric Association, among others—has repeatedly affirmed its statements that this care is medically necessary and has noted the harmful effects of not providing these services.
Gender identity and expression are all a part of human development, and we should be supportive of our youth and expand their access to care, not limit it. It is imperative that these youth be given the ability to meet with healthcare professionals who can provide them with an evidence-based evaluation and care to best support them. This care is LIFESAVING.
North Carolina is not that far removed from House Bill 2, the “bathroom bill” that several years ago that was shown to have
impacted revenue and business recruiting for the state, with cancellations in national conferences, major sporting events, and concerts, to name a few. Continued harmful bills, like the new HB 43, are also likely to have a significant negative economic impact on the state.
As an OB-GYN, I have seen firsthand the positive impact that gender-affirming care has on our youth. Laws like HB 43 have no place in our state, and I believe that all medical decisions should be left up to healthcare professionals, patients, and their families. I would implore our legislature to put politics aside and leave the practice of medicine to professionals who devote their careers to providing lifesaving care. W
it comes to legislating gender-affirming medical or surgical health care, North Carolina lawmakers need to heed the recommendations of medical professionals.
A tribute to a beloved coach and childhood mentor this Valentine’s Day.
BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.comThe world doesn’t know a lot about Gregory Everett Sr., but he meant the world to me and a group of Black boys coming of age in Rockingham, North Carolina, during the late 1970s.
If it weren’t for integration, I’m pretty sure I would have been a starting guard for the Leak Street High School Tigers.
Instead my hoop dreams ended prematurely when Richmond Senior High School coach Roy “Sonny” Clayton cut me from the basketball team.
This is a story about a different kind of love. It’s a story, first and foremost, about brotherly love. It’s also a story about community love and pride of place.
Visiting my hometown now is heartbreaking. There are few good-paying jobs in the manufacturing sector. The textile mills that made for a boom economy shuttered their doors decades ago. The once modest, well-kept homes are dilapidated, and way too many of the once-proud structures are uninhabitable. Far too many young people have guns and have resorted to drug dealing as a means of earning money.
Once, we had sports teams. The textile mills that were responsible for thousands of well-paying jobs were also great civic neighbors. The mills’ corporate bosses built baseball parks so that the children of their workers could play on the Little League teams they sponsored. The mills and other companies also sponsored the basketball and football teams with kids from all over Richmond County eagerly participating.
After integration, kids from all over the county attended the newly built Richmond Senior High School while formerly all-Black schools like Leak Street became middle schools. Leak Street is now a community center. Looking back, it seems ol’ Clayton cut the kids from the team who stayed closest to Leak Street School. My parents’ front door was about 75 yards from the campus. My friends lived even closer.
Clayton told us that he really had no
choice. He said we were being cut from the basketball team because the school board had decided that there had to be a certain number of white players on the team. We were pretty pissed off about the school board’s decision, but what could we do?
It couldn’t have been more than a week or so later. I was playing in a pickup basketball game at the Leak Street School gym, and ballin’ my ass off. I remember that afternoon like it was yesterday. The gym was packed. I was wearing a pair of pink cutoff jean shorts and a white T-shirt. Barry Saunders, the writer and my cousin who I grew up with, was home from college.
“You make the team?” he yelled at me from the sideline, where he stood watching the game.
“Naw,” I replied.
“What?” he answered in disbelief.
That pissed me off all over again. I had to do something to express my frustration and youthful indignation. So I wrote a letter to the editor of our local newspaper, the Daily Journal, tearing the school board a new one for its own brand of reverse affirmative action.
“I do not eat jump shots for breakfast, nor do I need behind the back dribbles to sustain me,” I wrote at the end of the letter.
The community response was considerable. Kids at school looked at me differently the day after the letter was printed in the paper. I heard from my former teammates on the basketball team that Coach Clayton told them he didn’t believe I wrote the letter. A school guidance counselor, Clifton Davis, pulled me into his office one day and suggested I go to college and major in journalism.
The trajectory of my future plans shifted. Instead of appearing in the newspaper with my beaming parents signing what used to be called a “grant-in-aid” to play basketball at a small college, I began writing really bad poetry and entering speech and writing contests.
But I still missed playing on the basketball team.
Enter Greg Everett and his decision to form a youth basketball team with the guys in the neighborhood who were cut from the Richmond Raiders.
I’m still not sure why Greg decided to coach us. But his decision was significant. First, it increased the chances that a group of boys in the community with loads of potential would stay on the right track. Second, despite ol’ Clayton’s decision to cut us from the school team, we could still play organized basketball, and third—for me at least—it fulfilled my dream of wearing a Leak Street Tigers basketball uniform.
Greg managed to get his hands on those old gold, blue, and white basketball uniforms worn by our uncles, fathers, brothers, and cousins during Jim Crow. We pulled on those warm-up togs with the gold snap buttons that trailed along the sides of the trousers and those equally beautiful blue jackets with gold trim that featured a white flap in the back with the abbreviated word “RHAM” and couldn’t have been prouder.
Playing for Greg, and with my closest childhood friends, was beyond rewarding. Greg was my first basketball coach since junior high who had confidence in my ability. Greg showed us how badly things could go for us if we chose the wrong path when he scheduled away games to the Cameron Morrison reform school. It was a place where no kid who had the
unfortunate fate of being sent there by a juvenile judge was ever reformed.
We played our home games at the Leak Street gymnasium that was built by students enrolled in Mr. Johnson’s bricklaying class. And truly it was home. During the 1960s, whenever there were school events, light spilled out of the gym’s tall windows and it would glow at night like a glittering diamond. It was our Madison Square Garden.
My father knew I was crazy about basketball but had never seen me play. One night, he showed up at the Leak Street gym and leaned against the wall near the front door. That night, I scored over 20 points and had the game of my life. It was one of those instances where I saw my publicly shy father smile.
Greg later married my cousin Jennie. This week his daughter, Jennifer Michelle, told me the man never stopped coaching youth teams in the community. She sent me an old picture of him posing with a youth football team. Jennifer said her dad also coached a coed softball team that she played for in the 1980s.
No one paid Greg a dime for serving as a mentor for a goodly number of young people. He did it for the love of the game, and most of all, for the love of his community.
I just want to pause for the cause and tell him, “Thank you for being there, Greg, when we needed you. It was like divine intervention.”
Love, every time Black man. W
Raleigh mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin wants to move forward with plans outlined in the Dix Edge Area Study; new council members voted to send them to a committee for more review.
BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.comThe Dix Edge Area Study, a development plan that has culminated in three years of work, is back in committee. The study, which started in 2020 and ended in 2022, involved consultants and city experts looking at the area around Dorothea Dix Park, which is facing rapid development, and proposing guidelines to shape the future construction of affordable housing, roads, and greenways, among other things.
As the city grows and Dix Park renovations begin, nearby residents have faced higher rents and more traffic in what was once an affordable place to live. The opportunity to build so close to downtown Raleigh has drawn interest from prominent development groups including Kane Realty and Merge Capital, in some cases displacing residents who have lived there for years.
Last spring, a dozen or so renters were forced to find a new place to live after a large development company bought their homes with plans to build two 20-story apartment buildings on the land.
Today, three major construction projects are slated for the area around Dix Park: Downtown South, a mix of office, retail, and residential space on 140 acres, with some buildings up to 40 stories tall; Park City South, another mixeduse development up to 20 stories tall; and South Park, a commercial and office complex only a few stories tall.
