Jasmine Gallup by Jasmine Gallup p.8As work on the children’s play plaza breaks ground, Dorothea Dix Park as a long dreamed of destination starts to take shape ParkPeople’sThe ParkPeople’s
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2 August 17, 2022 INDYweek.com When You’re Hot You’re Hot: Exhibit and Third Friday Reception Fri, Aug. 19, 6 p.m. 5 Points Gallery, Durham. IMAGE COURTESY OF 5 POINTS GALLERY Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill VOL. 39 NO. 33 COVER Design by Nicole Pajor Moore PUBLISHER John Hurld EDITORIAL Editor in Chief Jane Porter Arts & Culture Editor Sarah Edwards Managing Editor Geoff West 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 W E M A D E T H I S Interns Hannah Kaufman, Mari Fabian, Caryl Espinoza Jaen 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 4 Op-Ed | Drawn Out 17 Culture Calendar 5NEWS The NC Board of Elections is proposing new rules for elections observers' conduct at the polls. BY LYNN BONNER 6 How a group of genome sequencing research scientists at Duke guided the university's COVID-19 response. BY VIBHAV NANDAGIRI 8 With the groundbreaking of Dix Park's children's play plaza, dreams of the park are becoming a reality. BY JASMINE GALLUP 10 Durham commissioners hope the purchase of the old Boys and Girls Club in Hayti will address the dual issues of gun violence and gentrification. BY THOMASI MCDONALD ARTS & CULTURE 12 Ira David Wood III, Ira David Wood IV, and Evan Rachel Wood reunite for Theatre in the Park's adaptation of gripping family drama The Father. BY BYRON WOODS 14 Talking with Lucinda Williams about writing love songs, pushing buttons, and her newfound appreciation for Emily Dickinson. BY SARAH EDWARDS 16 Beloved local audio festival Audio Under the Stars took a pandemic pause. Now, it's entering a new chapter. BY SAM BERMAS-DAWES
Reader TIM MILLER had this to say via email: “Ahhh, ‘parental rights’ definition: What a small sub set of arrogant and ignorant parents/residents want taught to children to ensure they grow up to be just as arrogant and ignorant.” To spell it out bluntly, “parental rights” candidates are homophobic, transphobic, anti-vax, sciene-denying white supremacists! Don’t vote them onto the Wake County school board this fall.
You do community work in Durham to spread awareness about HIV prevention to Spanish-speaking residents. What inspired you to target this community?
Jose Romero, 30 AIDS care advocate and board member for the LGBTQ Center of Durham
CABKTALK
Tell me about the docuseries you’re a part of, Blind Angels.
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not only keep providers around sexual health but actually exposing how HIV- and AIDS-related work needs more resources. I was working for a CDC contract, and many of the staff working on sexual health and HIV have transferred to COVID, and so there was a lower number of bodies available to do this work. In North Carolina we see community members doing new, amazing things like drivethrough testing, where people can get tested in their cars for HIV and COVID on the same go. So we’ve seen people really trying to bring these health issues together. But, you know, the stigma is very real, and the stigma continues to shape how our community is able to show up. Blind Angels also highlights how minorities often bear the brunt when it comes to unequal access to HIV resources. Why do you think this is? The way funding for HIV is distributed is based on epidemiology—it’s just numbers and diagnoses. But sometimes, that doesn’t actually display the needs of community members. And minority communities tend to face the brunt of this— the funding isn’t there for organizations led by nonwhite folks, and there’s a lack of trust sometimes. We also know that there are other structural factors like hospital closures shaping the epidemic. There’s also anti-immigrant sentiment that comes up and many Black and brown folks, working-class folks, don’t have private health care. That creates a cycle where people aren’t able to thrive in the way they should. W Watch Blind Angels at cnn.com/blindangels. Read an extended interview at indyweek.com.
BY CARYL ESPINOZA JAEN backtalk@indyweek.com
“Are y’all being held hostage or blackmailed? Blink twice for help,” wrote Twitter commenter @plan_splaining, aka CAROLINE DWYER. “This is such a disturbingly one-sid ed promotion of hate and stupidity that I can only conclude you’ve been forced to publish it. Very disappointing.” ‘“Parental rights’ will be the excuse for defunding public education and preventing trans people from existing in pub lic. This article does not speak to the gravity of this situa tion,” wrote Twitter commenter @PLANNING_TROLL On Instagram, @SEANMOSHER had this to say about school board candidate Becky Lew-Hobbs: “Why are you giving this person a platform? She pro motes hatred & conspiracy theories. @indyweek you’re really dropping the ball here.” “A bunch of people with this ‘platform’ are running for school board in the next election. That’s why they are cover ing it, so we know who they are and can vote on what we see is right,” wrote Instagram commenter @KIMLOFTIS13 in response to @SEANMOSHER. “Thank you for writing and getting this story out there! EVERYONE these elections are the ones that directly effect our families. Please research and vote in the upcoming election.”
And here are some other thoughts on the piece: “Conservatives sinking their claws in local educa tion under the guise of ‘concern’ for children is nothing new but the current times make it even more insidi ous,” wrote commenter @HECKTHEWAKEFUL. “Wake County Public School System is the biggest in the state. If it is lost to such ideology, it will be grim.”
The Latinx community, the Spanish-speaking community, faces unique challenges. We have a lack of Spanish-speaking providers, a lack of hospitals that are culturally responsive. We see our community is also uninsured—most Latinx and Spanish-speaking folks don’t have a primary care provider, and many of us rely on our comrades, the corner store, or the corner pharmacy to get our health care. That shows that we depend on our community to take care of each other, and so this series is trying to shine a light on some of the ways we’ve been able to do that.
WANT TO SEE YOUR NAME IN BOLD? indyweek.com backtalk@indyweek.com @INDYWeekNC @indyweek Durham COURTESYPHOTOOFTHESUBJECT 15 MINUTES
Last week for print, Jasmine Gallup interviewed and wrote about conservative “parental rights” candidates who are trying to wrest control of the Wake County school board in the upcoming midterm elections. These candidates brought plenty of crazy and we gave it a good bit of space in the hopes that readers would come away with a critical understanding of what was reported. But some readers thought we shouldn’t have given these candidates a platform at all or should have pushed back against their disturbing views more forcefully in the story.
Blind Angels dives deep into how the South is one of the areas most impacted by the HIV epidemic, while also developing some of the best responses to keep our communities safe. In particular, our episode—episode 2 about North Carolina—was very special to me because North Carolina is a place where the first medications to combat HIV were developed and synthesized, at Research Triangle Park. Nevertheless, North Carolina and the South continue to have some of the highest rates of HIV diagnoses. Availability does not equal accessibility, and that is what this series is exploring. How do we make health, joy, accessible to our communities, to LGBTQI, two-spirit-plus communities and find ways of taking care of each other when we see that our community is so heavily under attack?
How has COVID-19 impacted the way you do outreach and community activism? The COVID-19 epidemic has changed some of the ways we’ve been able to show up for our community by creating other opportunities to
Clean Water Candidate
Last year, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data revealed North Caro linians with PFAS-contaminated tap water were more likely to have two or more chronic diseases than residents in the rest of the state. Last month, new research showed possible associations between PFAS blood contamination and deaths in the United States related to heart disease and cancer that is killing Americans every year at a similar rate to COVID-19. Wilm ington residents have PFAS contamination in their blood at two to three times above the national average. That’s why it’s so egregious that con gressman and U.S. Senate candidate Ted Budd has voted numerous times against bipartisan legislation that would help address PFAS contamination not just in Wilmington but all across North Carolina. In 2019, Ted Budd voted against an amend ment to the PFAS Action Act that would force dischargers to report PFAS releases into waterways and require the EPA to establish clear limitations on those releases. Last year, he voted against the PFAS Action Act of 2021, which would require the EPA to set a drinking water standard for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) with in two years, designate PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances and air pollut ants, set discharge limits of industrial releases of PFAS, prohibit unsafe inciner ation of PFAS wastes, and require com prehensive PFAS health testing. It defined PFAS in a way that won’t allow compa nies like Chemours to evade responsibili ty. It also provided $200 million annual ly to upgrade water infrastructure. This bill ultimately passed the House without his vote but stalled in the Senate, which is why who we send to the Senate this November matters so much. He voted against an amendment to the annual military spending bill that would olina congressional delegation are unwill ing to support their neighbors. We deserve a leader who loves this state enough to protect us from irresponsible corporations who continue to make billions while we go into medical debt and beg for mercy through GoFundMe accounts. We deserve justice and accountability. We deserve someone who understands what those things look like. This November, our tap water and our long-term health are on the ballot. We must elect Cheri Beasley and ensure voices in southeastern North Carolina are heard loud and clear. She is a clean water candidate and Clean Cape Fear fully endorses her work. W Emily Donovan is the cofounder of Clean Cape Fear. BY STEVE DAUGHERTY
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ONWARDUT
require national regulation of PFAS, strengthen disclosure requirements for PFAS manufacturers, like Chemours, pro vide PFAS exposure training to Depart ment of Defense medical providers, and mandate that the military comply with safe incineration standards for PFAS. Approving each one of these bills would bring us one step closer to the justice we seek and deserve. Just because PFAS exposures don’t impact his district as cat astrophically as they do ours does not mean he should turn his back on voting with compassion and mercy for his fel low North Carolinians—especially in our time of Votersneed.deserve the right to know what’s clearly at stake in this region. We’re not getting the help and resources we need, because some members of the North Car
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The Cape Fear River provides drinking water for over 1.5 million North Car olinians. It flows southeast for over 200 miles, passing by three major North Car olina cities before reaching Wilmington, which sits at the bottom of the river basin and collects drainage and runoff from more than 29 counties across the state. For the people of Wilmington, Bruns wick County, and parts of Pender County, the river is also our main source of drink ing water, and chemical companies like Chemours are getting away with polluting it, dumping large quantities of PFAS tox ins known as “forever chemicals” into the Cape Fear River. In June 2017, I cofounded Clean Cape Fear after learning that corporations were poisoning our community, and we have not stopped pushing for aggressive pro tections of our drinking water, air, soil, and food supply. Too many families worry about PFAS and other contamination in their water, and we must act urgently to address their needs. Clean Cape Fear is a grassroots communi ty group working to restore and protect our water quality as well as spotlight deficiencies in governmental regulations that adversely impact our right to clean water. We are not paid advocates. We are your neighbors, your friends, your family, and your coworkers. We are sons and daughters who know the dif ference between right and wrong. Five years ago we made a promise to fight irresponsible actions from companies like Chemours and hold our elected officials accountable. We are concerned residents who are tired of paying for water we don’t feel safe drinking. We are tired of seeing our bills go up. We are tired of government inac tion. We are tired of elected leaders who lack the courage to take a stand against corporate polluters like Chemours. Most importantly, we are tired of seeing our loved ones suffer, and we are not OK.
