Cookbook author and Food Waste Feast co-founder Mei Li gives kitchen scraps a second life. by gabi mendick, p. 20 waste notwAsTe Raleigh September 21, 2022 SPECIALSECTIONAD 2022 Durham:PrideNCGuide P.12
2 September 21, 2022 INDYweek.com Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill VOL. 39 NO. 38 COVER Photo by Brett Villena | Design by Nicole Pajor Moore Correction: In a story last week about the 287(g) program, we wrote that Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio was sentenced to prison for making illegal arrests. In fact, he was pardoned by President Trump the day before he was scheduled to be sentenced. PUBLISHER John Hurld EDITORIAL Editor in Chief Jane Porter Managing Editor Geoff West Arts & Culture Editor Sarah Edwards Staff Writers Jasmine Gallup Lena ThomasiGellerMcDonald Copy Editor Iza Wojciechowska INDY Week | indyweek.com P.O. Box 1772 • Durham, N.C. 27702 919-695-4848 EMAIL ADDRESSES first initial[no space]last name@indyweek.com WE MADE THIS Interns Nathan Hopkins, Lia Salvatierra Contributors Madeline Crone, Grant Golden, Spencer Griffith, Lucas Hubbard, Brian Howe, Lewis Kendall, Kyesha Jennings, Glenn McDonald, Nick McGregor, Gabi Mendick, Dan Ruccia, Rachel Simon, Harris Wheless CREATIVE Creative Director Nicole Pajor Moore Graphic Designer Jon Fuller Staff Photographer Brett Villena Contents © 2022 ZM INDY, LLC All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced without permission. ADVERTISING Publisher John Hurld Sales Digital Director & Classifieds Mathias Marchington CIRCULATION Berry Media Group ADVERTISING SALES Durhamadvertising@indyweek.com 919-286-1972 Classifieds 919-286-6642 CONTENTS THE REGULARS 3 Backtalk | 15 Minutes 28 Culture Calendar 4 Op-ed | Drawn out 6NEWS As tensions mount over free speech on campus, UNC faculty members pass a resolution BY JOE KILLIAN 8 Misinformation around voting machines is proliferating in North Carolina, and mistrust in government is growing accordingly. BY LYNN BONNER 10 A new study shows a link between greenspaces and lower crime. BY THOMASI MCDONALD ARTS & CULTURE 20 Cary cookbook author and Food Waste Feast founder Mei Li is on a mission to repurpose kitchen scraps. BY GABI MENDICK 22 At East Durham Haitian restaurant Pierro ToGo, the magic is all in the marinade. BY LENA GELLER 24 Ahead of her Cat's Cradle concert, firebrand Amanda Shires talks poetry, reproductive rights, and a Nashville that needs to change. BY SARAH EDWARDS 26 In her latest memoir, Frances Mayes's travels take her from the Triangle to Tuscany, and back again. BY SHELBI POLK flor performs at Cat's Cradle Friday, Sept. 23. (see calendar, page 28.) PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT'S CRADLE
“Hell yeah. Knock em down!!!” wrote commenter @GRETCHN0
“Yep … that sounds about right for those evangel ical, trump worshiping nut cases,” wrote commenter JESÚS GUTIÉRREZ
When did you become involved in local Pride?
What does it look like to be a part of this family offstage?
COURTESYPHOTOOFTHESUBJECT
Durham
“Wow! Great read. The beauty of karma. #Salute,” wrote commenter @JIMMYFREE_
CABKTALK
“And the Nobel prize award goes to …” wrote com menter @ALVAHORTON
“Don’t need to read it, I disagree with her positions without getting into family issues,” wrote commenter TOM MOYNIHAN.
INDYweek.com September 21, 2022 3
Also last week, for the web, McDonald wrote about Sandy Smith, a congressional candidate who has been accused of domestic abuse by her daughter and ex-husbands. Readers on Facebook had thoughts about the story and Smith’s candidacy.
Last week, Thomasi McDonald wrote about the mayor of Enfield, Mondale Robinson, who personally tore down a Confederate statue in his hometown and received threats, allegedly from the KKK, as a result. Readers on Instagram had lots of
and making sure that Durham isn’t like other places where there’s tension between the families. We want to see everyone rise and have a good time.
The House of Coxx exists because there was only one show happening when it was the time for us to consider getting started. There was a hole in the market, if you will. Now there’s so many more drag performers in turn, and you’ve got shows popping up virtually as well. Back when the Mothership used to be open in Durham, there was a show called Ship Shows; some performers just moved back to the area and then they’re a part of drag families. But we’ve been working on connecting
Local drag queen and reenvisioner of Pride Durham: NC
15 MINUTES
“This man is a hero and a role model for our chil dren. We need more like him!” wrote commenter @HECKER.EMILYJILL
I mean, do you know what it looks like to be in a family? It looks like that. There are days that we all are cuddled up on the couch watching a movie. And there are other days where we’re having really intense conversations because we’ve heard each other’s daily. We’re a family. Thing about this family is that we don’t give up on each other. You’re able to connect and reignite. But because we’re a family, we know that we’re gonna love each other no matter what. And it’s really magical to watch that and to go and do fun things and, you know, we have a road trip coming up.
praise for Robinson. WANT TO SEE YOUR NAME IN BOLD? indyweek.com backtalk@indyweek.com @INDYWeekNC @indyweek
“That’s cute that they think this will mat ter to republican voters,” wrote commenter MATT CUSKELLY
Is there any aspect of upcoming Pride Durham: NC you want to highlight?
BY LIA SALVATIERRA backtalk@indyweek.com
Yeah, I really want to point to the evening events. Everyone knows about the parade and festival. But we are taking over two different event venues that are adjacent to each other, a night party, one is a dance party at the Fruit and the other is a grown folks party at Suite Four. You can go back and forth between the two different spaces, but they are technically two different vibes in two adjacent buildings. And I just really want to promote this night party because it’s only the second time Pride has put on an official night party. So I want to lift that one up. W
Vivica C. Coxx
“GOP: party of ‘family’ except when it comes to the truth,” wrote commenter JAY DEE YUU.
What does the community of drag families look like in Durham and the larger state?
Smith was never convicted and denies all of the allegations against her. We have more reporting on Smith and the allegations on our website this week.
I grew up here, and my first Pride was when I was in high school. It was NC Pride, which is what Durham Pride is now. NC Pride was the predecessor to Pride Durham: NC. And I moved back after college to get my master’s at NC State in 2007, and then I moved to Durham in 2008. Yeah, and I, of course, attended Pride basically every year after I moved back. In 2018 NC Pride announced that it was canceled after receiving a lot of feedback and scrutiny. I said, you know, “Why? Y’all can quit, but that doesn’t mean Pride has to stop.” So I contacted the city and I contacted the LGBTQ Center of Durham—I was working at Duke at the time—and so I contacted the center and I said, “If I pulled this off, if I can make Pride happen, we have 90 days to do it, do you all support this and are you willing to make it a program of the LGBTQ Center of Durham?” Everyone said yes, and so essentially it went from being privately owned and operated, meaning all of the money went to an individual, to being affiliated with a nonprofit to fund the services of a community center and social services agency. All of that went down in 2018.
How can the elections of Bush or Trump (and the Supreme Court judges they’ve appointed) be seen as a worthwhile tradeoff for an opportunity to “make a state ment” by voting Green at the state and national levels?
In those local races any citizen can get on the ballot. A local Green Party can build its base and its reputation from the ground up. Can build a bench of skilled candidates and campaign workers over time. All with out spending vast resources in getting ballot access for state and national races. Races that can cause U.S. Senate candi date Cheri Beasley to lose a close election, forTheexample.response to my advice to these local Greens was always the same: “It’s only at the state and national levels that we can make real change.”
Frank Hyman is a Durham resident and authored the first living wage ordi nance in North Carolina. Find his essays at bluecollarcomeback.com.
“How can the elections of Bush or Trump be seen as a ‘makeopportunitytradeoffworthwhileforantoastatement?’”