The Dix Edge Area study proposes a set of amendments to Raleigh’s Comprehensive Plan, a citywide map for growth that guides the city council’s decisions on rezoning cases and other important issues.
The city council isn’t bound by the guidelines in the Comprehensive Plan, nor is it bound by recommendations from the Planning Commission, but the proposed changes provide the council with a solid foundation for accepting or rejecting new development plans around Dix Park.
“It’s a community-driven plan for growth in that area,” says council member Jonathan Melton. “There’s a lot of changes happening in that part of the city, and we can either let those changes happen haphazardly or we can have a road map for how they ought to happen.”
In addition to modifications to the city’s land use map (that scale up residential development), the proposal includes some environmental protections (like directives for “green” stormwater management) and measures to preserve and increase affordable housing (such as education about home rehabilitation funding and development of affordable housing on city-owned land).
The proposal also includes plans to connect streets and greenways, add bike lanes and sidewalks, and add lanes and street trees to roads.
But all of those changes are currently stalled with the plan back in committee. During the council’s meeting last month, members voted 7–1 to send the plan back to the Growth and Natural Resources Committee, headed by District D council member Jane Harrison, for more discussion.
Council members Harrison, Megan Patton, Mary Black, Christina Jones, and Stormie Forte all voted for the motion before Jonathan Melton and Corey Branch joined them when it became clear they had a majority.
Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin voted against sending the plan to committee, saying at the meeting that she’d rather discuss the plan with all eight council members present rather than in the four-person committee (which, in addition to Harrison, includes Patton, Black, and Branch).
The heart of the argument was over whether new council members, who have greater influence in the Growth and Natural Resources Committee, should have control over how and when the plan moves forward, or whether it should stay with the city council as a whole for discussion and debate.
Discussion in committee gives three of the four new council members an opportunity to take a “deep dive” into the plan, addressing their concerns about not having enough time to consider it before voting, Black pointed out.
But, Baldwin rebutted, there’s value in having reelected council members at the meeting “for perspective,” she said. In a pointed comment about the new balance of power on the city council, Baldwin told Black that “you’ve said a lot of times you want to learn. Well, part of how you learn is through our joint experiences.”
Meanwhile, Melton’s main objection to sending the plan
back to the committee, or, as was also proposed, a work session, is the delay it would create.
“We need to give everyone an opportunity to feel heard on this piece and for the new council members also to absorb some of the work [we’re caught up on] … but I don’t want to push it two months. Every day we don’t act on this, we’re losing opportunities,” Melton said at the meeting. “If we need to have a discussion, we can have a discussion now or at the table in two weeks … but at some point, we have to do something.”
In an interview with INDY Week, Melton adds that although he is sensitive to the experience of being a new council member, “we did get the plan at least several weeks ago.”
“I was trying to find a way to strike a balance between letting [new council members] have time to absorb it, addressing some of the tangible concerns we heard at the [public] hearing, but then advancing the majority of the plan that I know the community has been waiting on for several years,” Melton says.
One of the biggest issues raised at the public hearing was over the reclassification of an area along Fayetteville Street, currently home to single-family houses, to an “urban corridor,” which would allow greater density and buildings up to eight stories (or 12 stories if they include public benefits).
“Creating an urban corridor on Fayetteville Street is not only inconsistent with the 2030 Comprehensive Plan and Future Land Use Map, [but] it would be the most dramatic zoning change proposed in the entire Dix Edge study,” said Christopher Busbin, who spoke on behalf of the nearby Caraleigh neighborhood.
However, the “place type” change also fits with the city’s plan to develop an affordable housing complex on the site, a city-initiated zoning change that is part of the council’s larger effort to build more affordable housing.
“To be real, it’s complicated,” wrote Harrison in an email to the INDY
The new council member wrote that she wants to be thoughtful before trading in green space for more development, particularly in a forested area that “protects the floodplain around Rocky Branch Creek, providing needed erosion control, water quality protection, and green space opportunities in what otherwise is a heat island just south of downtown.”
Harrison says she is also worried about building more in an area that is surrounded by low- and middle-income neighborhoods, as well as one that is “upstream from frequently flooded Rochester Heights, a historic African-American community,” she wrote.
At the same time, she understands the need for affordable housing.
“At the [Growth and Natural Resources] Committee, we will review buildable areas on the site and consider the multiple paths to achieve more affordable housing in this area,” Harrison wrote. “This isn’t the only one.”
Harrison’s motion to move the issue to the committee also stems from a desire to add additional environmental and affordable housing protections to the Comprehensive Plan. Not all of the recommendations from the Dix Edge study made it into the amendment proposal.
Among the amendments Harrison wants are a provision to work with local developers to build affordable housing on “infill parcels,” incentivize affordable housing with city funding for infrastructure, and provide land grants to nonprofits building affordable housing. Harrison says she also wants the city council to consider
directing developers to conserve nearby wetland and river corridors, as well as study strategies to mitigate erosion along Rocky Branch Creek.
Ultimately, the decision about whether to move the Dix Edge study to committee or discuss it among the entire council seems to come down to scheduling issues. Although many city council members favor discussing the item at a workshop, time-sensitive development issues and budget items have filled the council’s workshop agenda for the next several months.
Still, some are concerned this marks a new era of “analysis paralysis” for the city. Of the eight rezoning cases that came before the council last month, only one was approved, noted Eric Braun, a former land use lawyer and local political commentator, in a newsletter for Raleigh Forward, a 501(c)(4) organization that monitors city council goings-on. All eight rezonings were recommended for approval by the city’s Planning Commission.
“Several zoning cases that could add to the City’s housing supply, including permanent affordable housing, were deferred or placed into committee for additional study,” Braun wrote.
“While deferring cases or placing them in committee is not unusual, Council must act reasonably swiftly on housing proposals due to the significant time it takes to permit, finance and build them,” Braun continued. “Every delay adds further time between when a project is approved and being occupied by new residents.”
Discussion of the Dix Edge Area Study will take place at the Growth and Natural Resources Committee’s next meeting on February 28. After that, it could come back before the city council in March. W
Seniors and disabled residents of Durham’s JJ Henderson Apartments were left without electricity two days before Christmas. Five days passed before anyone came to check on them.
BY CHLOE NGUYEN backtalk@indyweek.comWhile the days leading up to Christmas are often marked by celebration and warm memories, for residents of JJ Henderson Senior Apartments, December 23 and 24 were spent in the dark and cold, without electricity. During a blackout at the affordable apartment community for seniors and disabled people, their health equipment stopped working, they said. And no one checked on them for days.
At a city council work session on January 19, three residents of JJ Henderson described a Christmas blackout of about 35 hours. They lamented that their apartments were dark, their electric medical equipment stopped functioning, and the doors to the building were unlocked.
The outage happened on December 23 and 24, but no one from California Commercial Investment Companies (CCI) or Durham Housing Authority (DHA) came to check on them until the following Tuesday, December 27, they said. DHA renovated JJ Henderson in partnership with other companies and subsequently turned over management to CCI. As senior citizens and disabled people residing in a recently renovated affordable housing project, the residents wanted answers.
“We had no lights, we had no electricity, and it was cold up until December the 25th,” Rafiq Zaidi said. Zaidi is 78 and a 17-year-long resident of the building. “We refuse to accept this. These people demand reasonable accommodations under the Disability Act.”