When it comes to keeping NC waterways safe from contamination from PFAS and other pollutants, Cheri Beasley is the clear choice for U.S. Senate. BY EMILY DONOVAN backtalk@indyweek.com
“State law specifically prohibits observers from elec tioneering at voting sites and from impeding the voting process or interfering with or communicating with voters. These proposed rules are designed to ensure observers comply with the law.” Election observers aren’t supposed to talk to voters or election workers, except for the chief judge. They sign up to work four-hour shifts. They are supposed to be in an area of the polling place where they can see and hear the interactions between poll workers and voters, but they aren’t allowed to enter a voting booth, try to look at bal lots, or take pictures. The new proposal says observers shouldn’t be close enough to documents to see confidential voter informa tion or ballots, must stay in a designated area, and can’t use doors designated for precinct officials or one-stop workers. Observers who create a disruption by walking in and out of a polling place repeatedly during a four-hour shift could be removed by the chief judge.
According to the survey, an observer got into an alterca tion with a voter in Alleghany County. Several observers in Davidson argued that they should be able to stand behind machines to watch people vote. Poll workers in Pasquotank wereNorthintimidated.Carolina does not offer standardized training for election observers, though some states do. Most of the people who spoke at public hearings Thurs day and on July 28 said the revised rules were unnecessary or too restrictive. Most of the speakers were conservatives or Republicans involved in poll monitoring. Conservative groups have been holding classes to train election observers, a response to false assertions of widespread voter fraud. Several speakers opposing the revised rules men tioned being trained by Cleta Mitchell, Jay DeLancy, and Jim MitchellWomack.isalawyer who tried to help Donald Trump over turn the 2020 election. She was on the phone with Trump when he told a Georgia official to find him enough votes to overturn that state’s presidential election results. Mitchell is schooling activists around the country on aggressive poll monitoring, The New York Times reported.
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This story originally published online at NC Policy Watch
DeLancy has been looking for voter fraud in the state for at least a decade. Jim Womack, Lee County GOP chairman, has an organization that trains election observers.
The proposed rules “are necessary to ensure election workers and voters are not interfered with and the voting process is not disrupted in any way,” state Board of Elec tions spokesman Patrick Gannon said in an email.
DeLancy said at the July hearing that the proposed rule is “a solution in search of a problem.”
Angela Hawkins, a Republican member of the Wake County Board of Elections, called the proposed rules “too restrictive and unnecessary.”
PHOTO BY JENNIFER BURK
Observe and Behave
Fifteen county election officials reported in the survey that they had some problems with observers—some iden tified as Republican observers—during the primary. Some of the violations were minor, such as an observer talking to a voter they knew. Others reported that observers tailed elec tion workers driving from polling places to elections head quarters, wanted to take pictures at polling sites, interfered with voters, and distracted poll workers.
Wayne County elections director Anne Risku said in the survey response that an observer was ejected when she tried to block a voter from inserting his ballot into a tabula tor. Republican observers objected to curbside voting, even though they were able to observe it. They called it “ballot harvesting,” she wrote. One chief judge there doesn’t want to work during early voting anymore.
The revised rules grew from a survey of local elections officials after the May primary.
Jane Pinsky said at the July hearing that Common Cause supports the new rules because they’ve heard of voters being intimidated or confused. Observers should wear tags identifying themselves as observers and should stay in des ignated areas, she said. “I as a voter would be terribly intimidated to have an observer walking around with a notebook watching me vote,” she said. “That’s not what I consider the process to be.”
T he state Board of Elections is considering tighter rules for partisan election observers that outline what they can do at polling places.
The North Carolina Board of Elections is proposing more detailed rules for poll observers’ conduct. BY LYNN BONNER backtalk@indyweek.com
The Next Wave Behind the scenes of the massive genome sequencing operation guiding Duke University’s COVID-19 response BY VIBHAV NANDAGIRI backtalk@indyweek.com W hen he saw the preliminary results, Duke University research scientist Alejandro Berrio Escobar couldn’t believe his eyes. He was staring straight into the future of the pandemic. It was a few weeks into the COVID-19 lockdown, and Berrio Escobar, who specializes in evolutionary biology and computational genomics, had made a major discovery: SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, not only was diverging from the previous strain, but it was also diverging and evolving into new versions of itself. “I felt a deep sense of purpose when I saw this bug evolv ing in real time,” Berrio Escobar says. His early observations would ultimately lay the ground work for one of the largest COVID-19 genome sequencing initiatives in the nation. By this summer, Duke’s COVID-19 genome sequencing efforts, also known as the COVID-Seq project, were in full swing. In Duke’s Sequencing and Genomic Technologies Core Facility—housed within the Duke Center for Genomic and Computation Biology at the Chesterfield Building in downtown Durham—a group of genomics researchers has closely monitored the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in the Duke community for the past year and a half. By sequencing the viral genomes of positive COVID test results, they have provided valuable data for the university administration to stay one step ahead of the pandemic. Early discoveries Like most modern genome sequencing facilities, the Duke core facility, equipped with over $2.5 million worth of state-of-the-art sequencing machinery, is capable of sequencing the full genomes of anything with a genetic code. The genome—the sum total of genetic informa tion within an organism—consists of a sequence of four distinct chemical bases that make up a DNA molecule. DNA is the most common molecule for storing genetic information, but certain viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, also store this information in a molecule called RNA. DNA genomes range in size from millions of bases to over three billion in the case of humans, and sequencing is essentially the process of “reading” every single base within the total genome.
Duke delivered funding for the COVID-Seq project in Feb ruary 2021. During its initial stages, much of the analytical work was undertaken manually.
6 August 17, 2022 INDYweek.com N E W S Durham
The virus evolves By fall of 2020, Berrio Escobar, Wray, and several Duke scientists realized they needed to begin sequencing viral genomes from the broader Duke community to understand the virus’s evolution. These SARS-CoV-2 samples were a treasure trove of data that researchers could utilize to understand how the pandemic was unfolding. The emergence of distinct COVID-19 variants was still months away, but the rate and magnitude of mutations in the spike protein region concerned the researchers enough to push for a compre hensive sequencing project. The task ahead was enormous.
“DUHS did their own thing, the university did their own thing, and I had to communicate different things to both institutions based on their needs,” Berrio Escobar says.
Today, the core sequencing facility at Duke can sequence 80 human genomes simultaneously in a matter of 48 hours.
Using similar principles as human genome sequencing, the core facility was transformed to sequence thousands of samples of SARS-CoV-2, and, as variants emerged, sam ples could be analyzed and assigned as a specific variant.
Between Duke students, faculty, staff, and patients at Duke University and Duke University Health System (DUHS), and additional staff and patients from the Durham VA Health Care System, the number of individuals included in the weekly testing protocol exceeded 60,000. And while many of these systems were under the Duke umbrella, their needs varied significantly.
As the project got underway, Berrio Escobar was work ing in Duke scientist Gregory Wray’s lab, which focuses pri marily on researching human and sea urchin genomes. But Wray, who heads Duke’s Center for Genomic and Computa tional Biology, saw promise in the COVID-19 project. Berrio Escobar had quickly started uncovering distinct regions of interest within the virus’s genome that explained why it was so infectious, including genes that coded for the infa mous spike proteins. Wray and Steve Haase, Wray’s colleague in Duke’s biol ogy department, convinced the university’s administration to carry out regular COVID-19 surveillance testing for stu dents entirely in-house, an anomaly among universities at the time. As a comprehensive, campus-wide testing effort got underway, the question of what to do with the positive results became paramount.