BY FRANK HYMAN backtalk@indyweek.com
Yes, on some issues, that’s true. But how good is your argument when the “real change” that your efforts bring is to help Republicans win elections? W
O P - E D
4 September 21, 2022 INDYweek.com
he North Carolina ballot in Novem ber will include Green Party candi dates for U.S. Senate and NC Senate. If you dread the thought of Republicans taking either of those seats, I encour age you to forgo casting your ballots for these Green candidates.
And in 2016, if voters in Pennsylva nia, Wisconsin, and Michigan had voted for Hillary Clinton instead of the Green Party’s Jill Stein, Trump would not have become president.
On two occasions activists have tried to start a Green Party chapter in my home town of Durham. Each time I encouraged them to put their worthwhile efforts into running candidates in nonpartisan races like city council, school board, and even conservation district.
ONWARDUT BY STEVE DAUGHERTY Love the ? Support the businesses that support us... Shop local! RECYCLE THIS PAPER
This Fall, Don’t Go Green
Given that statement, you may be sur prised to know that I’ve felt an affinity for green parties since their early ’80s origin in Germany. As a former organic farmer, I’m pro-environment. As someone who’s always made a living with my hands, I’m pro-worker and pro-union. As someone whose first political role at 18 was helping a candidate against the original Dixiecrat, Strom Thurmond, I’ve always supported marginalized people.
But when Green Party candidate Ralph Nader pulled almost 3 percent of the vote in 2000 and tipped the scales in favor of Republican George W. Bush, none of those causes were helped.
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A Green Party vote in the mid-terms only helps Republicans.
INDYweek.com September 21, 2022 5 A pay-what-you-can cafe. 919-307-8914 | W Hargett St #50, Raleigh, NC 27601 Come visit us and join our 2020 Coffee Club unlimited coffee, tea, & iced coffee for the year A Place at the Table provides community and good food for all regardless of means. We are serving everyone. We believe that all people deserve dignity to eat in a restaurant and have a healthy, affordable meal. Wherever you may come from, you are welcome to dine with us. We hope you will.
The Chicago Principles, crafted at the University of Chicago in 2014, affirm free expression as essential to
university culture. Dozens of colleges, universities, and student and faculty groups have adopted them, including the UNC-Chapel Hill Faculty Council in 2018.
the trustees wrote in their resolution of support.
In the absence of an official statement from UNC, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health released its own about the ruling’s impacts on the day it wasChapman,announced.ashead of the faculty, issued her own state ment. She later said she had a dream she had been fired for doing so.
As Policy Watch reported in July, many people at UNC-Chapel Hill felt frustrated by the university’s silence about the end of the constitutional right to abortion, even as other major colleges and universities issued statements.
The report “further acknowledges ‘a heavy presumption against the university taking collective action or express ing opinions on the political and social issues of the day,’”
This month, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Faculty Council passed a resolution affirming the right of faculty members to speak freely and the university’s duty to protect their speech.
Speaking Truth to Power
UNC-Chapel Hill faculty members pass a resolution as tensions continue over free speech.
But the principles are not without controversy. Political conservatives, many who believe right-wing speech and ideology are suppressed in academia, support the princi ples. Some educators believe they preserve free, open, and rigorous debate on campuses. Yet others say they fail to address some of the thorniest issues about free expres sion on campus and can be used to justify ignoring or curtailing student activism.
“[Faculty members] should be encouraged to provide thought leadership, to be public scholars when their work gives them meaningful insight,” said Mimi Chapman, a professor in the School of Social Work, during the meet ing. “This is what faculty at a great research university does. They weigh in. They share their knowledge and expe rience. We shouldn’t be intimidated into hiding our light under the proverbial bushel.”
In adopting the Kalven report, the UNC Board of Trustees said it “recognizes that the neutrality of the University on social and political issues ‘arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.’”
Had the UNC Board of Trustees’ resolution been in place in 2018, when students toppled the Silent Sam Confederate monument—and some system leaders insist ed on re-erecting it—university leaders could have felt constrained from publicly commenting on several aspects of the controversy: on the statue’s meaning to Black stu dents and faculty, on the propriety of having such a mon ument on campus, on the contentious (and ultimately scrapped) deal the UNC System struck with the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
BY JOE KILLIAN backtalk@indyweek.com
Political appointees on the UNC Board of Governors have targeted academic centers whose work they oppose. They have allegedly meddled in faculty hiring decisions for political reasons. And they have exacted reprisals against faculty members who speak publicly on political contro versies of the day.
Far more controversial is the Kalven report, a product of the tumultuous political environment on campuses in the late 1960s. Few colleges or universities have adopted the conclusions of the report. Its critics at UNC System schools say it’s easy to see why: the report emphasiz es that a university should stay neutral on controversial political issues.
Now that the trustees adopted both the principles and the report, it’s unclear what university leaders and faculty members can say about current controversies, such as the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade
6 September 21, 2022 INDYweek.com N E W S Chapel Hill
aculty members at UNC-Chapel Hill have often spo ken their minds—but in some cases, they have done so at their own peril.
UNC’s Old Well PHOTO BY JADE WILSON
The faculty resolution comes after the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees adopted both the Chicago Principles and the “Kalven Committee Report on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action” in late July.
F
Gerhardt said it is part of a professor’s job to both educate in the classroom and help educate the public, such as through media interviews and court testimony. But to protect themselves from challeng es about whether they should speak on a subject, faculty members should make it clear they aren’t spokespeople for their institutions—even if it is obvious they are speaking to an issue firmly within their area of expertise.
• A person was recruited to the univer sity but has since found the curric ulum they were brought in to teach has been “put on ice” to avoid political controversy.
Professorsaid. Eric Muller, a colleague of Ger hardt’s in the law school, said it seems illogical for faculty members to have to make that distinction when speaking as subject matter experts.
But if asked to explain something about abortion law, for example, Muller said it seems odd to have to make the distinction.
INDYweek.com September 21, 2022 7
“I cannot tell you how much hate mail I got after I testified in the 2019 impeach ment hearings of Donald Trump,” Ger hardt said. “Enough to warrant police protection.”Theuniversity helped him navigate the difficulties with some alumni who called for him to be fired, Gerhardt said, but he
In her statement about the Roe v. Wade reversal, Chapman was careful to say she was speaking only as an individual, not a representative of the university. That sort of disclaimer may be increasingly neces sary, a legal expert told the Faculty Coun cil last week, as professors and instructors struggle to preserve their ability to speak as subject experts but without being seen as speaking for the university itself.
• A junior faculty member, excited about a book they have coming out, now worries it will anger some peo ple, including “some quarters of the power structure.” They wonder what that might mean for tenure, promo tion, and even their personal safety.
“Sometimessaid. even the power doesn’t like to hear it,” he said. “But I think that’s partly why we’re here. Otherwise we will not be able to advance knowledge, criti cal thinking, or improve the world in any shape or form.” W
“Public expression on matters of local, regional, national, and international importance is a core component of the jobs of many members of the faculty and must not be suppressed,” the resolution read. “Faculty members should be entitled to indicate their university affiliation in all expression related to their research, teaching, and service, so long as they do not indicate that they speak for the Uni versity as an institution. The University and its leaders must actively and pub licly advocate for and defend the rights of faculty members to speak and write on all matters within the ambit of their research, teaching, and service.”
“Through this process I was alerted that faculty were getting, at best, mixed mes sages about their ability to speak out on their research and scholarship as pertains to issues of the day,” Chapman said.
Faculty members under pressure
“It seems to me that if I post a restau rant review, make a political donation, or speak on behalf of a candidate, that has got to be me as Eric and not as a law pro fessor at UNC,” Muller said.
Michael Gerhardt, a professor at the UNC School of Law and a nationally rec
Gerhardt understands that tension well. In 1998 he testified in then president Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings. He was called to do so again in 2019 during the impeachment proceedings against then president Donald Trump.
“These days it’s really hard to find a sub ject that won’t irritate somebody,” Ger hardt
In June, after the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) voted to condemn the UNC System for political interference, Chapman held a series of listening sessions with faculty members.