“It hurts. It’s degrading, as a person that suffers with a mental health issue, right along with a building of other people that suffer with the same disorders or more,” Pearlie Williams, a resident and former vice president of the resident council at JJ Henderson, said.
Anthony Scott, chief executive officer of the DHA, said at the meeting that he planned to follow up with the residents at the 178-unit building. He had not heard of the outage previously, he said.
In response to the residents’ comments at the city council work session, council member DeDreana Freeman said she plans to investigate.
“I had heard this had happened, and I had asked the question just to try and figure out what was going on,” she said. “I will be visiting over there at JJ Henderson because it is concerning.”
Winter weather and a series of rolling blackouts by Duke Energy left half a million people without power on Christmas Eve, according to news reports.
The Christmas Eve blackouts were widely publicized at the time. Yet no staffers came to check on the residents of JJ Henderson until the following Tuesday, December 27, residents said.
In later interviews, residents clarified what happened during the blackout.
“I felt someone was going to come and check and, you know, let us know what was going on,” Daniel Marshburn, another resident, said. “No one came around. It was Christmas weekend, and they left on Friday and didn’t come back until Tuesday.… No one ever came up there and made sure we had food or made sure we had the things that people need.”
During the blackout, many of the residents could not use the equipment they relied on to help manage their disabilities, Zaidi said.
“People with COPD, which is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, were unable to have access to their equipment for oxygen and nebulizers,” Zaidi said. “Really, they couldn’t breathe.”
David McGhee, another building resident, said his electric heart monitor did not work during the outage. Williams said that other residents could not use their electric wheelchairs.
The doors to the building were also unlocked during the blackout, residents said. As a result, nonresidents were able to enter the building.
Sheryl Smith, a friend of the residents, said that the building relies on an electronic lock system. But during the outage, the lock system failed.
“Anybody from off the streets could come in,” she said. “And they did.”
Williams also said that the building lacks security guards. When the doors to the building were open, she felt afraid. “I was scared to death,” she said. “I was like, ‘Help me, what is going on?’”
The outage occurred only two months after the complex reopened following $31 million renovations by the DHA in partnership with CCI and other companies. Funding included a $2.9 million loan from the City of Durham. Changes to the building were made as part of the DHA’s Downtown and Neighborhood Plan, which aims to increase affordable housing in Durham.
DHA publicized the beginning of the renovation in 2021 and celebrated its finish with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in October 2022.
“We never took our eye off this ball,” Scott said at the ceremony, according to news reports. “We knew we couldn’t take our eye off the ball of trying to continue to redevelop our public housing communities, because that’s how you avoid a McDougald situation.”
McDougald Terrace is a multifamily public housing com-
On December 23-24 there were power outages throughout the City of Durham. It is unclear what outages were a result of Duke Energy rolling blackouts or an uncontrolled loss of power to the Duke Energy power grid.
JJ Henderson senior housing was impacted by this outage as well. Residents were notified via PA system in the building. The emergency generator at JJ Henderson performed as designed by starting up when the outage occurred. The generator does not provide full power to the building but provides power to the emergency lighting system, elevators, and the heating systems of the apartments. The safety and security of JJ Henderson residents will always be a priority, especially during emergencies. Following the blackout residents have not reported any further incidents or issues.
munity in Durham, which residents had to evacuate in January 2020 after officials detected high levels of carbon monoxide in their apartments.
JJ Henderson, a nine-story building at 807 South Duke Street, has provided affordable housing for decades. With the renovation, new owners took over the building, a limited partnership called JJ Henderson TC Senior Apartments, LP. The housing authority still owns the land, tax records show. After the renovation, DHA turned management of JJ Henderson over to CCI.
The 9th Street Journal reached out to Scott after the meeting for comment on the residents’ complaints. In response, DHA communications manager Aalayah Sanders issued an emailed statement on behalf of DHA confirming that an outage occurred at the building over the Christmas holiday. According to the statement, the building’s emergency generator “performed as designed.”
“The generator does not provide full power to the building but provides power to the emergency lighting, elevators, and heating systems of the apartments,” the response states.
Residents paint a different picture of their experience during the blackout, however. While the hallway lights worked, apartments were dark, Williams and McGhee said. Heat also failed in some apartments, according to McGhee and Zaidi.
DHA representatives did not respond to questions about the failure of the elec-
tronic lock system or about residents’ statements that their health equipment failed during the blackout. DHA also did not explain why no management came to check on residents until the Tuesday after the blackout. CCI representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Smith said she tried to raise awareness of the blackout through a Facebook livestream two weeks after the incident. She said she came with residents to the council work session to ensure that the incident was public knowledge.
“That way, if anything else was to happen, no one could say they didn’t know anything about it,” Smith said after the meeting.
At the meeting, residents said they hope their appeals will lead to changes in the way their building is managed.
“We cannot have our Black men, women, sitting in the dark for almost 37 hours, not having oxygen,” Zaidi said.
Williams echoed his sentiment.
“I’m appalled, I’m hurt, I’m angry,” she said. “As a person with a mental health disorder and an advocate for the state of North Carolina, this should not have happened.” W
This story was published through a partnership between the INDY and 9th Street Journal, which is produced by journalism students at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy.
“We cannot have our Black men, women sitting in the dark for almost 37 hours without oxygen.”
Lilly Shapiro is a third-year student majoring in business administration at NC State University. Like most students, Shapiro spends a lot of time on campus.
She does homework in D. H. Hill Library every week and enjoys hanging out with friends at the Atrium. She passes through the Brickyard on her way to classes before she attends her supply chain lecture at Nelson Hall. After her day is over, she enjoys grabbing dinner and Howling Cow ice cream at Talley Student Union. However, Shapiro readily admits that she does not know for whom Talley—as in Banks Talley, a former vice chancellor who led the merger of the university’s agricultural and engineering programs with the arts—was named.
“I had no clue,” Shapiro says. “It’s kind of crazy so many students aren’t aware of NC State’s history.”
In fact, of 10 students surveyed at Talley Student Union one day, none knew who Talley was.
Of the roughly 1,000 buildings on NC State’s main campus, most facilities and residence halls are named after high-achieving alumni, chancellors or professors, or major donors to the university. The vast majority of these buildings are named after white men, though today, NC State’s student body, faculty, and staff are much more diverse. Not only that, but there are multiple buildings named after people who were known to be racist, typically white men with involvement in the Confederate army or with ties to white supremacy.
In its marketing, NC State emphasizes its diversity and inclusivity, yet its building names do not reflect this. Recently, some students have suggested that the names of certain buildings on campus should be updated. Faculty members, too, have suggested reconsidering the process
of naming buildings altogether.
If students don’t know who the campus buildings are named for, they argue, there’s no way they’ll know the controversial histories of these buildings’ namesakes.
“When it gets brought to your attention, you care, but most people don’t know,” says Grace Harrison, a thirdyear biochemistry student “If I found out they were bad, I wouldn’t be happy.”
Taylor Simpson, a second-year science education student, agrees.
“[Campus buildings] should not be named after racists or white supremacists,” Simpson says.
Holly Hurlburt, an NC State history professor, assistant dean and the director of academic enrichment programs, says she believes it is important to consider where building names are coming from.
“A name is a really powerful thing,” Hurlburt says.
Several buildings and landmarks on campus are named after individuals who have histories of racism, according to Brick Layers, a team researching the history of NC State campus facilities and their namesakes.