“The first two months of 2021 were hard,” recalls Ber rio Escobar. As new variants started emerging, he and his Duke COVID-29 sequencing research scientists at work PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
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Omicron emerges With every new variant, however, came an entirely new set of challenges, including the emergence of the highly infectious Omi cron variant last winter. Omicron caused some of the highest infection totals that the administration had seen thus far, and, during its peak, the facility was sequencing well over 1,000 positive samples per week. “The DUHS nurses had to stop con tact tracing during Omicron,” Berrio Esco bar recalls. “The number of cases made it impossible.”Intheearly stages of the Omicron wave, Devjanee Swain Lenz came on board as the facility’s associate director. A former post doctoral fellow in Wray’s lab, Swain Lenz recalls frequent 12-hour workdays. Even tually, some of the testing sites, particu larly in DUHS, stopped sending all of their positive samples because there were simply tooOnmany.top of managing the acute caseload of Omicron, Swain Lenz’s long-term goal was to formulate a strategic vision for the future of the core facility. “We were never meant to be a COVID19 sequencing facility,” she says. “Our main mission is to support academic research, a definition which has obviously shifted a lot in the last two and a half years.” Looking ahead The future of the core facility has become a balancing act between the needs of researchers and the needs of administra tion. In this demand-centric model, Swain Lenz cites COVID fatigue as a major deter minant of the facility’s activity. “Fewer and fewer people are testing for COVID-19 regularly,” she says. Duke has opted for a voluntary testing protocol for the upcoming fall semester. Students will still be required to take an entry test prior to arriving on campus, though they will not need to submit results to Duke administration.“Thingshave slowed down naturally, but we will see what happens,” Swain Lenz says. Indeed, a new Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant COVID-19 strain across the United States. Highly infectious, even among recently infected individuals, BA.5 may stretch Duke’s COVID-19 pro tocol once again. But the researchers approach concern about increasing cases with a healthy dose of curiosity. Berrio Escobar says the students’ return will be something of a bellwether for the rest of the nation. “We usually have a great idea of what’s going on in the entire country when stu dents come back,” he says. The researchers’ contributions to both Durham’s health and the broader scope of academia are striking when considering their background. As Wray notes, no one on the COVID-Seq team had any training in virology or public health. What they did have, however, was a keen understanding of how things evolved. And harnessing and predicting these evolutionary trends would provide an essential lifeline to Duke’s pan demic response. “It’s basic biology. You work with sea urchins and genes, and you wonder when your research may impact the public,” Ber rio Escobar says. No estimate currently exists of the num ber of lives saved because of the COVID-19 sequencing initiative and its resulting policy decisions. For a disease that has taken away so much, the affirmation of central evolu tionary principles has revived this team’s faith in the healing powers of science and even in the twisted dogmas of the natural world.“Biological entities don’t have to be beau tiful or wonderful to evolve,” Berrio Esco barWhilesays.that may be the case, the response to evolution certainly can be. W
colleagues gathered a team of Duke engi neers to automate the process of assigning a variant to each sequenced SARS-CoV-2 genome. With each new variant more trans missible than its predecessor, understand ing the viral composition of Duke would provide vital feedback on the state of COVID-19 at Duke and in the surrounding Durham community. Tracking infections
From left to right: Sarah Clarke and Laura-Leigh Rowlette, both technicians, Devjanee Swain Lenz and Alejandro Berrio Escobar. PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
The unfolding results from this sequencing facility directly impacted Duke’s COVID-19 policies, including its decision to keep class es in-person for a majority of the 2021–22 academic year. Last August, however, the vision was considerably more uncertain. As thousands of students arrived from around the world to start their fall semester, they brought with them hundreds of new COVID cases, including the highly infectious Delta variant. The sequencing facility saw a huge spike in incoming positive results. Ques tions arose about whether in-person class es would still be feasible. Several universities around the country, including in the Triangle, were sending stu dents home; meanwhile, many Duke pro fessors had elected to teach virtually out of safetyBeforeconcerns.jumping to conclusions, the researchers wanted to know: Where were people getting infected? By comparing the different viral samples’ genomes in the lab, they stumbled on an interesting obser vation: people who were infected by the same host had genetically identical SARSCoV-2Duringgenomes.August and September, the researchers found many viral samples with nearly identical sequences, meaning a few super-spreaders were shedding virus to several people, most likely at large indoor gatherings. The researchers singled out Shooters II, a popular nightclub among Duke students that had remained open at full capacity during the first few weeks of the fall semester, as a major contributor to spread of the virus. Through Duke’s exist ing contact-tracing framework—interview ing infected students and contact tracing— they traced large numbers of infections to Shooters and other off-campus events, while virtually no infections were happen ing in classes, likely due to strictly enforced mask“Thismandates.wasthe key observation that con vinced leadership that transmission rarely happened in the classroom,” Wray says. The core facility’s sequencing work con tinued to provide Duke with vital insights throughout the Delta wave. To keep up with the heavy caseload—it takes techni cians 48 hours to fully sequence around 400 samples—the facility hired two fulltime technicians. At the height of the Delta wave, they saw “anywhere from 800 to 1,000 samples per week,” says Sarah Clarke, the facility’s main COVID-Seq technician. Looking at the composition of viral samples, researchers could predict which variants would soon predominate at the university, predictions that helped guide Duke’s masking policies, contact-tracing guidelines, and event orga nizing decisions.
Raleigh residents are also worried that the renovation will change the character of the surrounding neighborhoods, which consist
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The creek’s restoration will follow construc tion of Gipson Play Plaza, Pearce says. The city plans to widen the stream and restore the site’s natural wetlands. Rocky Branch Creek stretches about a mile along Western Boulevard, and it’s one of the most complex parts of the Dix Master Plan, says Pearce, but one of the most impactful. “We’re looking at concepts right now that reestablish the natural meander [of the creek], which will have really positive impact to mitigate flooding,” she says. “[It’s] about improving the water quality in the creek itself.”
As work on the children’s play plaza breaks ground, Dorothea Dix Park as a long-dreamed-of destination starts to take shape.
The People’s Park
“As people drive down Lake Wheeler Road or walk their dogs through the park, they’re going to see physical transforma tion,” says Kate Pearce, the city planner in charge of the play plaza project. “This is the first project, and there’s more to come. It’s kind of like, is this the end of the race or the starting line? It’s both.” Pearce hopes the play plaza will give peo ple an idea of what the park will eventu ally look like, she says. The plaza is cen tered around play areas for children, includ ing the splash pad and a waterfall wall; a playground with climbing towers and rope bridges; a sand bowl; a sensory maze; and a swing set area.
PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA cream or an iced tea. It will also have space for the public to use, if there’s a school group that wants to have a classroom ses sion or a community group that wants to have a meeting.”
BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com
The final design for the play plaza also includes a new garden and “Piedmont Prai rie” along Lake Wheeler Road, which will restore the park’s natural landscape, says Pearce. Preserving the green space in the park is a priority for city staff. Another major component of the Dix Master Plan is res toration of Rocky Branch Creek, a long-ne glected waterway that drains into Walnut Creek and ultimately the Neuse River.
The flurry of construction was a minia ture foreshadowing of a much larger proj ect—construction of the Gipson Play Plaza, an 18.5-acre entrance to the property. Come September, full-sized bulldozers and excavation equipment will arrive along Lake Wheeler Road to start digging. The play plaza is a huge endeavor that will take at least two years to complete. It involves building a splash pad, restor ing a historic home, and replanting native trees and grasses. Still, it’s a drop in the bucket of the Dix Park Master Plan, which aspires to restore and rebuild almost all of the 308-acre site. The city started planning the park renova tion in 2017. Now, five years later, staff are finally breaking ground.
Pearce says creating play areas for “all ages and abilities” was important. The play grounds include elements that are accessi ble to children and families with disabilities. When city planners asked families what was most important to them, many also said they wanted some sort of water ele ment for children. The city came up with a water mill mountain, inspired by the water mill in Historic Yates Mill County Park. Also important to the community was connectivity. The play plaza is designed to be accessible to drivers, walkers, cyclists, and bus riders, according to Pearce. A new bus stop is planned for Lake Wheeler Road, just outside the entrance to the play plaza. The city plans to add a greenway through the plaza, alongside Lake Wheeler Road, that connects Rocky Branch Trail to Walnut Creek Trail. The new greenway will make it easier for people to walk from downtown to the state farmer’s market or vice versa. “It is really this invitation,” Pearce says. “We wanted something on the edge that was highly visible, extremely connected to the surrounding neighborhoods as our first project.” Park plans City planners held several public meet ings, town halls, and online polls to find out what people wanted in the park. Hundreds shared their thoughts, saying they wanted the city to preserve and enhance natural areas and gardens, create a space where people could come together and learn, and offer more art, music, and theater. “We were at every major street festival, church basements and libraries, and we met with anyone and everyone who want ed to have a voice in the future of the park,” Pearce says. “There were a lot of common themes. Respecting the history of the site. Native plants.”
Construction on Dix Park’s Gipson Play Plaza begins next month
A shower of colorful confetti fluttered through the air at Dorothea Dix Park on Sunday, gently falling down around chil dren at play. In a giant sandbox, elementary schoolers dug up dirt, sifted sand into piles, and built tiny towers and walls.