“There is confusion about what con stitutes political activity, which may be curtailed when using university time or resources, versus speaking about issues that have become politicized,” Chapman said. “These are very different things. Any thing can become politicized. That doesn’t mean, if I have expertise or relevant prac tice experience in an area, I shouldn’t speak about that.”
Part of the faculty’s—and the universi ty’s—mission is speaking truth to power, Gerhardt
Among the stories Chapman shared, while preserving faculty member anonym ity, were the following:
As government employees, it’s trickier. It is constitutional, for example, for an enti ty that provides funding to a professor or department to place conditions on that money that could silence the recipients on controversial issues.
This story was originally published online at NC Policy Watch.
“Anything can become politicized. That doesn’t mean, if I have expertise or relevant speakexperiencepracticeinanarea,Ishouldn’taboutthat.”
What she heard from more than 50 faculty members tended to back up the AAUP’s concerns that the political envi ronment within the UNC System threat ened academic freedom, chilled speech, and perpetuated systemic racism.
“I am not prone to anxiety dreams,” Chapman said.
ognized constitutional law scholar, spoke to faculty at last week’s meeting about the tension between freedom of speech and the university’s concerns over who rep resents the institution.
didn’t initially feel much public support from the Nonetheless,university.he said, he knew he was protected by the U.S. Constitution.
“It’s not that I’m speaking on behalf of the University of North Carolina at Chap el Hill,” Muller said. “I’m just doing my job. And so it seems to me it would be an odd thing for me to have the affirmative obli gation, when I’m doing my job, to say I’m not speaking on behalf of or represent ing the institution. I don’t do that in the classroom. I don’t get up and say, ‘I want everybody to know that this is just us, I’m not speaking to you about Roe v. Wade on behalf of the university. I don’t do that in myTheresearch.”resolution ultimately adopted by the Faculty Council did reflect Gerhardt’s distinctions about professors speaking for themselves versus the institution. But the council also emphasized that the universi ty must defend its faculty members’ rights to do this essential part of their jobs.
• Another person’s website was taken down without discussion or consul tation after someone from outside the campus complained to a state legislator.
As private citizens, faculty members have a First Amendment right to speak on politically controversial issues of the day, Gerhardt said.
that took on the question about electron ic tampering back in April.
“Were the machines in Surry Coun ty connected to the internet, or do they have cell or internet capability?” he asked in April, invoking the names of nationally known election deniers, including ardent Trump backer My Pillow Guy Mike Lindell.
Surry County GOP chairman Keith Sent er told the Surry elections director she would lose her job or have her pay cut after she refused demands for access to voting equipment, Reuters reported.
Senter’ssaid.appearances at commissioners’ meetings to rail about elections continued through the summer.
Clements, who lost his university job last year because he refused to wear a mask in class, urged Surry to hand-count ballots.
That didn’t end the rumors.
Commissioners’ meetings in Surry County are a showcase of election conspiracy theories where distrust of the machines that count ballots plays a starring role.
MisinformationMachine
8 September 21, 2022 INDYweek.com N E W S North Carolina
Election deniers have champions in the stateMemberslegislature.ofthe far-right Freedom Caucus in the North Carolina House announced at a press conference last October that they intended to inspect Durham County voting machines for devices that would enable internet connections. That investigation didn’t happen after the state Board of Elections director said unauthorized peo ple can’t have access to voting machines.
In the lead-up to October, correspon dence between the office of Rep. Keith Kid well (R—79th District), chairman of the Freedom Caucus, and the Board of Elec tions in the summer of 2021 shows that caucus members had been trying to find a way to open active machines months before they announced they were going into Durham. Elections board staff had
PHOTO VIA UNSPLASH
In the counties, demands to scrap machines for hand-counting are intersect ing with the distrust of voting equipment.
“The only way you will know is to do a forensic analysis of the machines,” Senter
Dominion Voting Systems is suing for mer Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for her wild claims about its machines. In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Powell’s lawyers wrote last year that “no reasonable per
BY LYNN BONNER backtalk@indyweek.com
The county devoted nearly an entire May meeting to election deniers that featured David Clements, a former assistant profes sor at New Mexico State University who travels the country preaching about fraud.
Senter did not return phone calls this week, but he’s a regular at “open forum” portions of commissioners’ meetings.
he northwestern North Carolina coun ty on the Virginia border is probably best known as the home of Mount Airy, the birthplace of Andy Griffith and the inspiration for Mayberry in his eponymous television show from the 1960s. This year, Surry County has been a stop on the circuit for prominent election deniers who false ly maintain that votes were engineered to have President Joe Biden win in 2020.
T
No North Carolina county uses Domin ion equipment, yet Republicans have demanded to look inside the machines that get deployed to voting sites to search for modems or chips.
Goins could not be reached by tele phone this week.
At the meeting’s end, Surry board chair man Bill Goins told the crowd that com missioners were reviewing residents’ rec ommendations, but concerns about fraud should go to the local and state boards of elections. Someone in the crowd yelled, “Pontius Pilate.”
Among the pages on the state Board of Elections website about cybersecurity, elections security, and misinformation is a page on voting machine security that attempts to knock down rumors about modem-embedded machines. It includes a statement from Trump himself released ahead of a trip to North Carolina last sum mer praising his victory in the state “with out a fraudulent outcome.”
“North Carolina voting equipment does not contain modem chips, and state law prohibits voting machines from being con nected wirelessly to any other device,” says this myth-buster answer.
David H. Diamont, a former state house member from Surry, said the search for election fraud reflects a deep distrust in government.“Theyjust don’t trust government any more,” Diamont said in an interview this week. “It’s a disease. It’s scary. It is so dif ferent from what it was when I was in politics.”MostNorth Carolina voters mark paper ballots that are fed into tabulators. With former president Donald Trump’s lies about widespread voter fraud came asser tions of tabulator tampering via internet connections. These beliefs have taken hold even in places like Surry, where Trump won 75 percent of the vote.
son would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.”
The state Board of Elections runs a feature on its website and social media accounts called “Mythbuster Mondays”
Johnston County elections board chair man Gordon Woodruff said there are
Nonetheless, interest in hand-counting is taking root. It’s become a theme for the half dozen or so people who regularly attended Surry commissioners’ meetings this summer to complain about elections.
A “Trusted Elections” tour that plans to stop in each of the state’s 14 congressio nal districts devotes time in each 90-min ute town hall for an explanation on how voting machines work.
“There are no mechanisms in place to send or receive data to or from any modem on certified voting equipment,” elections board spokesman Patrick Gannon told Kid well in a June 8, 2021, email in answer to a question about modem capabilities.
At the Johnston County courthouse on August 31, Brad Reaves, an expert in computer system privacy at NC State University, told the audience that none of the state’s voting machines can be hacked because they’re never connected to a network.
One resident told Surry commissioners that schoolchildren should be given the task of counting ballots as part of civics instruction starting in sixth grade.
The correspondence was obtained through a public records request.
Recent recounts have found errors of one or two votes, representing a tiny frac tion of 1 percent, he said. And the handeye audits that the state requires for selected precincts confirm the machines’ accuracy, he said.
INDYweek.com September 21, 2022 9
“And state law prohibits any county from using a modem connection in voting equipment,” Gannon added.
Among the questions: Why can’t a coun ty hand-count if that’s what the communi ty wants to do?
far too many ballots to count by hand. About 111,000 people voted in Johnston County in 2020.
“It’s lack of information, or understand ing, or confidence in technology,” Orr said. “I don’t know what you do about that, but we’re trying.” W
been meeting with caucus members about elections processes and trying to convince them that none of the machines used in North Carolina can access the internet.
This story was originally published online at NC Policy Watch. This story is part of a project called Democracy Day, in which newsrooms across the country are shining a light on threats to democracy.
“They just don’t differentaanymore.governmenttrustIt’sdisease.It’sscary.Itissofromwhatitwas.”
The only real “vocal pushback” so far came in New Bern, where a video substi tuted for a live election security expert. People in the audience called it “propagan da” and “lies,” Orr said.