In the heart of campus, Dan Allen Drive and its parking deck get their name from Daniel Allen, a secretary of Raleigh’s White Supremacy Club in the early 20th century.
Allen was known to have particularly strong views in favor of local segregation policies and the advancement of the white population of Raleigh at the expense of Black citizens. He was specifically cited by The Morning Post, a
conservative newspaper founded in 1897, as showing “care for the interests of Anglo-Saxon North Carolina.”
According to Brick Layers, in the 1920s, all three of Allen’s real estate transactions in the area contained restrictive covenants outlining segregation practices that oppressed the Black community.
Poe Hall’s namesake, Clarence Hamilton Poe, has drawn scrutiny recently for his segregationist ideals and crude racist remarks in the Progressive Farmer newspaper while he was its editor in the late 1890s. Last year, students published an editorial in NC State’s student newspaper The Technician making the case that Poe is not an appropriate namesake and called for Poe Hall to be renamed.
Yet another building with a controversial namesake is David Clark Laboratories. David Clark was the founder and editor of the Southern Textile Bulletin newspaper beginning in 1911 and received an honorary doctorate in textiles from NC State in 1944.
As editor of the Bulletin, Clark published his racist views and was particularly vocal about his prosegregation opinions. Clark also expressed his opposition to laws restricting child labor. Brick Layers reports that Clark was quoted stating his disdain for the University of North Carolina’s acceptance of minority students.
Finally, NC State campus’s Park Shops building also has a controversial namesake in Charles B. Park. At the turn of the 20th century, Park was the vice president of Raleigh’s White Supremacy Club.
The White Supremacy Club worked to “fully restore and make permanent in North Carolina the supremacy of the white race,” according to the Morganton News Herald in a piece written in 1900. The club campaigned for the favor-
At NC State University, it turns out, a lot—as students and faculty members say campus building names are archaic and offensive and need updatingPHOTO COUTESY OF NC STATE
ability of the white race and pushed for taxes at polls and a literacy test, a racist law that is still on North Carolina’s books today. (Dan Allen was a member of this same White Supremacy Club.)
“That feels pretty inappropriate to me,” says Hurlburt, of naming the student stores for Park.
So, should the names of these buildings be changed?
According to NC State’s policy titled Review of Facility Namings for Removal, REG 03.00.04, “NC State University is dedicated to ensuring a welcoming, diverse and inclusive campus environment for all students, faculty, staff, alumni and visitors,” a policy with which the values of the White Supremacy Club and its members seem clearly to be at odds. The regulation also states, “NC State will consider the removal of a naming from buildings, spaces, streets, monuments and other named spaces on campus when strong evidence exists that the name is in opposition to the current mission and values of NC State.”
A common objection to the removal of offensive names or monuments is the idea that it may erase history or attempt to change the past, says Hurlburt. But she disagrees.
“We’re not losing the history,” she says. “A statue is not history, a statue is commemoration.”
The same could be said about the names of campus buildings. More controversial than renaming, perhaps, may be allowing the names to remain.
Other institutions in North Carolina have renamed buildings that were regarded as inappropriate. East Carolina University removed Charles B. Aycock’s name from Aycock Residence Hall in 2016. Aycock was the 50th governor of North Carolina and was heavily involved in white supremacy campaigns. His work with the Democratic Party led to the Wilmington Massacre of 1898, according to The Well, a UNC-Chapel Hill publication. During his governance, Aycock passed laws that disenfranchised Black voters.
UNC has also removed several controversial namesakes from its buildings, including those of Aycock and Josephus Daniels. These buildings are now called Residence Hall One in Lower Quad and UNC Student Stores. UNC also removed
Julian Carr’s name from a campus building due to his open support of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacy. Duke University removed Carr’s name from a campus building in 2018.
William Laws is a North Carolina history professor and an expert on memorialization in NC State’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences. He suggests changing the strategy of naming buildings entirely.
“I am actually opposed to any kind of monuments that single out people and place them above others in public spaces,” Laws says. “In a democracy we are supposed to all be equal. There is a lot of hatred and discrimination in our monumental history. … I would rather see ‘History Hall’ or ‘Engineering Hall,’ more functional [names].”
Another option could be to rename campus buildings to reflect more of the diversity present at NC State.
“Native American land pledges tell us that this land was historically occupied by and sacred to Native Americans,” Hurlburt says. “It would be neat to acknowledge that in some way.”
Located just a mile from the main campus, Dorothea Dix Park recognizes its space as the “ancestral land of many indigenous tribes.” Further, the park’s website states that it acknowledges the land’s past: “Only by sharing Dix park’s deep and complex history can we move memory into action and truly create a park for everyone.” Raleigh has been home to the Coharie, Cherokee, Haliwa-Saponi, Lumbee, Meherrin, Occaneechi, Sappony, and Waccamaw-Siouan people, according to the Dorothea Dix Park website.
But to change the names of buildings would require that the university undertake a lengthy and complex logistical process with several steps and important considerations, according to NC State university architect Lisa Johnson.
“If you’re taking a name off of something, you don’t do it lightly,” Johnson says. “Daniels Hall had a lot of discussion going on before the campus decided to take the name off. It’s all about doing due diligence, investigating, weighing the options, and then making that decision.”
Johnson says she believes the members of the NC State community should be involved in decision-making about campus buildings.
“It needs to be a process and a discussion with the campus community, listening to all views,” Johnson says. “Diversity of views is important.”
NC State has already done this on Centennial Campus, with buildings with “neutral” names such as Engineering Buildings I, II, and III, which don’t carry the controversies that go along with any namesakes. It’s possible, though, that these buildings could be renamed in the future.
NC State, too, has shown that renaming buildings on campus can be done. The university changed the name of Daniels Hall to 111 Lampe Drive in 2020. The building was formerly named for Josephus Daniels, an outspoken white supremacist and former editor of The News & Observer. The building’s new name is simply the street address of the building.
When Josephus Daniels’s name was removed from Daniels Hall, Chancellor Randy Woodson discussed the decision with the Daniels family and they were understanding, according to an N&O report. And it’s a conversation that can extend to other features around campus, including namesake outdoor spaces and streets.
Johnson says she agrees with the students and faculty that naming changes need to be made.
“We don’t have enough buildings named after women or minorities,” Johnson says.
As time goes by, values change and the community may see it necessary to update memorialization to reflect these values.
“If they do not represent what we value moving forward, changing the name is appropriate,” Laws says. “I believe as a scholar of memory and commemoration that every generation should have the right to remember who they want to remember.” W
“I am actually opposed to any kind of monuments that single out people and place them above others in public spaces. In a democracy, we are supposed to all be equal.”
Talking with Asheville musician Angel Olsen about dreams, outlaw country, and her upcoming Carolina Theatre concert.
BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com
Afew days out from Valentine’s Day, Angel Olsen is bringing her Big Time to the Carolina Theatre. Feel what you may about the holiday—a sweet day to celebrate your sweetheart, a commercial tool of capitalism, a day forged out of the fires of heartbreak—and Olsen’s expansive romantic oeuvre will likely cover the mood.