In addition to building playgrounds, the city plans to restore the Buffaloe House, also known as the House of Many Porch es. The space will be used as a welcome center, concession stand, and community space says Pearce. “We’ve been working with a preservation architect to restore and rehabilitate that building,” she says. “It will have some sort of concessions, where you can go to get an ice
Community concerns Although many are excited about Dix Park’s upcoming transformation, nearby neighbors also have concerns. “I am most concerned that the history of the land will be forgotten and hope the park will continue to incorporate the lega cy of the land to provide healing and rest,” wrote one Raleigh resident, according to a community engagement report. For about 150 years, the site was part of the Spring Hill Plantation, a 2,500-acre farm worked by Black slaves. It eventually became the site of North Carolina’s first mental health facility, Dorothea Dix Hospi tal. Now, many of the buildings serve as NC Department of Health and Human Services headquarters.“Mostgreat parks don’t have a million square feet of buildings, but that’s the his tory of this site,” Pearce says. “So … how can some of those buildings be reused and repur posed for public benefit and for park benefit?”
The Dix Park renovation is an ambitious undertaking and will likely significantly ben efit the Raleigh community. The city has already moved its annual Fourth of July fire works show to the park, and it’s the site of a new dog park and sunflower field. Dix Park is also one of the few places in Raleigh that offers a clear view of the sky. Amateur astronomers recently flocked to the park to see the Perseid meteor shower. But the renovation will contribute to rising housing prices in the area, perhaps transforming one of the few affordable places left in Raleigh into a neighborhood exclusively for the rich. Raleigh mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin says the city is working to ensure this won’t hap pen; the city recently purchased land near Dix Park specifically for affordable housing. “The price of housing is going up through out the city, and the way to combat that is to increase housing supply,” Baldwin says. Meanwhile, families in Raleigh have a lot to look forward to. Pearce says the renovat ed Dix Park is designed to be a “destination park,” meaning people across the county can enjoy it. “It is a park for the neighbors, but it’s also a park for the community at large. So people will drive to this park to enjoy it and probably stay a couple of hours. It’s as much a park for the larger Triangle region as it is for the people that live directly across the Constructionstreet.”of the Gipson Play Plaza is expected to start in September and last 24–27 months, Pearce says. The plaza is projected to open in 2024. W
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 mostly of affordable, middle-class homes and commercial buildings. Gentrification and displacement were among some of the top concerns of nearby residents, prompting the city to commission the Dix Edge Area Study to examine possible solutions. The money pouring into Dix Park and the surrounding area has already forced some to leave their homes as corporations buy property and raise rents. “It’s not OK that people are displaced and pushed out so easily,” said Francisco Ceron-Sagastume earlier this year, after he had to leave his Fuller Heights rental home of two years. “All these developers are just buying out all these homes in magnitude.” Dix Park is the center of a hub of new development, including a massive mixeduse development project from Kane Realty dubbed Downtown South. The developer plans to build new offices and retail space, apartment buildings, and hotels on about 130 acres of land around South Saunders Street and I-40. Kane announced plans for a 21-story apartment building and a 27-story office building earlier this year.
INDYweek.com August 17, 2022 9
10 August 17, 2022 INDYweek.com N E W S Durham
BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com W hen members of the Durham Coun ty Board of Commissioners last week approved the purchase of the old John Avery Boys and Girls Club to house a newly created department to address gun violence, some county officials applauded the decision, saying that the new initiative needs room to grow. But the county’s elected leaders also acknowledged they want to grab two birds with one hand by approving the purchase of the entire 13,592-squarefoot building that housed the Boys and Girls Club and the ballfield next to it that together comprise two parcels of land at 2.61 acres. The purchase is part of an ongoing effort to halt Durham’s gun violence crisis, but buying the build ing is also an effort to preserve the char acter and legacy of the community. County commissioner Nimasheena Burns noted during the board’s regularly sched uled meeting that the blue-and-white brick structure—decorated with a mural of youthful brown hands on its front exteri or and the faces of Black and brown chil dren on the rear—offered an equally com pelling reason for the county to purchase the still-handsome building that sit in the southern shadow of downtown in Hayti. “It’s smack-dab in the center of Hayti,” Burns said. “Hayti has been purchased by There’s considerable bad feeling in the community about the failure of urban renewal and the threat of displacement as a consequence of gentrification. “So we can sit and talk about all the pro grams we want to put there,” Burns said during the commissioners’ regularly sched uled meeting on August 8. “But I can speak for myself and for some of my fellow board members if they’re brave enough. We did it [the land and building purchase] so that people could not continue to tear up Hayti. When I brought up this issue, no one on the board disagreed with that fact.”
Today, about 100 Black-owned busi nesses line the Hayti District’s Fayetteville Street corridor that stretches from NC 147 to Cornwallis Road.
With the purchase of the old Boys and Girls Club building in Hayti, Durham commissioners hope to address the issues of gun violence, gentrification, and displacement.
The INDY reported in late June that Ster ling Bay, a Chicago-based development firm with deep pockets, announced a joint ven ture with another Chicago firm and a New York developer to purchase the Heritage Square shopping center, a declining com mercial space that sits between the 600 block of Fayetteville Street and the 400 block of East Lakewood Avenue.
A mural painted on the rear side of the old John Avery Boys and Girls Club building in Durham’s Hayti district PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA folks who are not from this community or from this state.”
The trained county-funded team of “vio lence interrupters’’ and outreach workers started in the gun- and gang-plagued Southside neighborhoods on South and Fargo Streets and the McDougald Terrace public housing complex in 2016 with the goal of approaching violence as a public health issue not unlike cholera or influ enzaLastoutbreaks.year,the city’s and county’s elect ed leaders reached an interlocal agreement that expanded BCU to four more gun fire-prone neighborhoods: a public housing complex along Cornwallis Road; Old Oxford Highway; the Fayetteville Street corridor between NC Central University and Phoenix Square; and East Durham’s Holloway, Liber ty, and East Main Streets. The local initia tive is modeled after CeaseFire, an anti-vi olence program that was originally devel oped in 2000 and implemented in Chicago neighborhoods where there were high inci dents of shootings and gun murders.
Sterling Bay’s $62 million purchase of the nine-acre Heritage Square is just the latest development that has some longtime Hayti residents contemplating a not-so-dis tant future in which they will have little if any say, no place to live, and no business to own in the Bull City’s most celebrated Black community, whose name was inspired by the Haitian Revolution. Even before the threat of gentrification, the neighborhood has struggled following the broken promise of urban renewal, an ill-named federal effort a little over a half century ago that was supposed to improve blighted homes and businesses in the neigh borhood but instead destroyed and demol ished 4,000 homes and 500 businesses.
History of Violence
The grass has grown high around the building, and the ball field is in need of renovations and equipment repairs, but it will one day serve as the home of the coun ty’s new Community Intervention Services Department. The place will house three initiatives that aim to improve outcomes for young people who live in communities where there has been a dearth of invest ment and resources. Project BUILD, a youth gang interven tion program, started in 2009. The acro nym stands for Building, Uplifting, Impact ing Lives Daily, and the program will oper ate out of the building. So will My Brother’s Keeper, a nation wide nonprofit launched by former presi dent Barack Obama in 2014 that aims to reduce barriers and create more opportuni ties for boys and young men of color. Then there’s Bull City United (BCU), arguably Community Intervention Services’ flagship initiative, which relies on reformed gang members who each day go into the Bull City’s most gun-violence-prone neigh borhoods with the aim of stopping gunfire before it occurs.
Joanne Pierce, who works as general manager of the county’s community inter vention services, agrees with Johnson.
Earlier this year, Maria Jocys, a retired FBI agent who spent the last five years of her career working with the federal agency’s Safe Streets Task Force, which focuses on criminal street gangs in Durham, said she wants to address gun violence in some of BCU’s operational areas, such as Bragtown. “There’s a gang feud that started in 2017 between the 8 Trey Gangsta Crips in Brag town and the nontraditional O Block 8 AM gang,” Jocys told the INDY this spring. “We’re seeing shootings involving these two entities that started with the shooting death of Kyle Fisher, whose alias is the letter O.” But so far this year, no one has died from gun violence in Bragtown, and only two people have been shot. “The two shootings just happened in June,” Johnson told the INDY. “Before June there was none for the entire year.” Similarly, there have been no homicides reported at the Cornwallis public housing complex this year. “The numbers don’t lie,” Johnson says. “It’s working out way beyond our expectations.”
The onus, Pierce says, is not on Black and brown children who gun one another down in the streets but on the greater society and the powers that be. “What do we need to do for these com munities to be better?” she asks. “We need to turn the mirror inward at these systems and ask, ‘How have we contributed to the inequities? How do we do better?’ “If you have a polluted lake, you don’t fix the fish.” W
“The data will show that this program is doing what it’s supposed to do,” she says. But Pierce also struck a cautionary note last week while speaking with the INDY One program, she says—even one that has had the success demonstrated this year by BCU—will not solve the systemic issues that have bedeviled those communities for decades.“Programs are useful for what they do,” Pierce says. “But it does not address the systemic structural issues. Durham is a foodie town. But we have food des erts, where people can’t access food in these same places, educational deserts, and economic mobility deserts, health deserts in communities that have been geographically segregated from resourc es …. Rarely does the response to sys temic issues address the magnitude of thePierceissue.”rightly insists that what’s happen ing in the Bull City is happening nationwide. It’s generational, stretching back centuries, and is the inevitable outcome of a society structured on race. She says the real con versation should be centered around racebased inequities. “That conversation,” she adds, “needs to be “reframed.”