The Carter Center, a nonprofit based in Atlanta, is sponsor ing the tour. Bob Orr, a former Republican NC Supreme Court justice, and former Charlotte mayor Jen nifer Roberts are leading the effort.
Mitch Kokai, senior political analyst at the John Locke Foundation, moderated the session and asked panelists questions the audience submitted. The local elections officials got the challenging ones.
In an interview this week, Orr said elections officials have appreciated the chance to talk about what they do. Par ticipants aren’t there to challenge peo ple’s beliefs, he said, but to let audiences hear from the local people who run elec tions about how it all works.Some of the same questions get asked at every stop, Orr said. He thinks mem bers of groups chal lenging the elections go to the town halls to raise them.
In addition to com puter experts, the meetings feature county elections direc tors, Democratic and Republican elections lawyers, and Demo cratic and Republican members of coun ty elections boards.
“The machines are so good, it’s really not a major issue,” Woodruff said.
A new study finds urban green spaces in cities like Durham and Raleigh linked to a lower risk of crime.
Still, the researchers concluded that green spaces lower crime risks because in an overwhelming majority of neigh borhoods in close proximity to the ecosystems, residents reported an improved overall quality of life, increased physical activity, improved mental health, and a greater
The researchers also considered median household income along with “diversity” and “disadvantage” indexes.
O
The disadvantage index takes into account four variables; the percentage of residents and families within a census block—or neighborhood—who are unemployed, living below the poverty level, have less than a high school education, or are in homes where women are the head of the household with children under the age of 18.
“I don’t think nothing is going to change unless God him self comes out here,” said the woman, who declined to give her name. “It’s a good idea though. We need more lights. They come and bust the lights out,” she added about law breakers in the neighborhood.
A McDougald Terrace resident who lives across the street from the park spoke with the INDY this week. She was not optimistic about the study’s findings and doubted wheth er more green space in the community could deter crime.
n a sunny midafternoon this week, Hillside Park’s heavy tree canopy offered a welcome respite from the day’s rising temperatures.
Larson says the diversity index directly accounted for race and was based on the proportion of the population in each of the 14 racial and ethnic groups recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau.
It’s all good in the neighborhood at the moment, but Hill side Park, which sits in the southern shadow of Durham’s downtown district, has been the scene of at least two vio lent fatal crimes in recent years.
sense of community.
A small park on Sima Avenue that’s across from the apartment complex is dotted with a scattering of trees, along with a picnic shelter and brightly colored playground equipment, but save for a ring of trees that encircles the complex, there is no tree covering to offer shade from an unrelenting sun for folks sitting outside on their porches. The sun’s heat bounces off concrete, brick, and asphalt surfaces and settles into the McDougald residents’ reality like an unwelcome guest.
PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
The year before, police charged Michael Anthony Person, 55, with the stabbing death of Alicia Elder, 50, at the park.
The scholars made their findings public after collect ing data from more than 62,000 census blocks in cities across the nation with populations of over 100,000 and the respective cities’ overall crime rates.
“Higher diversity scores meant a great variety of races were present in an area,” he explains in the email.
Urban green spaces are “loosely defined as any type of plant-covered environment (public or private) located with in a city,” according to the authors of the study, “Urban Green Space Linked to Lower Crime Risk across 301 Major U.S. Cities,” which was published August 24 in CITIES: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning
In late May 2019, police charged 18-year-old Antonio Stan back with murder following the shooting death of Darren Dixon, a 22-year-old man who was found dead in the gazebo at the park in the 1300 block of South Roxboro Street.
“We found these results to be very compelling,” Larson says in an email he wrote to the INDY this week. “It’s pretty remarkable that, while controlling for many other factors
Three Black teens puffed on a blunt underneath the park’s picnic shelter.
That’s two fatalities too many, but it’s also revealing.
Last month, a team of scholars found that urban green spaces like Hillside Park were linked to a lower crime risk in hundreds of major cities across the United States, including Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham.
The 12-page study was authored by a team of research ers that include L.R. Larson, an associate professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Manage ment at NC State University.
Elder and Dixon were the sole victims of fatal violent crimes at the park since 2010.
“We didn’t explore links between greenspace, diversity, and social disadvantage in this study, but other research has shown that communities of color and low-income com munities typically contain lower quality parks and reduced access to greenspace,” Larson writes.
On the other side of the coin, the researchers also sug gest that while urban green spaces can deter crime, the areas can also generate criminal activity by limiting “visi bility” and “reducing sightlines” that can “provide cover for criminals and illicit behavior in public spaces.”
10 September 21, 2022 INDYweek.com N E W S Durham Green Peace
Largely owing to gentrification and a housing inventory shortage, the traditionally Black community is becoming increasingly diversified. An older white woman walked her two small dogs around a sidewalk that encircles the park’s baseballMeanwhile,field. a shirtless Black man napping in the outfield let loose with a loud yawn.
that have been linked to crime in previous studies, urban greenspace displays such a strong and consistent inverse relationship with both violent and property crime risk in nearly 300 cities across the United States.”
Moreover, the study suggests that poorly maintained green spaces that are riddled with “overgrown vegetation and litter, can communicate a lack of oversight and attract criminalMaybeactivities.”thedearth of green space and tree coverings can help to explain why the highly racially segregated McDou gald Terrace public housing complex is consistently ranked as the most violence-prone community in the Bull City.
BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com
Hillside Park in Durham
The study published last month also offers a series of caveats. For starters, the researchers find that the “strongest posi tive predictor of violent crime within block groups was social disadvantage.” Moreover, although urban green spaces are linked to a near-across-the-board decrease in crime risks, the study determines that is not the case in Chicago, Detroit, and Newark.
Larson adds that “some of our research also seems to indicate that, by reducing temperatures and fostering more conducive spaces for outdoor activities during real ly hot weather, greenspaces might create environments that are actually more con ducive for potential criminals who would be less mobile and active under extreme heat
“Our work does not support the idea that vegetation in general is a cause of crime,” the study authors state. “Though such aspects as concealment or impaired visibil ity in specific urban locations might present unique challenges. They add later that the integration of urban green-space planning in urban crime prevention strategies “offers many potential advantages.”
“Proactive, urban greenspace-based approaches may be even more important following the COVID-19 pandemic, which has produced unprecedented challenges to mental health and social stability on a glob al scale,” the study authors state.
Racial segregation, Larson says, “often fuels social disadvantage, which is typically linked to crime.”
Indeed, the absence of tree canopies in low-income communities leads to higher temperatures that fuel high utility costs and a higher incidence of health-related issues, as the INDY has previously reported.
“We aren’t sure why that relationship didn’t hold in these cities, but all three are notorious for their high crime rates that seem to be impervious to many interven tions,” he states in the email. “It’s quite likely that other social and environmental factors that we didn’t account for in our analysis, might have a disproportionately larger influence in these cities.”
The researchers suggest that the three cities are outliers owing to “other social, eco nomic and cultural factors not accounted for in their study, including neighborhood dis investment and abandonment,” along with suffering from “greater amounts of vacant land” that communicate “a lack of care” while “offering settings for criminal activity.”
Trees, they say, are good for cities and their residents. They reduce air pollution, mitigate stormwater runoff, cool homes naturally, and generally improve the health of the ecosystem. Studies have found that trees reduce stress and brain fatigue and have been linked to lower levels of obesity and higher property values.
“In these three cities, greater urban greenspace was related to increased vio lent crime risk within neighborhoods,” the study authors state. And while Detroit had the highest mean violent crime risk and lowest median income of all cities, “Chicago and Newark did not rank as extreme on the median income spectrum.”
The study, which relied on spatial views of urban communities across the United States, also considers the impact of cli mate, noting that “further research is need ed on the role climate may play in the crime and greenspace dynamic beyond mean temperatures, considering especially the increased number of extreme heat events predicted in the future.”