Released last June, the Asheville musician’s sixth studio album is emotionally surging and stylistically sweeping, as all Olsen’s work tends to be. But love, write large in Big Time, is also no easily codified thing: it covers freedom and exultation, grief and boundaries, sweeping listeners up into the gauzy expanse of “All the Flowers” and the tender parts of life that, as in “Go Home,” bruise at the touch. It also chronicles the paradigm-shifting moments of Olsen’s last few years, which included falling in love and experiencing heartbreak, coming into her experience of queerness, and coming out to her parents, only to have both of them pass away within a few weeks.
These experiences are all part of the album fabric, though Olsen is reluctant to retread the same ground in interviews—her publicist famously provides interviewers a multipage fact sheet with off-limit topics, and this interview was no exception. But these boundaries also make sense, given how raw and porous Olsen’s music is and what a gift it is to access such a rich translation of love. Ahead of her upcoming Durham appear-
ance, INDY Week spoke with Olsen about Karen Dalton, outlaw country, and dream journals.
INDY WEEK: You’re about halfway through the tour. What’s that emotional register like?
OLSEN: You just start to feel really in sync with the band—you feel close to everybody and kind of get into a rhythm, and you’re not as nervous to try weird stuff or try covers or to switch up the set in the middle of the show. That kind of thing starts to happen. At the very end of the tour we’re going to be playing six shows in a row and Durham is our last one, so by then, we’ll be super tight.
The film for the song “Big Time” was inspired by a dream. Do you keep a dream journal?
I started to, recently, actually. I used to have a lot of really vivid dreams, so whenever I [do], I write them down. Last year, I did the three-pages-a-day thing. This time I’m kind of doing it as soon as I wake up, trying to write whatever it is down.
Who are some of the artists you found yourself returning to while writing Big Time?
Stevie Nicks, Big Star, Lucinda Williams. Dolly Parton. I listened to a lot of Jeannie C. Riley and a lot of outlaw country, here and there. Townes Van Zandt, Tucker Zimmerman, Mickey Newbury. That part of country that’s like, country-folk—it’s not really folk, but it’s sort of folky [laughs]. I listened to a lot of George Harrison, too. It’s a mixture of those kinds of things. Every now and then I go back and forth with a Neil Young revival—get obsessed and listen to all the records again.
That’s a long list—how do you hold all those influences in your head while you’re writing?
I’m not trying to write exactly like those people, but I was just kind of like, “How do I do my version of this mixture of things?”
I had already written “All the Good Times” in 2017, but I didn’t put it on any record—it just didn’t fit. So I knew I at least had that one. And then I wrote “Dream Thing” and “Right Now.” And once you write three or four, you’re like, “OK, I think I can try to write some more like this.” And “Big Time” was kind of a joke with my partner at the time—we wanted to make a country song. A lot of the writing process for me, especially if I’m trying something new, is wondering if something is a song when I’m not sure if something is a song yet. And then after I take some time away from
it, here I am. Once I’m writing the verses [sometimes] I’ll flip them or I’ll change where the verses happen, or I’ll take two lines and put them at the top. It feels like you’re completing a puzzle, in that mode.
What was it like doing the voiceover for Karen Dalton’s journals in the documentary about her?
They didn’t show me the film before I did it, so I was just trying to be as intimate as possible. There are parts of [the journals] that I related to, but it was so long ago— it took a few years before it was finished. But it was a fun project and it was really fun doing a cover for the Light in the Attic edition—that was for the movie; they made a record.
In so much of the early aughts, in the Joanna Newsom era of singing, people were influenced by Karen’s vocal style. Between her and Barbara Dane, who is also a soulful, jazzy singer in the sixties, I definitely got a lot of peripheral influence without even realizing it. I remember being really protective in the early days of writing and putting out music and not wanting to be compared to anything. At this point, if people like it, they like it, and if they think it sounds like something, that’s fine. But I think that’s because I’ve made a series of records and established somewhat of my own style at this point. W
Want your kids to be active in the summer months? Send them to dance, fencing, horseback riding, or a science and nature summer camp. Want them to practice the arts or learn a new skill? There’s cooking, visual and performing arts, and music summer camps available, too. Whatever your child’s interests, and whatever summer camp your family chooses, one thing is certain: the memories kids make while learning, playing, and adventuring at camp stay with them for a lifetime.
American Dance Festival Summer Camps
ADF
Location: Durham, NC
Ages: 6-17 years
Contact: americandancefestival.org/about-the-studios
919-797-2871
jscullythurston@americandancefestival.org
ArtsCenter ArtsCamp 2023
Location: Carrboro
Ages: Rising K-9th graders
Contact: artscenterlive.org/youth/artscamp_2023
(919) 929.2787
Blue Skies of Mapleview LLC Horse Camp
Blue Skies of Mapleview
Location: Hillsborough
Ages: 8-17 years
Contact: blueskiesmapleview.us dpmblueskies@hotmail.com
919-933-1444
Broadreach Adventures
Locations: Caribbean, Red Sea, Bali, Bonaire, Fiji, and Curacao, Costa Rica, Ecuador and the Bahamas
Ages: 12-18 years
Contact: gobroadreach.com brhq@gobroadreach.com
Camp Shelanu
Jewish For Good
Location: Durham
Ages: Rising K-8th graders
Contact: jewishforgood.org/camp camp@jewishforgood.org
Carolina Friends School Summer Programs
Carolina Friends School
Location: Durham
Ages: 4-18 years
Contact: cfsnc.org/extended-learning/summer-programs extendedlearning@cfsnc.org
Circle City Supper Club Cooking Camp
Location: Pittsboro/Siler City
Ages: 7+ years
Contact: circlecitysupperclub.com hello@circlecitysupperclub.com
DAC Visual + Performing Arts Camps
Durham Arts Council
Location: Durham
Ages: Rising K-17 years
Contact: durhamarts.org/dac-camps
Contact: gardens.duke.edu/learn/camp gardenseducation@duke.edu
iWalk the Eno Science and Nature Camp
Eno River Association
Location:
Ages:
Contact: enoriver.org/features/iwalk-the-eno blobfishactivityhub.com/camps/program/412
Eno River Field Station
Eno River Association
Location: Hillsborough
Ages: 12-15 years
Contact: enoriver.org/features/eno-river-field-station blobfishactivityhub.com/camps/program/413
Farm & Wilderness Camps
Locations: Plymouth, VT and Mt. Holly, VT
Ages: 4-17 years
Contact: farmandwilderness.org
Forge Fencing Summer Camps
Location: Durham
Ages: 7 years to adult
Contact: forgefencing.com/camps info@forgefencing.com
Glazed Expectations
Location: Carrboro
Ages: 5-12 years
Contact: glazedexpectations.com susannah@glazedexpectations.com
Kidzu Summer Camp
Kidzu Children’s Museum
Location: Chapel Hill
Ages: 4-8 years
Contact: kidzuchildrensmuseum.org/summer-camps camp@kidzuchildrensmuseum.org
Kramden Institute Camps
Location: Durham
Ages: Rising 3rd-12th graders
Contact: kramden.org/camps camps@kramden.org
(919) 293-1133
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
Contact: naturalsciences.org/summer-camps
Over The Moon
Location:
Ages: Rising K-4th graders
Contact: overthemoonplay.com/summer-camps camps@overthemoonplay.com
Piedmont Wildlife Center
Locations: Durham, Chapel Hill and Raleigh
Ages: 5-12 years
Contact: piedmontwildlifecenter.org camp@piedmontwildlifecenter.org