Two years ago, BCU reported that between March 1 and September 12, 2020, there were 556 shootings throughout the city. Only 63 occurred in BCU’s target areas: McDougald Terrace, which in 2015 was deemed the most violent neighborhood in the city, and Southside, the city’s sec ond-most-violent neighborhood. “Give me a hundred people, and I can change the violence trends in Durham,” David Johnson, who supervises BCU, told the city council during a 2020 work session. In early 2021, Durham City Council mem bers didn’t give Johnson 100 folks. But they reviewed the overall decline in gun violence in McDougald Terrace and Southside and opted to give the county up to $935,488 to hire 18 more people and expand the Cure Violence model to four other areas in the city that are also perennially bedeviled by gunplay. The new target areas of treatment are Cornwallis Road, a section of Southside that was not formerly part of BCU’s target area, Oxford Manor, and Liberty and Elm Streets.Johnson is making good on his promise. According to data provided to BCU by the Durham Police Department, there have been 140 people shot in the city so far this year and 24 homicides. Those numbers stand in marked con trast to those in the historically vio lence-prone areas targeted by BCU’s vio lence interrupters and outreach workers. Between July of last year and June of this year, BCU workers who were formerly part of the city’s gun violence dilemma partici pated in nearly 900 mediations to resolve conflicts in their communities before they could escalate to deadly gunplay.
The end result: only eight homicides were reported between July of last year and June of this year in areas where BCU violence interrupters are working. Moreover, during that same time period, 61 people were shot in the communities where the violence interrupters are trying to intervene. Of that number, 25 were shot in McDougald Terrace and 14 in the East Durham target area. One person was killed in Southside, three in McDougald Terrace, three more in East Durham, and one along the Fayetteville Street corridor. “I’m not saying that’s not a lot of people,” Johnson told the INDY this week. “But it’s nothing like when we first went to work in McDougald Terrace. It’s always been like that. Those spots have been historically like that. It’s not just a yearly battle. You have historic violence in those communities.”
INDYweek.com August 17, 2022 11
TIP’s longtime artistic director Ira David Wood III (who goes by David) directed his daughter, Evan Rachel Wood, as a child in shows including The Miracle Worker on this same stage before her Hollywood film career led to central roles like Dolores Abernathy and Christina on HBO’s Westworld. In this production, the pair convincingly plays central characters André and Anne, an aging father and adult daughter who are slowly being torn apart. Evan’s brother Ira David Wood IV (who goes by Ira) directs the production. Audiences may also recognize the play from its 2020 Oscar award-winning film adaptation (currently available on Hulu) starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colemen. Dementia’s downward spiral is already well underway by the time we first encounter Anne and André. Anne’s already exhausted
Dementia is the ultimate form of self-abandonment: the damaged psyche taking panicked, erratic flight from memories that are either inaccessible due to brain pathology or too painful to recall. It’s ironic that the one moment when long-term memory fully functions, it is only to remind André of another loss—the death of another beloved family member. But when the inevitable moment comes where André doesn’t recognize Anne, abandonment achieves true contagion. Anne says, “It did something to me. I was like a stranger to him.” And as Evan nervelessly intones the line, it’s chilling and clear that her character’s father has achieved a Schrodinger-like state. Like the famous cat, he’s simultaneously there and not there, dad and not dad. In this memorable production, the moment conveys a threat all its own to the sense-making systems of those who care for the disappearing man. W ing tensions within this challenged family, he gives full rein to the ingenious strategies Zeller uses to depict the experiences of dementia from the point of view of the person suffering its effects. When the last thing André remembers is a moment from months or years before, a character disappears in mid-scene, and André becomes obsessed with finding out where he went. What was a morning mere moments before becomes night. At more than one point André doesn’t recognize Anne’s partner or a nurse he met the day before. When that happens, another actor appears in an identical costume. When these and other theatrical misplacements occur, David vividly depicts the dilemma of a man whose sense-making mechanism is still desperately trying to function without the continuity of memory needed to do so. Gradually, André becomes aware of his losses: “I feel as if I’m losing all my leaves, one after another.”
Ira
PHOTO BY CATHERINE
Ira David Wood III and daughter Evan Rachel Wood bring a gripping psychological family drama to stage.
In a stop-gap measure, Anne moves André into a room in her own home, where his increasing inability to make sense of his changing locale and circumstances takes an inevitable toll—on their relationship and on Anne’s relationship with her longtime partner, Pierre (Chris Hinton). There’s true poignancy when André tries to convince Pierre, whom he cannot remember and doesn’t recognize despite multiple encounters, that there’s nothing wrong with him: “I still have use of my arms, see? And my legs. And my hands. In fact, it all works wonderfully. You agree? Of course you agree.” Meanwhile, Evan embodies the ever-increasing stress her character is experiencing, going rigid and pursing her lips tightly between her teeth when her father makes a casual, cutting remark. As Ira’s direction pressurizes the growDavid Wood III Evan Rachel Wood DAVIS
Father Figurative
What’s even more discomforting? Particularly given the dysfunctional state of health care in America, as the schism morphs into a bittersweet but potentially agonizing long goodbye, that state of abandonment—unintended, and sometimes forced—can metastasize, multiply, and spread throughout a family. A real-life family reconvenes to stage this disturbing story.
PHOTOGRAPHY STAGE THE FATHER | 1⁄2 Theatre in the Park | Through Aug. 21 | theatreinthepark.com
12 August 17, 2022 INDYweek.com
The Father, now onstage at Theatre in the Park (TIP), playwright Florian Zeller shows us that when that estrangement is unintentional and stems from a medical condition like dementia, the borders that could limit and contain those feelings can stretch and blur before they dissipate completely.
W hen a deliberately neglectful parent or partner abruptly leaves, the clarity of that sharp, defining act can provide a useful—and finite—frame for the feelings of abandonment that follow. But in his gripping psychological drama
BY BYRON WOODS arts@indyweek.com
by the efforts she’s made to take care of him; after looking in on her father in a series of daily visits, she’s concluded someone needs to stay with him for him to be safe. André’s short-term memory loss—and gradually increasing paranoia as a consequence—are obvious as he casts about suspicions over a watch he’s sure has been stolen because he can’t remember where he put it. But since he remains unconvinced he needs any help, he burns through a series of caregivers Anne has arranged for, haranguing them before physically threatening the last one. Because Anne is moving to London with her partner, something has to give. But when she reveals that move to André, he feels“Theabandoned.ratsareleaving the ship,” he rails, before tacitly acknowledging he can’t function on his own: “What’s going to become of me?”