“The short answer is, we don’t know,” Larson says. “Some studies suggest that climate change will lead to increased heat waves and more stress on resources and people that fuel higher levels of crime, war fare, and other types of violence. For exam ple, crime rates are always higher in the summer months. By helping to mitigate temperature (i.e., urban heat islands) and effects of climate change in cities, greens pace might provide additional crime-reduc ing benefits under these scenarios.”
Larson says the research team was more surprised that green space had such a strong and consistent influence on crime risk reduction in every other city in the country.
Theconditions.”studyconcludes by suggesting that crime in America’s urban green spaces, particularly in public parks, could be mit igated by applying the principles of pre vention law through the elements of envi ronmental design.
INDYweek.com September 21, 2022 11
So how big of a role will climate change play in future criminal activity?
The research, although compelling, is not surprising. Durham’s elected leaders, activists, and scholars in recent years have pointed to the benefits of more ver dant green spaces throughout the city, particularly trees.
In addition to a more positive and less controversial approach than more aggressive law enforcement models, the researchers say crime prevention strategies that utilize urban green spaces are preferable attempts to curb crime instead of increasing the num ber of arrests for low-level offenses.
“In fact,” Larson adds, “in our analysis we found that greenspace was a stronger cor relate of reduced crime risk than per capita police force in a city.” W
The researchers also surmise that the three cities’ “high degree of racial segregation might also lead to concentrations of violent crime.”
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been so successful that it will be the foundation of a cook book slated for release in June of next year.
At Mei Mei, the Lis’ solution to the challenge of food waste was to become more open-minded and creative with their menu items and recipes.
that the Lis began to notice the vast amount of food waste generated in restaurant operations—waste that made already slim restaurant margins even slimmer. Equipped with an MBA from University College London, Mei brought a business-minded perspective to the family endeavor.
Cookbook author and Food Waste Feast co-founder Mei Li gives kitchen scraps a second life.
“The things that you’re purchasing and spending tons of money on—if that’s going to the trash, you are wasting your money,” she says.
“There are lots of things that feel very big and unchange able,” Mei says. “Contributing to minimizing your food waste is something that we can do. And it’s not our sole respon sibility, but it feels good to do that for me. And I hope for other people too.”
F O O D & D R I N K
Mei mei means “little sister” in Mandarin.
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“There are people who just really like it from a cooking perspective. Let’s say you’ve got fresh herbs and you’re mak ing an herb oil or an herb sauce, or you’re taking your left over bread and making bread crumbs. You have more com ponents to work with,” says Mei, who recently turned 40 and moved to Cary with her husband and two kids in 2019.
Food Waste Feast co-founder Mei Li in her Cary kitchen
Research has shown that individuals are more likely to take incremental, tangible steps that have a real impact and allow them the satisfaction of knowing that their per sonal actions make a difference.
PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
Home cooks who are interested in trying something new might find that the challenge of minimizing food waste presents exciting opportunities for experimentation in the kitchen. This is where Food Waste Feast comes in, with the Lis guiding and educating readers through a multitude of creative ways to cut down on kitchen waste.
In 2012, Margaret—who goes by Mei—and Irene, along side their older brother, founded Mei Mei, a food truck in Boston. In 2013, the business expanded to a brick-andmortar restaurant and then, during the pandemic, evolved into a dumpling company.
Still, the actions of individuals do matter, as 31.9 percent of food brought into households goes to waste. There are many angles from which to engage people’s consciousness about food waste and find practical, sometimes creative ways to address the problem. One approach that grabs individuals’ attention and interest is the impact on their ownThefinances.Liswere initially attuned to the cost of food waste in their commercial kitchen at Mei Mei, but even within homes, individuals are estimated to spend thousands of dollars a year on food that they end up throwing out. With the rising cost of food due to inflation and other factors, that financial burden only grows.
The frustration of waste and the excitement and joy that grew out of addressing that frustration is what sparked Food Waste Feast. The sisters hit a chord: the website has
FOOD WASTE FEAST foodwastefeast.com
argaret and Irene Li are on a mission to reduce food waste—and they’re bringing eaters along for the ride. The sisters are the cofounders of the project Food Waste Feast, a website, blog, and educational resource that has found a cult following around the country and between Margaret’s home base in Cary and Irene’s home base in Boston.
Waste Not
20 September 21, 2022 INDYweek.com
In the food production system, there are a multitude of points at which food waste can occur—and on a grand scale, it does, at each and every point, from farm to distrib utor, distributor to market, market to refrigerator, refriger ator to trash can. Much of that food never even makes it to a plate, let alone into a stomach. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), between 30 and 40 percent of the food supply in the United States is wast ed. There are many factors at play, and, even for the most environmentally conscious among us, “the fate of climate change doesn’t rest on whether you put your carrot tops in the compost,” Mei says.
BY GABI MENDICK food@indyweek.com
It was at Mei Mei, while producing food on a large scale,
“The nickname for me came about as a child when I was the little sister in the family,” Mei explains. “When my older brother came up with the idea for the food truck, he asked my sister Irene and I to join him, and we thought the name Mei Mei was a great way to honor the family vibe behind the business.”
“One of the things that we did at our food truck and restaurant was try to design dishes that used up all parts of [an ingredient], whether it’s kale with holes in it that would go into our pesto or using cilantro stems in curry,” Mei explains. “It really helped our bottom line and also made for more interesting and delicious dishes.”
Just
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Perfectly Good Food recipes are more expansive: a recipe may call for two cups of chopped root vegetables rather than gold en beets. One of the book’s philosophies is to think about ingredients in categories like grains and leafy greens. Ingredients within these categories can often be swapped for similar results, and that adaptability can help reduce waste and often make for more tasty, flexible, and personalized dishes.
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She describes another approach that individual consumers might take, a tech nique not only for convincing her kids to eat their fruits and veggies but also for contin uously transforming leftovers so that noth ing ends up in the trash.
Withsubstance.allofthese impacts and perspec tives in mind, Food Waste Feast’s next venture, their cookbook titled Perfectly Good Food, will take shape with a new approach to recipes.
“It might not be exactly the way it looks in that beautiful magazine cover,” Mei says, “but it’s gonna taste perfectly good.” W
A tremendous amount of natural resourc es and energy are expended in all aspects of food production, so for those who are passionate about fighting climate change, minimizing food waste plays an import ant role. Food production and transporta tion systems generate carbon dioxide, and when food is disposed of and enters land fills it releases methane, a potent green house gas that causes pollution and affects the climate detrimentally. According to the USDA, food waste makes up 24 percent of materials found in landfills, more than any other
“In writing our cookbook, thinking about the way that recipes are often written, you realize how it can be very limiting,” Mei says. She explains that shopping for and cooking recipes with long, specific ingredient lists means that home cooks often end up with leftover ingredients that sit on a shelf and expire or that they don’t know how to use up in another way.
When asked if there is any effort to reduce waste that goes over the top, Mei shares, “It all depends on what you think is weird. I will sometimes think my mom is going too far. I’m like, ‘You don’t need all these take out sauces.’ And then she’ll put together a chicken marinade from all her different takeout sauces and I’m like, ‘OK, that was really good.’”
“If they didn’t eat all of their apple slic es, I’ll put them in a bag, and that becomes their smoothie bag. I will keep it in the freezer and then I will make it into smooth ies. And if they don’t drink those smooth ies, I make it into popsicles and then I feed it to them again,” Mei explains. “I try to reincarnate things as much as possible.”
After graduating from college, Pierre spent nearly two decades climbing the restaurant industry food chain, work ing as a dishwasher at Wendy’s and a prep cook at Disney World before landing an executive chef job at the global hospitality company Aramark.
Most dishes at Pierro ToGo require at least a day of preparation. Every meat on the menu—chicken, pork, red snapper—is marinated in epis for at least 24 hours before it hits the pan, and side items get a similar treatment; pikliz, a pickled vegetable relish, steeps in a spicy vinegar brew for weeks before being portioned into ramekins and served alongside griot, a classic deep-fried pork shoulder entrée.
Secret Sauce
22 September 21, 2022 INDYweek.com
BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com
Though most dishes share the same seasoning, the menu is far from monotonous, with epis acting as an aromatic grout for a complex mosaic of tastes and textures.