Playmakers Summer Youth Conservatory
Playmakers Repertory Company
Location: Chapel Hill
Ages: Middle and High Schoolers
Contact: playmakersrep.org/education-and-outreach/summer-youth-programs syc@unc.edu
Schoolhouse of Wonder Summer Camps
Locations: Durham, Wake, and Orange Counties
Ages: 5-17 years
Contact: SchoolHouseOfWonder.org
schoolhouse@schoolhouseofwonder.org
(919) 477-2116
School of Rock Chapel Hill Summer Camps
School of Rock
Location: Chapel Hill
Ages: Rising 4th-12th graders
Contact: schoolofrock.com/locations/chapelhill/music-camps
Sisters’ Voices Summer Camps
Location: Chapel Hill
Ages: Rising 3rd-10th graders
Contact: sistersvoices.org/summer-camp leandra@sistersvoices.org
TNVLC Spring Break IMPACT Camp
The Triangle Nonprofit & Volunteer Leadership Center
Location: Durham
Ages: 9th-12th graders
Contact: thevolunteercenter.org/IMPACT thevolunteercenter.questionpro.com/SBimpact23 jenneca@tnvlc.onmicrosoft.com
919-321-6943
The Triangle Nonprofit & Volunteer Leadership Center
thevolunteercenter.questionpro.com/SBimpact23
TNVLC Model United Nations
The Triangle Nonprofit & Volunteer Leadership Center
Location:
Ages: Rising 9th-12th graders
Contact: thevolunteercenter.org/Model-un-week
thevolunteercenter.questionpro.com/Summer2023
jenneca@tnvlc.onmicrosoft.com
919-321-6943
TNVLC Civic Engagement Leadership Institute
The Triangle Nonprofit & Volunteer Leadership Center
Location: Durham
Ages: ising 10th-12th graders
Contact: thevolunteercenter.org/celi thevolunteercenter.questionpro.com/Summer2023
jenneca@tnvlc.onmicrosoft.com
919-321-6943
Two Sisters Adventure Company
Location: Durham
Ages: 6-18 years
Contact: twosistersadventure.com/camps connect@twosistersadventure.com
USA Ninja Challenge
Location: Durham
Ages: 6-11 years
Contact: ninjadurham.com durham@usaninjachallenge.com
Woodcrest Farm and Forge
Location: Hillsborough
Ages: 5-16 years
Contact: woodcrestfarmnc.com/summer-camps
YMCA Camp Kanata
Location: Wake Forest
Ages: 6-15 years
Contact: campkanata.org
CampKanata@campkanata.org
(919) 556-2661
existential anxieties with more prescient concerns about the state of our world and nation.
“O little child / You will never know a world / That lets you forget / What you’ve been,” Bickford intones on “Born Outside,” contemplating the digital footprints that cling to us in this modern age as acoustic guitar and organ slink before blossoming into a patient full-band rollick. “When I was a boy / I really thought I would be / Relieved to find out / How the story ends.”
Shortly thereafter, Bickford laments that he lived “to see a demagogue / finally get the keys to the United States” and that “we had this coming.”
Scivic Rivers is filled with such verses that poignantly weigh near-term concerns of family and society against the arc of time and history.
“The last thing I want to do / Is file another field piece / About what it means / To raise a human being.”
These words start the last song on the first album by Scivic Rivers (and the seventh album from deep-thinking Durham songwriter Randy Bickford, who adopted the moniker after releasing two 2010s albums as Brice Randall Bickford and a handful before that as the Strugglers).
With all due respect: the album very much is a field piece about raising a human being—but it’s also much more than that. Scivic Rivers connects the threads of a songwriter becoming a father as he loses his own father to lung cancer, mulling the amount to which we grow with each generation against the way our patterns can often seem to just go on repeating—“a child is always on the way” is the persistent refrain of “Instruction After the Fact,” the aforementioned closer.
Set to folk-rock that runs the gamut from epic and somber to energetic and danceable (captured with immersive clarity with help from local producer Scott Solter), Bickford’s latest connects these looming
“Shenandoah Granite” observes, “You can be scared / And bored at the same time / For the civilized / It’s hard to feel otherwise.”
The opening “High Season” finds Bickford thinking about how “The sea is close / As close as you can get to eternity / It goes on / Churning bodies” as he lies sprawled out on the beach with “other bored voices” around him.
Appraising a newly built overpass “with the boy as a lens” on “Blood Vessel,” he notes with a grave double meaning that you can take the interstate “all the way / To the end of the West.”
The music on those songs remains elegantly nervy and elemental even as it trips through varying shades of rock, Americana, and disco.
Bound by the yearning of Bickford’s honeyed and hypnotic baritone, Scivic Rivers ponders questions that are big, unknowable, and universal with arrangements that are consistently immersive and engaging. This is an album that doesn’t pretend to have the answers, but it might make you feel less alone. —J.L.
In many ways, The Veldt is a spot-on reincarnation of a classic psychedelic rock band. They’re named after a sci-fi story by Ray Bradbury. They favor long album titles that resemble the lysergic musings of Terence McKenna. Their pedalboards overfloweth, turning plain old electric guitar signals into a celestial roar.
At the same time, you would never mistake them for a period artifact or even a simple pastiche. After all, few classic psych-rock records have such acute realworld song titles as “Slave Ship Serenade” and “Requiem for Emmett Till,” and fewer still contain Sneaker Pimps–style downtempo electronics, a sky-stomping cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “Check Out Your Mind,” or an interpolation of the haunting hook from Mobb Deep’s “Get Away.”
Yet all of this can be found on The Veldt’s first full-length album since they reformed circa 2016. It follows a string of rejuvenated EPs from twin brothers Daniel and Danny Chavis, who grew up in Raleigh, fused dream-pop and soul in the golden age of Chapel Hill indie, and
went on to have a major-label adventure in New York that bequeathed us the 1994 classic Afrodisiac, which Pitchfork enshrined as one of the 50 best shoegaze records of all time.
Now with bassist and programmer Nakao Hayato, keyboardist Micah Gaugh, and drummer Dan Milligan, Daniel’s soaring yet desolate singing and chopping rhythm guitar and Danny’s combustible leads are in fine form, captured in a potent recording that balances foursquare brawn and baroque detail. The heaviest songs have the glazed power of neo-psych bands like The Jesus and Mary Chaim, but it’s tempered by the furtive catchiness of Echo and the Bunnymen and activated by the revolutionary energy of Parliament.
And check out those two alt-rock beauties in the middle, “Sweeter” and “Walk with the Spirits”—reminders of how cunningly The Veldt always toyed with mainstream success even while buffeting it with their contrarian conviction. Their references may be classic and global, but these are true American originals. —B.H. W
award throughout
The
Nominate your favorite Wake County bar, veterinarian, bookshop, museum—whatever it may be, there are over 100 categories in which you can profess your favorite Wake County treasures. Have no fear: Durham and Orange/Chatham Counties will have their own nominations soon.
ESCAZÚ 936 N. Blount Street, Raleigh | escazuchocolates.co
As Valentine’s Day approaches, the inventive chocolatiers at Escazú are kicking into high gear, making as many truffles, chocolate bars, and specialty confections as they can.
The North Raleigh boutique chocolate store—a finalist in INDY Week’s “Best Of” contest at least three years running—is known for its handmade, small-batch chocolate, including rich ice cream and varieties of spiced hot chocolate traditional in Mexico, Spain, and other countries around the world. The store, which opened in 2008, is named after a region in Costa Rica where some of the beans used by the shop are grown.