and
INDYweek.com August 17, 2022 13 SA 10/1 @NC MUSEUM OF WATCHHOUSEARTW/ALLISONDEGROOT&TATIANAHARGREAVES CATSCRADLE.COM • 919.967.9053 • 300 E. MAIN STREET • CARRBORO MOTORCO (DURHAM) 8/21 MAN OR ASTRO-MAN? W/ THE SHUTUPS 10/4 RARE AMERICANS 10/28 ALGERNON CADWALLADER 11/4 OFF! 11/6 OSO OSO W/ M.A.G.S., ANXIOUS 11/10 COPELAND HAW RIVER BALLROOM (SAX) 8/20 SNAIL MAIL W/ MOMMA, HOTLINE TNT 8/21 & 8/22 LUCINDA WILLIAMS (2 NIGHTS) (CANCELLED: 9/23 ANDREA GIBSON) 9/29 TINARIWEN W/ GARCIAL PEOPLES 10/6 ALEX G W/ BARRIE 10/17 MADISON CUNNINGHAM W/ BENDIGO FLETCHER 10/26 VIOLENT FEMMES 11/7 PLAINS W/ MJ LENDERMAN 11/14 SOCCER MOMMY W/ HELENA DELAND THE ARTSCENTER (CARRBORO) 9/14 JOE PURDY 10/13 JONATHAN RICHMAN FT. TOMMY LARKINS ON DRUMS 10/16 BOB MOULD SOLO ELECTRIC W/ H.C. MCENTIRE 10/30 DAR WILLIAMS ($30/$35) 11/4 MATTHEW SHIPP, IVO PERELMAN, JEFF COSGROVE TRIO W/ TRAGIC ASSEMBLY ($20/$25) THE RITZ (RALEIGH) 9/4 INTERPOL W/ DANTE HIGH 10/3 LUCY DACUS W/ CROOKS & NANNIES (MOVED FROM LINCOLN THEATRE) 10/18 MOTHER MOTHER W/ SIR SLY LOCAL 506 (CHAPEL HILL) 11/17 PRETTY SICK NC MUSEUM OF ART (RALEIGH) 9/14 LAKE STREET DIVE W/ THE DIP 10/1 WATCHHOUSE W/ ALLISON DE GROOT & TATIANA HARGREAVES CAROLINA THEATRE (DURHAM) 9/8 CROCE PLAYS CROCE 50TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR (AJ CROCE PERFORMING THE SONGS OF JIM CROCE) CAT'S CRADLE SA 8/20 ABBEY ROAD LIVE! (MATINEE AND EVENING SHOWS) SU 8/28 SCHOOL OF ROCK CHAPEL HILL END OF SEASON SHOWCASE (NOON-6PM) TU 8/30 BORIS W/ NOTHING SA 9/3 MIPSO W/ RODES BABY, LOU HAZEL SU 9/4 MIPSO W/ BELLA WHITE FR 9/9 SPIRITUALIZED LIVE MO 9/12 BRISTON MARONEY W/ MEDIUM BUILD TU 9/13 LEO KOTTKE (SEATED SHOW) SA 9/17 CONNELLS W/ TONK WE 9/21 AMANDA SHIRES TH 9/22 ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS: THE SPILL CANVAS FR 9/23 CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS: FLOR W/ WLDLFE, GOOD PROBLEM SA 9/24 BE LOUD ’22: PREESH!, WHAT PEGGY WANTS, THE SEXELLS (MEMBERS OF CONNELLS AND SEX POLICE) SU 9/25 MOVEMENTS W/ ANGEL DU$T, ONE STEP CLOSER, SNARLS MO 9/26 GIRLPOOL W/ DREAM, IVORY ($16/$20) TU 9/27 OSEES W/ BRONZE ($25/$28) TH 9/29 ELECTRIC SUPERSUCKERSSIX/ FR 10/1 JUKEBOX THE GHOST TU 10/4 OF MONTREAL W/ LOCATE S,1 WE 10/5 IBEYI FR 10/7 STEVE KIMOCK & FRIENDS SA 10/8 WILD RIVERS W/ KYNDAL INSKEEP SU 10/9 CAROLINE ROSE W/ TOTH TU 10/11 LUCERO W/ L.A. 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GOODMAN W/ LE REN TH 9/22 SARAH BORGES TU 9/27 FLEECE W/ GRAE WE 9/28 KING BUFFALO W/ HEAVY TEMPLE FR 9/30 ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS: TITUS ANDRONICUS TU 10/4 MELT TH 10/6 THE CACTUS BLOSSOMS W/ ALEXA ROSE ($17/$20) FR 10/7 TYRONE WELLS W/ NATHAN COLBERG SA 10/8 CLEM SNIDE & JILL ANDREWS TH 10/13 DEAD HORSES SA 10/15 PSYCHIC HOTLINE BLOCK PARTY WE 10/19 FRANKIE AND THE WITCH FINGERS W/ KAIROS CREATURE CLUB FR 10/21 JON SPENCER & THE HITMAKERS MO 10/24 NARROW HEAD W/ TEMPLE OF ANGELS TU 10/25 PILE—DRIPPING TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY TOUR W/ MANEKA WE 10/26 CORY BRANAN W/ JOHN SNODGRASS TH 10/27 MO LOWDA & THE HUMBLE SU 10/30 GHOSTLY KISSES WE 11/2 TROPICAL FUCK STORM SU 11/6 THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS W/ ORBIT SERVICE SU 11/13 THE BREVET MO 11/14 FIELD MEDIC W/ SADURN WE 11/16 MARIECOURTNEYANDREWS TH 11/17 STOP OBSERVATIONSLIGHT SA 11/19 ROSE CITY BAND W/ ROSALI WE 11/23 ALDN SU ASTROMAN?MAN@MOTORCO8/21ORW/THESHUTUPS SOLDOUT TU 8/30 @CAT’S W/BORISCRADLENOTHING FR 9/9 @CAT’S SPIRITUALIZEDCRADLELIVE TWO NIGHTS! SA 9/3 & SU 9/4 @CAT’SMIPSOCRADLE W/ RODES BABY, LOU HAZEL W/ BELLA WHITE SU 8/21 & MO 8/22 @HAW WILLIAMSLUCINDABALLROOMRIVER SA 8/20 @HAW RIVER BALLROOM SNAIL MAIL W/ MOMMA, HOTLINE TNT SOLDOUT MO 11/28 BLACK LIPS W/ BLOODSHOT BILL FR 12/9 KELSEY WALDON: NO REGULAR DOG TOUR ($15/$18) SA 12/10 THE COMMITTEEGREETING W/ WILLIS TU 10/25 WHITNEY WE 10/26 THE AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT W/ MONDO COSMO FR 10/28 BAD SUNS W/ LAST DINOSAURS, QUARTERS OF CHANGE SA 10/29 TOO MANY ZOOZ W/YAM YAM MO 10/31 NAPALM DEATH W/ BRUJERIA, FROZEN SOUL, MILLIONS OF DEAD COPS ($20/$25) TU 11/1 THE WRECKS W/ ARLIE ($25/$28) WE 11/2 RUSSIAN CIRCLES W/ REZN FR 11/4 ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS BETH STELLIG SA 11/5 CHLOE MORIONDO W/ DREAMER ISIOMA MO 11/7 TIGERS JAW W/ HEART ATTACK MAN, GLITTERER WE 11/9 ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS: EUGENE MIRMAN SA 11/11 VIOLET BELL ALBUM RELEASE SHOW SU 11/13 BE GOOD TO YOURSELF PRESENTS: ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO ALL STAR BAND W/ JONATHAN BYRD + JESS KLEIN FR 11/18 THE STEWS SA 11/19 CARBON LEAF W/ CARRIE WELLING SU 11/27 THE MENZINGERS: ON THE IMPOSSIBLE PAST 10 YR ANNIVERSARY TOUR W/ TOUCHE AMORE, SCREAMING FEMALES TU 12/13 CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS: THE HAPPY FITS WE 12/14 MCLUSKY ($25/$28) 2/17/23 ADAM MELCHOR 2/27/23 JUNIOR BOYS 6/29/23 EELS TH 8/18 ALESANA W/ VAMPIRES EVERYWHERE, FRONTSIDE, AND GOLD STEPS SA 8/27 TENILLE TOWNES ($23/$25) WE 8/31 SIR WOMAN FR 9/2 BIRDS AND ARROWS W/ JOSH KIMBROUGH ($10) TU 9/6 ALMOST MONDAY WE 9/7 HOLY FAWN W/ ASTRONOID FR 9/9 DRAG QUEENS ARE COMING SA 9/10 THE PINK STONES W/ TEDDY & THE ROUGH RIDERS CAT'SBACKCRADLEROOM
(2 SHOWS: 4 PM MATINEE AND 8:30 PM EVENING SHOW) SA 8/20 @CAT’S CRADLE ABBEY ROAD LIVE! SOLDOUT SOLDOUT
BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com
Now touring for her riled-up latest LP, Lucinda Williams talks pushing buttons, covering songs, and reading Emily Dickinson.