At Pierro ToGo, the Triangle’s first Haitian restaurant, a little time to marinate is everything.
ing a remote job as a French translator to pay the bills. A few years later he met Joe Bushfan, a celebrity bodyguard turned renowned Durham hot dog vendor who had recently closed his eponymous East Durham diner and converted it into a rentable commercial kitchen called Joe’s Commissary.
When Pierro ToGo held its grand opening in April 2019, marking the launch of the first Haitian restaurant in the Triangle, Pierro knew that he’d picked a good location.
’ve never really had the desire to eat styrofoam, but last week, staring down at an empty, marinade-drenched to-go box, I faced an existential question: What would be harder to stomach, consuming this flavorful foam whole sale or letting all the marinade go to waste?
nation from his childhood nanny, a Haitian woman who cooked him food while his parents were at work.
“One day, I saw her pouring marinade over meat, and she put it in the fridge,” Pierre says. “I was like, ‘I’m hungry right now.’ And she’s like, ‘Oh, no, that’s for the next few days.’”
Then, like in a televised cooking show, she pulled out a tray of meat that had marinated overnight.
The marinade—a traditional Haitian seasoning base called epis that blends fresh herbs, vegetables, olive oil, and citrus juice—is the backbone of nearly every dish at Pierro ToGo, a Haitian eatery in East Durham that launched in early 2019 and, due to pandemic-era challenges, shuttered for more than two years before reopening two weeks ago.
I
As far as Haitian cuisine goes, epis is paramount, but like any good marinade, the mixture can only work half of the magic on its own. The other half, of course, comes from time.
Bushfan, who tells me he was drawn to Pierre’s ability to “open up people’s palates, minds, and hearts” through Haitian cuisine, decided to make Pierre an offer: if Pierre moved his catering operation to Joe’s Commissary, Bushfan would allow him to open his own restaurant in the facility’s overflow room.
The child of two Haitian immigrants, Pierre spent his early years in Toronto, Canada, and moved to Orlando, Flor ida, at 13. As a young teen, he dreamed of becoming an FBI agent, but his parents didn’t approve of this career path, he says. Instead, hoping to set him on a different track, his mother pulled him out of school one day and surprised him with a visit to a nearby culinary arts school.
Pierre had some reservations about working in Durham— he’d only ever heard negative things about the city, he says—but after Bushfan explained the history and trajec tory of East Durham and the area’s need for vibrant, com munity-oriented businesses, Pierre was sold.
Owner Jethro Pierre learned the importance of mari
In 2016, seeking a change of pace after losing his par ents and undergoing a painful divorce, Pierre moved to Raleigh and launched his own catering service while work
“I said, ‘There’s no way that this is the same Durham I’ve heard about,’” he says. “I’m talking about diversity: college students, police officers, people from the neighborhood. We had over 100 Haitians that came from all over. I was so shocked by the capacity of love that was shown. Right there, that’s when I fell in love with Durham.”
PIerro ToGo Owner Jethro Pierre
PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA R I N K
F O O D & D
PIERRO TOGO
“Within that first hour, I fell in love with the smell,” Pierre says. “The clacking of the pans on the fire, the gas—it just ignited something in me.”
2100 Angier Ave, Durham | pierrofoods.com
But it didn’t take long for the community to come to his aid, ordering food for small gatherings and outdoor events. With sup plemental income from his translator job, Pierre was able to make ends meet and hang tight. Two weeks ago, two and a half years after that initial opening, he finally found himself in a position to reopen the restaurant for indoor dining.
Because Pierro ToGo, which has a staff of five, shares its facility with a handful of other businesses—mostly food truck own ers who use the commissary kitchen for food prep—it faces some limitations. The restaurant only offers dine-in and takeout services Thursday through Saturday, with the rest of the week reserved for cater ing prep and other tenants. The overflow room, while generally reserved for the restaurant, is still part of a shared space, leaving little room for Pierre to hang his own
There’sdecorations.alsonosignage that indicates the existence of Pierro ToGo.
But when you know what to look for—a large brick building on the corner of Ang ier Avenue and Driver Street, equidistant from Rofhiwa Book Café and Ideal’s Sand wich and Grocery—the entrance is hard to miss, and when flipped for dinner ser vice, the space is charming, with chatter ing customers, four-tops draped in black tablecloths, and Haitian music playing through the speakers. With good com pany and a steaming plate of the griot, it’s hard to imagine a more fully rounded dining
“When COVID hit, everything stood still,” Pierre says. “I had to do an inventory as to how I felt. And I felt depressed. I felt sad. The business was not working. Nothing was going our way.”
Thoughcuisine.Pierre is excited about the future, he’s not in a rush. For now, it’s back to busi ness as usual, he says, and enjoying the moment. He’s happy to marinate in that for a little while. W
“Haitiansexperience.arerich people,” Pierre says. “And when I say rich, I’m not just speaking about money or assets. I’m talking about rich in knowledge and culture and love and connection with people. That’s what we offer at Pierro Pierre’sToGo.”next venture—which adds a third branch to his blanket company, Pier ro Foods—will be centered around educa tion, with free cooking classes offered to anyone who’s interested in Haitian culture and
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The restaurant picked up speed over the next few months, and by February 2020, both Pierro ToGo and Pierro Cater ing were going strong. We all know what happened next.
24 September 21, 2022 INDYweek.com
ver the phone, Amanda Shires—who is current ly on tour for her seventh solo album, Take It Like a Man , released on July 29—describes herself as a bit of a “word nerd.” That verbal attention shines through in the music—which is raw and vulnerable but burnished with a barn-burning edge. Idioms abound, but they’re taut and disciplined and rich with layers. Every word counts.
No. I’ve been thinking about that a lot and, you know, Garth Brooks said he’s for women’s rights and all that, and he didn’t say he was pro-choice but he also didn’t say he wasn’t, so I’m going to assume he’s pro-choice. There’s still only a representation of 16 percent of women in
Shires is a singer, songwriter, and fiddler with a Nash ville résumé that’s longer than Music Row. Beyond her seven solo albums, she’s played as a member of the Texas Playboys, Thrift Store Cowboys, and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit (Shires is also married to Isbell); has a Gram my under her belt; and is the founder of The Highwomen, an industry-bucking country music supergroup alongside Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, and Natalie Hemby.
O
BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com
There’s always a thing—not a role thing, but there’s always a “Dress like this and this is what happens,” “If your avatar is a cat you must be ugly,” you know? “If you don’t get into doing XYZ right, you won’t be successful.” Those same labels don’t apply to men.
Ahead of her stop at Cat’s Cradle on September 21, the INDY sat down with Shires to talk about poetry, reproductive rights, and vulnerability. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity; a longer ver sion is available online.
AMANDA SHIRES: The whole time I was talking to her, I kept waiting for somebody else to respond [to her questions]. I’ve gotten so used to staying up late listen ing to her talk.
The phrase “take it like a man”—what does that mean to you and why did it feel like a fitting album title?
Yeah, there are like 50 ways you can talk about it, and I think that’s sometimes what makes titles good, is when they’re broad enough but pointed enough to tie a collection together.
It’s also a comment on those folks who put women in boxes—like, “You’re a mom now, you’re a wife, these are what the rules are for those different roles”—when really, we’re unique individuals first and then occupy those roles as moms, wives, sisters, lovers, all that. It’s a comment, too, that we’re not just one thing.
Amanda Shires PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
country music right now, so there are not a lot of women who can say anything.
It sounds like it can also be an instruction: “If you’re going to listen to this, take it like a man.”
INDY WEEK: I just listened to your interview with Terry Gross, which is a high interview bar to follow.
Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro; Wednesday, Sep. 21, 2021, 7 p.m., $25-$28]
Amanda Shires talks reproductive rights, poetry, and the Nashville norms that needs to change.
I made that decision intentionally. I was making choices about what songs to keep on the record and I knew that if I kept certain songs on the record, certain questions would get asked.