The shop’s busiest time of year is, of course, the week before Valentine’s Day, when customers flock to the door to buy sweets for their sweethearts. In one week, Escazú sells three times the amount of chocolate they do during any other month save December, says co-owner Danielle Centeno.
“We try to get ahead as much as we can,” she says. “There’s a lot of things that we can stock up, but a lot of our confections are [also] fresh. We don’t use preservatives, so it makes a little bit harder.”
After the Christmas rush, Centeno and her business partner Tiana Young don’t have much time to prepare for Valentine’s Day. They’ve been making chocolate nonstop since January.
“It will be very busy here starting [this] week,” Young says. “Valentine’s is a procrastinator’s holiday.”
INDY Week caught up with Young and Centeno in early February, while they were still hard at work, to talk about the business and art of making chocolate.
INDY WEEK: Escazú makes chocolate from scratch, starting with the cocoa bean. How does that work?
YOUNG: The first step in the process is to hand-sort the beans. They come in big, 120-pound bags. You go through them one by one, and we’re looking for anything that isn’t a good bean. It might be a flat bean or a moldy bean or a buggy bean or [even] a rock or a nut or a bolt.
Once we have all the good beans, they get roasted. We have an antique ball roaster. It looks like a giant eyeball that turns over a little open flame. [The beans] roast for about three hours, give or take, depending on the origin and the temperature and humidity. Then they’ll come out and cool.
Then [the beans] go through a process called winnowing. We have a machine that will crack the beans and drop them down through a series of sifters to separate out the papery shell of the bean, which we call a husk, from the meaty interior, which is the nib. The nibs will then go into our grinders with some percentage of sugar and maybe cocoa butter, depending on the type of chocolate we’re making. It’ll grind for three to four days and at the end of that, we’ll pour it out and it will be chocolate.
We store them in big untempered blocks and they’ll age for a little bit to help their flavors round out and kind of come together. Then it goes into ice cream or turns into confections or bars or hot chocolate.
CENTENO: Once the beans come out of the grinder, the flavors are very bright. If you let it sit for a while, the flavors kind of come into harmony.
CENTENO: For the bars and the confections, you temper and mold [the chocolate]. The tempering process aligns the sugar and the fat crystals [so they’re] so, so small. That’s what gives you the shine and the snap, what we know as chocolate.
On this side, you can see the million molds that we have right now. Anything you see [in the shop] that is shiny with color, that is colored cocoa butter. When the chocolate goes in with cocoa butter, it just wants to adhere to it, because it belongs to chocolate.
YOUNG: We hand-paint [the molds] with a brush or an airbrush.
CENTENO: [Then] you ladle [the chocolate] into a mold, shake out the air bubbles. You let it set just enough so that you have a shell, and then you dump [the rest of the chocolate]. Those shells are going to be filled with ganache or with caramel or whatever we use for the filling.
INDY WEEK: What kinds of chocolate do you make?
CENTENO: [The different kinds of chocolate] mostly refers to the percentage. We make a 65 percent blend of beans from different origins. We pick those beans based on [whether they’ll] pair well with everything. We use our blend to make all of our confections … [ones with] lavender or raspberry or alcohol. So it has to be delicious, but not too loud about its own flavors.
With a blend it’s also a little bit easier to have it taste the most consistent from batch to batch. But even if you have the exact same beans, it’s still going to vary, because every harvest always feels different.
INDY WEEK: How does the harvest affect the flavor of chocolate?
CENTENO: People don’t really see chocolate as an agricultural product that changes. Like strawberries, you [might] get them last summer and they were delicious, but this summer it rains too much or there’s not enough sun, so … they’re not going to be sweet enough. The flavor of chocolate depends on the bean, because you can have beans that are a little bit more fruit-forward, maybe a little tobacco, maybe a little dried cherries. Then you can have others that are more fudgy and nutty.
YOUNG: Mass chocolate producers overroast their beans and add a lot of additives to make it taste super-duper consistent. They don’t care about the quality of the bean itself, because they’re going to make sure that they standardize whatever they’re getting to taste [the same]. We work with the fact that it’s an agricultural product. It changes and has beautiful and intricate flavors that you can preserve. Just like wines can taste really different, single-origin chocolate can taste really different from one bean to the other.
INDY WEEK: What is your day-to-day like?
CENTENO: We try to keep production a little loose. We change it a lot. [So one week], instead of your Pinella lime confection being dark green, it’s gonna be light green. A lot of customers come here and expect the same collection, or they’re like, “Why can’t my box have a guide?” Because we change them literally all the time. Every single box that goes out is completely different. It keeps us creative and able to play around, as opposed to just being machines and producing the same thing all the time. Even if we’re really busy, there’s still a little bit of room to create.
YOUNG: And to use your intuition. What do people enjoy? What do we enjoy? If we were just stuck in this box of making the same 20 flavors over and over again … then it would start getting boring and all of those great ideas would go to waste. That’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to taste things and bring you ideas and flavors and textures. W
In the intimate side chapel at Ridge Road Baptist Church in Raleigh, an unlikely figure steps onstage and speaks.
“My name is Asher Lev,” he begins. “I am an observant Jew. A Hasid.”
A moment passes as he calmly assesses us with an artist’s eye. Then he adds, “And yes, of course: observant Jews do not paint crucifixions.”
Those familiar with the works of Chaim Potok will immediately recognize the opening to his best-selling autobiographical novel from the 1970s, in Aggregate Theatre’s current production of My Name Is Asher Lev. But why is it playing in a Baptist church this weekend—and a Jewish cultural center in Durham next week?
The interfaith production is the centerpiece of Ridge Road’s Mosaic Festival, a yearly exploration of art and religion including music, panel discussions, and a curated tour at the North Carolina Museum of Art. The band Chatham Rabbits and novelist Clyde Edgerton headlined last year’s festival.
“This neighborhood is passionate about the arts,” says Trey Davis, the pastor at Ridge Road Baptist Church. “Art brings people from many different ages, incomes, backgrounds, and ethnicities together. When it’s done right, I like to think that faith can do that as well.”
When he challenged Matthew Hager, Aggregate’s founder, to stage a show on art and faith, Hager recalled a powerful production of My Name Is Asher Lev that he saw off-Broadway in 2015. The title character was the same age as the audience Hager’s company is trying to reach: young professionals in their mid-twenties-to-thirties, many of whom feel that local theaters aren’t telling their stories.
Potok’s protagonist, a child growing up in a neighborhood patterned on the ChabadLubavitch Hasidic community in Brooklyn in the 1940s and ’50s, struggles in a conflict between his family, community, faith, and art, which ultimately discloses the truth of his own experiences with all of these.
When the church approved the production, Hager reached out to Marshall Botvinick, a rising young director in the region who grew up in a Lubavitcher community. An all-Jewish cast performs the drama.
“It was very important to them to not produce this piece in a silo,” says Jack Reitz, director for engagement at Durham’s Jewish for Good, which is co-producing the show. “One of the first things Marshall did was connect with experts in Jewish culture in the field.”
“We wanted people to be able to trust that we’re telling the story well, and doing it right,” Hager says.
Hager realizes he also has to counter the stigma that has associated political conservative extremism with the Baptist faith: “‘How could they possibly welcome viewpoints that aren’t fundamentalist or Christian into their space?’”