Lucinda Williams’s name goes well with her music: It’s poetic, symmetrical, and paired with a stubborn set of syllables that require emphasis. That’s the same quality in her songs, which span decades and dig their heels into love, loss, and the people and places of the American South with a ragged Delta rock fervor that threw the music indus try for a loop when her breakthrough album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, was released in 1998. When I called Williams up on the phone one recent afternoon and she men tioned being 69 and trying to reach listeners who might be 29, I enthusiastically intoned that she’d succeeded. But success—of which the decorated Williams has much of—doesn’t mean she’s ready to hang up her guitar. In 2020, Wil liams released her latest album, Good Souls Better Angels, a riled-up LP that looks con temporary issues in the eye. Her latest tour comes on the heels of a sold-out, yearlong Car Wheels on a Gravel Road anniversary tour, as well as a touring stint with Bon nie Raitt. Ahead of her tour stop at the Haw River Ballroom, the INDY spoke with Williams about Emily Dickinson, her cover songs, and not being afraid to push buttons. INDY: You’re just coming off a tour with Bonnie Raitt. How long have y’all known each LUCINDAother?WILLIAMS: It was really good— we hadn’t really known each other, but during the tour, we started to finally get to know each other, and she is just a sweetheart. I assumed you would’ve crossed paths! No. I know, it seems like we would’ve but we just never did. I mean, you know, there M U S IC
LUCINDA WILLIAMS The Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw | Monday, August 22, 8 p.m. | $35 everything else, I’m like, to heck with it. I like to feel like I’m helping people by going out there and singing songs and talking to people. There’s one song I learned from a blues artist, “You Can’t Rule Me”—it goes “You can’t take my money and try to rule me too”—it’s a really cool song. I started dedicating it to the United States Supreme Court and then I do the song. Everyone loves it. Was this before or after the Roe v. Wade decision? Oh, after. You talked about your process for writing topical songs. What’s it like writing love songs? One of the things I like to do when I’m writ ing a love song or romantic song is making sure that it will appeal to everyone regard less of gender or anything like that. I don’t know if it’s working or not. I think it’s working. You’re Lucinda Williams. Well, good. That’s the other thing—I’ve got a lot of fans of different races and genders that like my music, and different ages too. That’s the other thing, is being cognizant of that. Someone who’s 29, how is he or she going to respond to a song written by someone who’s 69? I’ve noticed, I was just talking about this with Tom recently, is that more younger people are coming to see me, it feels like. That’s a good feeling. You’ve talked about how in other musical and literary forms an artist aging adds more dimension than irrelevancy. I’m spitballing, but maybe since your music taps into those, it has more resonance for people as you age. Yeah, I’d like to think that, because I was Or too preachy. Yeah, exactly, too preachy or too flowery. Or too mean or gruff-sounding. It depends on who your audiences are, I guess. I sang “Masters of War” one time after 9/11 and this woman was offended. But I like to push people’s buttons a little and wake them up. And people seem to really enjoy those songs. At the end of shows a lot of the time we’ll sing “People Rocking in the Free World,” things like that, and people clap and sing along. I think people need it—we’re living through wild times right now. One hundred percent, definitely. And peo ple might not want to admit they need it ’cause they think it’s corny or something. You’d be surprised at my audiences—it reminded me of the sixties when every one used to sing together and have these demonstrations and marches with everyone singing “We Shall Overcome” and all this, there was this feeling of togetherness and it just felt good to do that, but people have become so cynical. So I was surprised when I saw my audi ences basically doing that. At the end of “People Rocking in the Free World,” I was standing at the edge of the stage and encouraging people to join in on the refrain. And they did—they loved it and just jumped right in. It’s like a sea of arms and hands, and it was really cool. Just like the old days. Do you think audiences are more cynical these days? It just seems like people are more like that now. But it’s kind of just best to ignore it if possible. I’ll stand onstage and give every one the power sign and the peace sign and were a couple of shows we did together but usually, when you’re doing those things, you don’t get to talk to people that much. But on this last tour, we did—she always went out of her way to, you know, come down with me and visit and talk a little bit about everything. You did a cover series, Lu’s Jukebox—how did you choose which songs to cover? Sometimes we’ll be sitting around and I’ll say, “I’d love to cover that, I want to do that song.” I was always saying that about other people’s songs, and Tom came up with the idea—Tom, I mentioned before, is my husband and manager. So he brought it up. He said, “You know, we should just do some covers of the songs you’re always talking about that you like so much.” And then we decided to do the livestream thing and fans really loved it. I was stand ing in front of the computer watching the comments roll in. People called your last album “topical.” Does that feel accurate? Yeah. I’ve always wanted to delve into that. Those kinds of songs are harder to write for me. I feel like, you know, there’s your basic love song—those are always easier to write than a topical song about what’s going on in the world. I always loved, as a teenager in the sixties, listening to Bob Dylan’s “Mas ters of War.” How is the process different for you, writing a political versus a love song? Political songs are harder because you don’t want to sound corny, too much like “OK, brothers and sisters, let’s hold hands and dance in a circle.”
Lucinda Williams PHOTO BY DANNY CLINCH
14 August 17, 2022 INDYweek.com
Out of the Blues
INDYweek.com August 17, 2022 15 Available8.15TUES8.30 7PM 8.25THUR 6PM Latest on EventsBookin’ Raleigh's Community Bookstore Register for Quail Ridge Books Events Series at www.quailridgebooks.com Ruthanna Emrys, A Half-Built Garden THUR8.18 7PM IN-STORE Heather Newton, The Puppeteer’s Daughters in conversation with Cate Linebery IN-STORE Rachel PickleballSimon,ForAll @GARLAND Vishwesh Bhatt, I Am From Here Chaat party with dishes prepared by Garland and Cheeni Raleigh www.quailridgebooks.com • 919.828.1588 • North Hills 4209-100 Lassiter Mill Road, Raleigh, NC 27609 Offering FREE Media Mail shipping and contactless pickup! with it. I by learnedtalkinggoingtofromaMe”—itgoestrytoruleIstartedSupremeEveryone v. Wade for lovewritingsongs? I’m writ is making everyone regard that. I don’t Williams. thing—I’ve got and recently,writtencognizantagesgenderstoo.isheorbywasjustisthattoseeme, otherspitballing,addsmusicalmoreintothose,asyouage. because I wasinspired by all those things when I was learning how to play and learning how to write songs. I was heavily inspired by poetry and jazz and blues. Do you still read poetry, and if so, who? Well, my dad. I guess I’m kind of biased there. I was reading some of Frank Stan ford’s poetry and realizing how great he was. You know who I really got into recent ly, a couple of years ago? You would have thought it would’ve been sooner, but, Emily Dickinson. I got turned on to Emily Dick inson and I was like, “I get it, I get it, I get why people like her!” I fell in love with her stuff. [I love] the simplicity of it—apparently she was’t formally trained, as I understand. She was very spontaneous in her writing and she didn’t follow the rules of poetry, she wrote just the way she wanted to. And at first people were kind of appalled, I guess— in those days, you can’t do that kind of thing. But she would anyway, and after a while it just became her way of writing. I just thought that was really brave and rebellious and really cool. I heard you’re writing a memoir—is that true? Yeah, I am. It’s a big undertaking. W
Friend says the partnership will help ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE MOORE AND JON FULLER
I
BY SAM BERMAS-DAWES arts@indyweek.com
When Elizabeth Friend and Jenny March first organized Audio Under the Stars in 2014, they never thought it could grow into one of Durham’s most popular summer events.
Marc Maximov helps Friend and March seasonally with the show and has contributed five stories to the festival, including a story about reconnecting with a distant family member over social media. He says he enjoys how easy it is to relax and listen. “It’s almost like going back to the days when people told stories around campfires,” he says. “It’s just indescribably pleasant to doFriendthat.” says that’s part of what made Audio Under the Stars unique from the“Westart.listen to a lot of stuff in our earbuds and in private in our cars,” Friend says. “And what I found is, stories hit differently when you hear them with others. The sad parts seem sadder or the funny parts funnier. It’s like you pick up on the emotional vibe of the people around you and it resonates in a way that it doesn’t when it’s just you by yourself.”
Audio Under the Stars later moved to the hospitable front lawn of CDS near Duke’s East Campus. The summer-long festival grew to attract more than 300 people a night in the years leading up to the pandemic, organizers say, with listeners packed across the lawn forming a quilt of picnic blankets under the warm glow of stringAfterlights.apandemic hiatus—save one virtual event in 2020—Audio Under the Stars is set to return to in-person events, organizers announced recently, with a few changes, including a move to new venues and a new seasonal setting. Partnering with Duke Arts, organizers are now planning two events for this fall, including the show’s first event outside of Durham. In late July, Audio Under the Stars opportunity in a rapidly changing Durham, Navey says, a chance to hang out with old friends and meet new people in a cozy outdoor space without having to pay. “People are looking for an excuse to go do something outdoors that doesn’t cost money, where you can just kind of sit around with other people,” he says. “But those spaces don’t really exist anymore.”
t’s a simple idea. Take the type of audio storytelling enjoyed by listeners of podcasts and public radio, add lawn chairs and picnic blankets under a setting sun, and turn the act of listening into a communal function. It’s This American Life with local stories enjoyed on a grassy lawn with your friends and neighbors instead of in your headphones.
Audio Under the Stars return to Durham before the end of the year, an important goal for the small team behind the show. As they prepare for the upcoming pair of shows, Friend says plans for 2023 and beyond can wait. “We’re going to bring back these two shows and then sit down and reassess,” she says. “Does it make sense to talk about future collaboration? What are our goals forA2023?”long-term goal of the series, Friend says, is to expand its ability to help amateur contributors working on their audio submissions from scratch. Before the pandemic shuttered programming, they worked with two such producers in 2018 and four in 2019. “It’s very hands-on and labor intensive, but we think it’s like a core part of what we want to be able to do in the future to help keep bringing new independent producers into a nontraditional audio pipeline,’’ Friend says. “So you at least walk away from that experience with a piece that you could pitch somewhere else.”
Fans have long been on the lookout for the return of Audio Under the Stars. Durham resident Matt Navey volunteered during the 2019 season and says he was thrilled to hear about the new season. The event offers a somewhat unique announced a September 23 event at the Plant, an event space with local breweries and businesses converted from an old manufacturing yard near Pittsboro in Chatham County. Taking the show on the road has been a longtime goal, Friend says, and the Plant offers a unique space for programming. The show’s roots are in Durham, Friend adds, and hosting shows in the city is a priority.Butthe return to Durham has been a rocky road. In July, organizers announced on social media that Audio Under the Stars’ partnership with CDS was no more, leading to unexpected expenses. For years, the center had provided access to equipment as well as a venue for shows, invaluable for a festival otherwise supported by individual donations and a small, intermittent stream of grant money. According to the social media post, organizers were told CDS was no longer looking to host any partner events for the foreseeable future. Friend did not detail more information about the end of the partnership but says she is open to working with the center in the future. The new partnership with Duke Arts is much-needed good news for Friend and March. The department will support September’s event at the Plant and a show later in the fall in Durham, with a time and place to be announced soon, according to “Audioorganizers.Underthe Stars gives us a respite from our daily lives and brings together community and music—one of core goals,” John Brown, Vice Provost for the Arts at Duke, wrote the INDY. “Our entire Duke Arts team is thrilled to partner with this wonderful program and we look forward to these shows.”