A lot of the men close to me are pro-choice and still seem uncomfortable talking about it, and they’re not the ones with a platform, with something quote-unquote “to lose.”
Shires describes Take It Like a Man in unequivocally joyful terms, and there’s an electricity in her voice when she talks about her collaboration with Lawrence Rothman, whose production of the album gave space for Shires to be raw, assured, and free, all at once.
Generally, repressing feelings or emotions and thinking about it, I discovered that it actually takes more strength and courage to be vulnerable and say your feelings. But it also means “Here’s all this shit: good luck with it.” It’s a comment on being vulnerable, and if you don’t like it, go somewhere else. U S
IC
I do think it’s a shame that more men don’t say any thing. Kendrick’s up on stage talking about its importance, and yet the [country music] bros don’t say boo about any thing. And to that, I’d say, “Don’t support men who don’t support your rights.”
For me, I mean—I’m just a really bad liar, and as much as this world can be confusing and hard to give language to, I know that in whatever way I can help, I’m gonna do my best. As humans, we need each other to walk through this nebulous pain stuff so we can grow together, and it’s
Have you felt like you’ve been put into roles?
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Changemaker
AMANDA SHIRES
And knowing that they’re probably benefiting from it, too! More than shameful, it’s disgusting. And we need those people to say something. At one of the rallies I went to—and they said it way more eloquently than I’m about to—but they said, “The job for you fellas is to hold the line and protect the people out there fighting for their rights.”
There’s a lot of vulnerability in this album. How do you balance telling those stories and protecting yourself?
You’ve been very vocal about reproductive rights and recently called on people in the country music industry to be more vocal about these issues. Have you seen a shift?
uncomfortable, but I guess I just feel that if I can find language to help someone, I’m doing a good job.
For this album you had an abundance of material, right?
It really is, and I recommend it for everyone. If I could fix that for everyone, I would, but it kind of happened over time for me and I don’t know exactly what ori entation of the Rubik’s cube happened for me. But I’m glad it did. W
INDYweek.com September 21, 2022 25
I wanted to be better with words. I feel like I’m really good with them on the page but I haven’t gotten any better at them in conversation, you know. But yes, I just wanted the tools in the toolbox, you know; instead of it taking me an hour to figure out which preposition was right, I wanted to have a reason for my editing choices. And then when I got into it, it was really difficult and a lot of reading—I was getting ocular migraines! I was like, “How am I going to ever get done with this, this is crazy, who am I, I hate school?” It took me some time to finish it, but I had to be patient with myself. I’m a person that loves words and I love knowing the shade they can tint the page. Some could be bright or dazzling or even gloaming, which is a weird word.
You did an MFA in poetry at the Uni versity of Sewanee. What led you to pursue one and how did it change your songwriting?
That sounds like a life-changing switch to turn on—in your head or heart, or wherever that gets turned on.
Everyone’s marriage looks different to the individual, but I didn’t want folks to look at my marriage or anyone’s and think, “That’s what a good marriage is supposed to look like.” It’s hard for everyone, even in friendship. I don’t want anyone to think, “My marriage is a piece of shit because they still make lovey-dovey eyes at each other on stage.”
Yes. I think it was that because when I found joy in music again, it exploded and it exploded everywhere. I hadn’t felt joy in music in a long, long time, not since I was in the Texas Playboys band. Lawrence [Roth man] is just a joy to be around and ban ters and has fun in the studio. That’s not what everyone likes in the studio, but I like it. I wrote a song yesterday—when the joy is there, you get creativity. For a while, I was just making music, plotting a line to nothing land and having trouble keeping it happy and not feeling harmful. Now that I’ve figured out how to do that, I want to support everything that comes out—not that it’ll all be great, but it’ll be fun.
“It is the mystery of all houses,” Mayes says. “They keep kind of revealing their secrets. I thought we knew everything by now about this house, but now I wonder what else is lurking somewhere?”
Frances Mayes PHOTO COURTESY OF PENGUIN RANDOMHOUSE
[Crown Publishing; August 23]PAG E
FRANCES MAYES: A PLACE IN THE WORLD: FINDING THE MEANING OF HOME
Mayes takes pains to highlight the writ ing community she’s found: “I always used to say it was a gathering that hasn’t hap pened since the mid-19th century in Con cord, Massachusetts.” On our call, Mayes spends more time talking about her friends and writing community in Hillsborough than any house. Her writing group is “the gift of the past couple of decades,” and she laments the recent loss of her friend Michael Malone, a writer Mayes calls “one of our major, major people in Hillsborough.”
Mayes’s memoirs often drift between her own experiences in a place and her ideas of what a life before hers might have looked like, often prompted by the things she discovers plastered into her walls or buried by generations of gardeners.
“I always come home with a desire to work,” she says. “I want to get onto my proj ects right away. So the house is kind of like a cocoon—an extension of myself in that I can enter it and then start my projects.”
itself.It’s obvious from her work that travel, home, and writing are all intertwined in Mayes’s life, and during our conversation she eagerly expands on the intersections of these themes.
“I always think of myself as an undisci plined writer, but I look at all the books I’ve written and I realized that I do really get a lot done somehow,” she says one Septem ber morning when I call her on WhatsApp. At the time, she is in Cortona, Italy—her other home base besides Durham.
“The main one we found was formal cur tains painted all over the walls,” Mayes says. “I was happy that we were able to save a huge piece of that.”
accounts of local flora and fauna that build immersive, intimate looks at the places she loves and keep her work deep ly rooted in place.
In previous memoirs, she has shared the laborious details of updating an ancient Tuscan house for decades, and A Place in the World includes the beginning of a major project her Italian neighbors have been predicting since she bought the house: adding a pool. That project, a 17-month renovation that included the additions of a pool and bathroom, was recently completed, and Mayes looks for ward to a break. During the project, build ers discovered frescoes that had been hid den under plaster since long before Mayes took up residence in Bramasole.
Mayes has made a life of writing about both concepts. Her romantic 1996 memoir Under the Tuscan Sun, about buying and ren ovating a rickety but venerable Italian villa called Bramasole, kicked off a writing career that has continued with gusto into Mayes’s eighties. She’s written six books of poetry and three novels (“few,” she jokes; “some writers’ entire lives,” I say back). She has her byline on a cookbook and a “field guide to poetry.” Then there are the memoirs, about home, travel, and making a home in an unfa miliar place, which made her famous.
Her latest book, A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home, released on August 23, is a set of essays and medita tions on the concept of home, rife with
“I love the Southern landscape,” Mayes says. “All the extremities of the weather, and the quicksand, and the cyclones, and the alli gators … and just the drama and violence of the landscape and the beauty. It makes you love it even though it’s so flawed.”
Durham writer Frances Mayes has made a career of writing about her love of travel. In a new memoir, those travels reach from the Triangle to Tuscany, and back again.
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The introduction of A Place in the World opens with a description of the Eno River cutting through a field near Mayes’s recent ly sold Hillsborough home. Mayes and her husband moved to North Carolina “around 15 years ago” and spent 12 of those years settled into Chatwood, a sprawling, historic Hillsborough property, before selling it during the pandemic to downsize into Durham. But her longest home has been Bramasole, the house she has owned for 32 years in Corto na, a small Italian town of roughly 23,000.
“Houses have always been just about as much of an obsession for me [as travel],” says Mayes, 82. “It’s just the obsession slightly tips in the direction of the airport. My mother was obsessed with houses. I think it just rubbed off on me, particular ly because she never got the house she would dream of living in.”
rances Mayes has nearly equal affection for leaving for a trip and returning home.
Mayes’s place in that Southern land scape is Hillsborough, and I was enchant ed by her descriptions of it. She spends a long time sharing the history of the house and rose garden of an earlier Chatwood owner and takes readers for a walk around town, pointing out the homes of friends and artists along the way.
26 September 21, 2022 INDYweek.com
“I mean, that’s nothing in the scheme of things, but you know, it’s not running
“I didn’t plan it this way,” Mayes says, “but it has become my longest home.”
The surprises of renovation have become familiar to Mayes.