“But all Baptists are not those awful people who are making our laws,” Hager notes. “There are spaces at Ridge Road and within this community that value other voices, other viewpoints, and other religions.”
During and after Asher’s opening monologue, actor Liam Yates’s character coolly navigates the chambers of the past, nimbly threading between the present and past as he leads us through a potential minefield of memories. Though Aaron Posner’s adaptation of Potok’s richer novel sometimes only skirts the life events that shape the young artist, actor Rebecca Bossen (in designer
Jane Caradale’s pitch-perfect period costumes) ably channels the anxieties and grief of a Jewish wife and mother coping with depression in an age before its effects were well understood. Ryan Madanick digs with gusto into the roles of Asher’s uncomprehending political activist father, artistic mentor Jacob Kahn, and the discerning rebbe, the community’s spiritual leader.
Ultimately Asher’s art is caught between the rebbe’s injunction to do no harm and Kahn’s one aesthetic dictum: do not lie. Sometimes, the truth hurts.
In My Name Is Asher Lev, if a child’s gifts—and his knowledge of a dysfunctional family’s secrets—are not acknowledged and respected, he will redouble, deepen, and amplify his efforts to communicate them. When made as public as they are here, in the words of Leonard Cohen, private lives will suddenly explode—and a reckoning long deferred comes immediately due.
In a number of cultures, chalk, rice powder, and white paint have been used to denote the presence of the dead. In Butoh dance and Day of the Dead commemorations, the color denotes a connection to spirits.
Appropriately enough, the color is also hard to control: it goes everywhere and can be very hard to take off. In Mlima’s Tale, whose lyrical production closes this weekend at Burning Coal, it is the dead who mark the living in white. After the title
character, one of the last big-tusk bull elephants to survive the illegal ivory trade in Kenya, is finally felled by a poacher’s poisoned spear, Mlima roams the planet, to face each person responsible for his death.
There is no shortage of theatrical poetry in this superior work, as rising director Ana Radulescu assembles a top-flight design team to match equally accomplished actors on stage. Christopher Popowich’s nuanced lighting and Emma Hasselback’s deep and ambient soundscape merge the natural world with unnatural insights, as set designer Xinuan Li’s oversized tusk reaches for the rafters of the Burning Coal space. Though it hides actor Preston Campbell from different parts of the audience at first, it then literally opens and unfolds the tale of Mlima’s trek across Africa and the ocean, as he witnesses—and marks—corrupt and complicit government agents, shippers, artisans, and, finally, consumers.
Emerging actor Ada Chang, young stage veteran Khalil LeSaldo, and Sean “Ickye” Delgado-Cruz impress across a broad range of supporting characters. But Campbell anchors the work, synthesizing Radulescu’s direction and Willie Hinton’s African-dance-based choreography to marvelously embody the easy authority of a monarch among elephants, the starkness of his death pains, and the fluid force of his movements as a spirit determined not only to know and see his killers but mark them, permanently. Highly recommended. W
An interfaith production of My Name is Asher Lev tells a story of spiritual turmoil, while Burning Coal’s Mlima’s Tale tackles a different kind of reckoning.
Big Gay Wednesdays
Wed, Feb. 8, 9 p.m. The Station, Carrboro.
Queer Country Night Wed, Feb. 8, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Widespread Panic SOLD OUT. Feb. 9-11, various times. DPAC, Durham.
Big Gigantic $33. Thurs, Feb. 9, 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.
George Shingleton $10. Thurs, Feb. 9, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Mol Sullivan / Jenny Besetzt Thurs, Feb. 9, 7 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
The Stews $15. Thurs, Feb. 9, 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
Hamlet $20+. Jan. 25–Feb. 12, various times. PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill.
Mlima’s Tale $20+. Jan. 26–Feb. 12, various times. Burning Coal Theatre Company, Raleigh.
Carolina Ballet: Grieg Concerto $40+. Feb. 2-19, various times. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.
My Name Is Asher
Lev $25. Feb. 3-12, various times. Ridge Road Baptist Church, Raleigh.
Dreamgirls $23+. Feb. 7-12, various times. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.
Dancing with the Stars Live! $50+. Wed, Feb. 8, 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
Nick Swardson: Make Joke from Face Tour $38+. Thurs, Feb. 9, 7:30 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.
Best of Enemies $23. Feb. 10-26, various times. Umstead Park UCC, Raleigh.
Demetri Martin: The Joke Machine Tour $40+. Fri, Feb. 10, 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.
Rouge: A Cirque and Dance Cabaret $42+. Fri, Feb. 10, 8 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh. The Book of Mormon $50+. Feb. 14-19, various times. DPAC, Durham.
Warren Zeiders
SOLD OUT. Thurs, Feb. 9, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
Far Too Jones $23. Feb. 10 and 11, 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
REVOLUTION: The Music of the Beatles—a Symphonic Experience $53+. Feb. 10 and 11, various times. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.
10 String Symphony / Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagno $15. Fri, Feb. 10, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Cantus Vocal Ensemble $10+. Fri, Feb. 10, 8 p.m. Baldwin Auditorium, Durham.
Ellis Paul $18. Fri, Feb. 10, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Kathleen Edwards $25. Fri, Feb. 10, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
Live Jazz with Simon Dunson and Kurt Stracener Fri, Feb. 10, 7:30 p.m. The Oak House, Durham.
Thrio $20+. Fri, Feb. 10, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.
Timeshares / All Away Lou / Long Relief / Worthington’s Law $12. Fri, Feb. 10, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Angel Olsen SOLD OUT. Sat, Feb. 11, 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.
Angela Bingham and Friends: “Do You Miss New York?” $25. Sat, Feb. 11, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.
Deep 6: A Tribute to Pearl Jam $10. Sat, Feb. 11, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Kimbra $24. Sat, Feb. 11, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
Liminal Space Sat, Feb. 11, 8 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.
Scivic Rivers / Quetico $15. Sat, Feb. 11, 8 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.
Shallow Cuts
Presents: SHALLOWR Sat, Feb. 11, 9 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
Show Me the Body $25. Sat, Feb. 11, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Speed Stick $10. Sat, Feb. 11, 9 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Yarn/Wire $10+. Sat, Feb. 11, 8 p.m. Baldwin Auditorium, Durham.
The Gibson Brothers $18. Sun, Feb. 12, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Hans Condor $10. Sun, Feb. 12, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Valenprines Show: A Night of John Prine Covers $12. Sun, Feb. 12, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Goon $12. Mon, Feb. 13, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
STRFKR SOLD OUT. Mon, Feb. 13, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
CxffeeBlack to Africa: Screening & Filmmaker Q&A Fri, Feb. 10, 7 p.m. Hayti Heritage Center, Durham.
Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice $10. Fri, Feb. 10, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.
22nd Annual Animation Show of Shows $6. Sun, Feb. 12, 2 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.
Lisa Cupolo: Have Mercy on Us Thurs, Feb. 9, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
Sadeqa Johnson: The House of Eve Mon, Feb. 13, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
James Ponti: City Spies: City of the Dead Tues, Feb. 14, 5:30 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzles page” at the bottom of our webpage.
720 Ninth Street, Durham, NC 27705
Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–7 | Sunday 10–6
© Puzzles by Pappocom
this week’s puzzle level:
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
“puzzles page”.
Best of luck, and have fun! www.sudoku.com
RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER
To