Audio Under the Stars has enthralled local audiences since 2014. Now, the beloved festival moves on to its next chapter.
ETC.
AUDIO UNDER THE STARS Friday, September 23, 8 p.m. | The Plant, Pittsboro | audiounderthestars.org
Friend, who now works as a producer at WUNC, says she was “flabbergasted” by the turnout at their first show, which she and March organized alongside other students taking classes in audio documentary at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Study (CDS). “[There] was, like right off the bat, an inkling that this is something that appeals to more than just audio nerds,” Friend says. “There’s an audience for this.”
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music screen stage art
PHOTO COURTESY OF PNC ARENA
Please check with local venues for their health and safety protocols. Circles around the Sun $23+. Sun, Aug. 21, 8 p.m. Lincoln Raleigh.Theatre, Jack Johnson: Meet the Moonlight Tour $41+. Sun, Aug. 21, 7:15 p.m. Coastal Credit Union Music Park, Raleigh. Jazz Brunch Sunday with Al Strong Sun, Aug. 21, 12 p.m. Alley Twenty Six, Durham. Man or Astro-man? $25. Sun, Aug. 21, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham. Rooftop Jazz Brunch $45. Sun, Aug. 21, 10 a.m. The Willard Rooftop Lounge, Raleigh. Yeaux Katz $7. Sun, Aug. 21, 3 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill. The Beths $20. Mon, Aug. 22, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham. Live Jazz with Danny Grewen & Griffanzo Mon, Aug. 22, 6 p.m. Imbibe, Chapel Hill. Goo Goo Dolls $38+. Tues, Aug. 23, 6:30 p.m. Red Raleigh.Amphitheater,Hat Live Jazz with the Brian Horton Trio Tues, Aug. 23, 9 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham. Movies under the Stars: High School Musical Thurs, Aug. 18, 8 p.m. The Forest Theatre, Chapel Hill. Dirty Dancing and Grease $10. Fri, Aug. 19, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham. The Five Deadly Venoms and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin $6+. Sat, Aug. 20, 2 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary. Grease 2 Brunch $11. Sat, Aug. 20, 11:30 a.m. Raleigh.DrafthouseAlamoCinema, Read the Room: A Chill Variety Show Wed, Aug. 17, 7:30 p.m. Durty Bull Brewing Durham.Company, Future Stars of Comedy Thurs, Aug. 18, 8 p.m. James Joyce Irish Pub, Durham. Downtown Comedy Showcase Fri, Aug. 19, 8 p.m. The Glass Jug Beer Lab, Durham. Kevin Hart: Reality Check $450. Sat, Aug. 20, 7 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh. Kurtis Conner $40+. Sat, Aug. 20, 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham. PlayMakers Open House Sat, Aug. 20, 11 a.m. ChapelRepertoryPlayMakersCompany,Hill. WAR on the Catwalk $35+. Sat, Aug. 20, 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham. Kevin Hart performs at PNC Arena on Saturday, August 20
Snail Mail performs at Haw River Ballroom on Saturday, August 20
Blends with Friends (Open Decks) Wed, Aug. 17, 5 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. John Hiatt & The Goners $43+. Wed, Aug. 17, 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham. Live Jazz with Marc Puricelli and Friends Wed, Aug. 17, 7 p.m. Imbibe, Chapel Hill. Mary CarpenterChapin$39+. Wed, Aug. 17, 7:30 p.m. DPAC, Durham. Alesana $20. Thurs, Aug. 18, 7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro. Al Strong: Love Stronger $15+. Thurs, Aug. 18, 7 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham. Mellow Swells Thurs, Aug. 18, 7:30 p.m. Imbibe, Chapel Hill. Roger Waters $35+. Thurs, Aug. 18, 8 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh. Sumac $17. Thurs, Aug. 18, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. Fade to Black: A Tribute to Metallica $10. Fri, Aug. 19, 8:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh. La Fiesta Latin Jazz Quintet $15+. Fri, Aug. 19, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham. MAE $25. Fri, Aug. 19, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham. Abbey Road LIVE! $8+. Sat, Aug. 20, 4 and 8:30 p.m. Cat’s Carrboro.Cradle, Greensky Bluegrass $25+. Sat, Aug. 20, 6:30 p.m. Red Hat Raleigh.Amphitheater, Patrick McGrew Trio Sat, Aug. 20, 6:30 p.m. The Oak House, Durham. Sleigh Bells: Texis Tour $23. Sat, Aug. 20, 8:30 p.m. Lincoln Raleigh.Theatre, Snail Mail $30. Sat, Aug. 20, 8 p.m. Haw River Saxapahaw.Ballroom, Steve QuintetHaines $25. Sat, Aug. 20, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham. Trinidad Jame$ $25+. Sat, Aug. 20, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill. Lucinda Williams $35. Aug. 21-22, 8 p.m. Haw River Saxapahaw.Ballroom, C U LT U R E CA L E N DA R FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR: INDYWEEK.COM
Monica Byrne: The Actual Star Wed, Aug. 17, 7 p.m. Online; presented by Flyleaf Books. Storytime in the Garden Wed, Aug. 17, 10:30 a.m. NCMA, Raleigh. Heather Newton: The DaughtersPuppeteer’sThurs, Aug. 18, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. Schellman:Katharine Death at the Manor Thurs, Aug. 18, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill. Patricia Bryan and Thomas Wolf: The Plea Tues, Aug. 23, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
Mindful Museum: Slow AppreciationArt Wed, Aug. 17, 6 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh. When You’re Hot You’re Hot: Exhibit and Third Friday Reception Fri, Aug. 19, 6 p.m. 5 Points Gallery, Durham. Artspace CelebrationSummer Sat, Aug. 20, 12 p.m. Artspace, Raleigh. Open NoelleStudio:GunnSat, Aug. 20, 1:30 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh. What’s Sculpture?ThatSat, Aug. 20, 10:30 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh. page
PHOTO COURTESY OF HAW RIVER BALLROOM
18 August 17, 2022 INDYweek.com INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.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 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:8.17.22solution to last week’s puzzle MEDIUM#17 2348 763 49 64 8679 95 75 352 4276MEDIUM#18 419 653 8295 43 162 27 5986548 397932 8562 4371591 23874
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EMPLOYMENT Software Engineer II Software Engineer II, F/T, at Truist (Raleigh, NC) Deliver technically complex solutions. Perform system integration support for all project work. Dvlp customized coding, s/ ware integration, perform analysis, configure solutions, using tools specific to the project or the area. Lead & participate in the dvlpmt, testing, implmtn, maintenance, & support of highly complex solutions in adherence to co. standards, incl robust unit testing & support for subsequent release testing. Must have a Bach’s Deg in Comp Sci, S/ware Engg or related tech’l field. Must have 4 yrs of exp in s/ware engg or IT consulting positions performing/utilizing the following: in-depth knowl in info systems & ability to identify, apply, & implmt IT best practices; understanding of key business processes & competitive strategies related to the IT function; planning & managing projects & solving complex problems by applying best practices; providing direction & mentoring less expd teammates; & utilizing exp w/: Cloud Technologies: AWS, Azure, or GCP; SOA & Open API methodologies; SQL; MQ; JMS; Git; Maven; Jenkins; Advanced TIBCO complex prgmg & support skills; TIBCO BW; TIBCO Plugins; TIBCO Admin; TIBCO EMS; TIBCO Adapters; JAVA; & Mulesoft. Position may be eligible to work remotely but is based out of & reports to Truist offices in Raleigh, NC. Must be available to travel to Raleigh, NC regularly for meetings & reviews w/ manager & project teams w/in 24-hrs’ notice. Email resume w/ cvr ltr to: Paige. Whitesell@Truist.com (Ref. Job No. R0065357) Software Engineer III Software Engineer III, F/T at Truist Bank (Raleigh, NC) Deliver highly complex solutions w/ significant system linkages, dependencies, associated risk. Lead & perform dvlpmt efforts such as analysis, dsgn, coding/creating, & testing. Must have Bach’s deg in Comp Sci, Comp Engg, Mechanical Engg or related field. Must have 6 yrs of progressive exp in s/ware engg or IT Consulting positions performing the following: applying in-depth knowl in info systems & understanding of key business processes & competitive strategies related to the IT function to identify, apply, & implmt IT best practices; applying broad functional knowl in reqmt gathering, analysis, dsgn, dvlpmt, testing, implmtn, & deployment of applications; planning & managing projects & solving complex problems by applying best practice; providing direction & mentoring less expd teammates; & utilizing exp w/: TFS (Azure DevOps); FTP; SOAPUI; IBM WebSphere MQ; Tomcat Web Services; UNIX; Visio; IBM DB2; Pega; Websphere; Open API & service architectures; IBM Content Manager; IBM Websphere process Server (WPS); & J2EE. Position may be eligible to work remotely but is based out of & reports to Truist offices in Raleigh, NC. Must be available to travel to Raleigh, NC regularly for meetings & reviews w/ manager & project teams w/in 24-hrs’ notice. Email resume w/ cvr ltr to: Paige.Whitesell@Truist.com (Ref. Job No. R0061976)
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