Her move to Durham has only added 15 minutes or so to her drive to friends’ houses.
literary allusions and lush sensory details, that reach from the Triangle to Tusca ny and back again. The collection cuts between Mayes’s childhood in Fitzgerald, Georgia, and her homes in North Carolina and Italy, but it isn’t limited to homes she’s actually inhabited. She writes about the homes of her remarkable friends, describes new-to-her cities that feel like home, and finishes with loose associations and liter ary musings about the word and concept
Sense of Place
Mayes’s memoirs are loaded with
BY SHELBI POLK arts@indyweek.com
Mayes is active enough on Insta gram to make real connections with strang ers online, some of whom later knock on her door. Tourists in Tuscany approach her in the town or leave notes at the Madonna built into her wall. After a local paper pub lished that she’d moved to North Carolina, a distant relative reached out.
Under the Tuscan Sun lived on the New York Times best sellers list for more than two and a half years, and the interna tional phenomenon the memoir and the movie (which starred Diane Lane) created has drawn people from all over the world.
“So that’s the joy of having an audience to me is that it’s not solitary,” she says. “It’s not an introverted act to write any more because it reaches people and they reach back to you, and there’s this kind of exchange that constantly happens that I reallyWhilelove.”she agrees that travel isn’t nearly as challenging or inconvenient as it used to be, especially compared to the early 20th-century memoirs she references, Mayes loves how many women she sees wandering Tuscany with a notebook. She can tell they’re on a quest, a kind of travel she understands and loves.
“I know these women are after some thing,” she says. “They’re not just sightsee ing. They’re here because they’re looking for something. To me, that’s the best kind of travel and the best motivation for trav el: because you want to grow. You want something to happen to you, you want to be changed. You want to be changed into something you are.”
INDYweek.com September 21, 2022 27 EVENTS Raleigh's Community Bookstore Register for Quail Ridge Books Events Series at www.quailridgebooks.com www.quailridgebooks.com • 919.828.1588 • North Hills 4209-100 Lassiter Mill Road, Raleigh, NC 27609 Offering FREE Media Mail shipping and contactless pickup! 9.27TUES 5:30PM Madison Lawson, The Registration 9.28WED 5PM John Patrick InvestiGators:Green,BraverandBoulder AGES 7+ THUR9.22 7PM Mike Duncan, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution 9.23FRI 7PM Rinker Buck, Life on the Mississippi: An Epic AdventureAmerican Get cultureyour x. Follow @INDYWeek on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for breaking news.
In A Place in the World, Mayes discusses the fallout of sharing a life so many peo ple loved. “It’s constant in my life that people who are reading my books are coming to my house,” she says. “That’s just a daily occurrence. And everyone thinks that would be awful, but it hasn’t been.” Her writing has impacted people who have in turn impacted her and last year brought visitors from Brazil, Poland, and“It’sHungary.sucha powerful feeling to realize something you write can go out and go around the world,” she says. “It’s profound forToday,me.”
into each other at the grocery store any more and stuff like that,” she says. “But I’m making—I will always make—a big attempt to keep in touch.”
And she’s not at all bothered that her vision of home in Tuscany has brought a bevy of tourists into the town: “I mostly see women with their journals and their novels and their sketch pads, and I think, ‘Oh, you’re so lucky. You’re going to dis cover something.’” W
CULTURE CALENDAR
S.G. Goodman $15. Wed, Sep. 21, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
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The Soul Rebels perform at Memorial Hall on Friday, September 23. PHOTO COURTESY OF MEMORIAL HALL.
The Soul Rebels $35. Fri, Sep. 23, 8 p.m. Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill.
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Please check with local venues for their health and safety protocols.
Sun, Sep. 25, 11 a.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.
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Danny Grewen and Griffanzo Mon, Sep. 26, 6 p.m. Imbibe, Chapel Hill.
North Carolina Jazz OrchestraRepertory $25. Tues, Sep. 27, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.
$22+. Thurs, Sep. 22, 7:30 p.m. Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill. $50+. Sep. 23-24, 8 p.m. Duke Energy Center for Raleigh.PerformingtheArts,
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The House Party: Friday on DancefloortheFri, Sep. 23, 10 p.m. The Station, Carrboro.
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Alice in Chains / Breaking Benjamin $30+. Tues, Sep. 27, 5:30 p.m. Coastal Credit Union Music Park, Raleigh.
IBMA RambleBluegrass $25+. Sep. 27-29, various times. Various downtown venues, Raleigh.
Wednesday $15. Thurs, Sep. 22, 9 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Peter Lamb and the Wolves $20. Fri, Sep. 23, 6:30 p.m. For Garden’s Sake, Durham.
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Megan Doss $5+. Wed, Sep. 21, 5:45 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.
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North ExhibitionPicturesSymphony:Carolinaatan
Le Weekend $10. Fri, Sep. 23, 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
The Breakfast Club $12. Sat, Sep. 24, 9 p.m. Theatre,LincolnRaleigh.
$93+. Sat, Sep. 24, 1 p.m. Coastal Credit Union Music Park, Raleigh.
Emma’s Revolution Benefit Concert $5+. Fri, Sep. 23, 7:30 Hill.Universalist,HillChurchCommunityp.m.ofChapelUnitarianChapel flor: The Future Shine Tour $20. Fri, Sep. 23, 7:30 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
Rinker Buck: Life on the Mississippi Fri, Sep. 23, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
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All Wigged Out: Screening and Music Event Sat, Sep. 24, 2 p.m. Raleigh.NCMA,
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The Play That Goes Wrong $30+. Sep. 14-25, various times. Theatre Raleigh, Raleigh.
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Sat, Sep. 23, 10 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.
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Sat, Sep. 23, 5 p.m. Durham Central Park, Durham.
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Michael Gutierrez:Keenan The Swill Thurs, Sep. 22, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
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Wed, Sep. 21, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill. Thurs, Sep. 22, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
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Carolina Ballet: Jerome Robbins’s The Concert $27+. Sep. 22-25, various times. Duke Energy Center for Raleigh.PerformingtheArts,
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30 September 21, 2022 INDYweek.com INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.com www.regulatorbookshop.com 720 Ninth Street, Durham, NC 27705 Hours: Monday–Friday 10–7 | Saturday & Sunday 10–6 In-Store CurbsideShoppingPickUp DISCOUNT CLUB FREE FOR EDUCATORSALL & HEALTHWORKERSCARE SERVINGWITH PRIDE SINCE 1976! If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages” at the bottom of our webpage. P U Z Z L E S su | do | ku © 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.” Best of luck, and have fun! www.sudoku.com this week’s puzzle level: 9.21.22solution to last week’s puzzle #17 2348 763 64 352 4276MEDIUM#18 419 653 8295 43 162 27 5986548 472613859932 695478123 318295764 246357981 731869245 859142376 124986537 563721498 987534612#19 #19 8562 63 841236897145 978541632 145263978 457319286 621485793 389672451 792138564 563924817 814756329#20 15 91 843195726 795426318 261387954 374219685 589764231 612538479 438952167 926871543 Page157643892 5of2530/10/2005
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Outdoor Counselor Job
Senior Data Engineer sought by LexisNexis USA in Raleigh, NC to add & maintain data flows into the LexisNexis Data Lake. Develop innovation, strategies, processes & best practices. Write stored procedures, functions, & ETL jobs. Minimum of Master’s or equiv in Comp Sci, Comp Engg, Info Tech, Electrical Engg or rltd + 3 yrs exp in job offered or rltd rqd. EE reports to LexisNexis USA office in Raleigh, NC but may telecommute from any location within US. Apply by mail to T. Hayward, RELX Inc; 1100 Alderman Dr, Alpharetta, GA 30005.
Seeking employees at Piedmont Wildlife Center to run our Homeschool and Afterschool programs. Have fun in nature. Work the days and hours that fit your schedule. To apply: Email a resume and cover letter to camp@piedmontwildlifecenter.org. Programs start in September. Applications accepted on a rolling basis. Hourly rates starting at $12.
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Senior Data Engineer
