INDY Week March 8, 2023

Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill

Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill

March 8, 2023

March 8, 2023

MOMS 4 LIBERTY

PARENTS’ BILLOF RIGHTS

WEDON’T CO-PARENT WITHTHE GOV’T

CORRECTION

MISCORRECTION MISCORRECTION

Despite her considerable achievements, Orange County’s new school board is ousting superintendent Monique Felder. Does this mark a departure from the focus on student equity? By Jasmine Gallup

, p.4

Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill

VOL.

CONTENTS

4 The Orange County school board is ousting superintendent Moniqe Felder despite her considerable achievements. BY

JASMINE GALLUP

6 A Guilford County couple is mired in litigation after retired Durham judge Jim Hardin Jr. evicted them, causing them to lose their business and hundreds of thousands of dollars. BY

THOMASI MCDONALD

8 Questions remain about the Christmas blackout that left seniors and disabled residents of JJ Henderson apartments at risk. BY

CHLOE NGUYEN

ARTS & CULTURE

12 Spirit In the Land at The Nasher Museum of Art offers deeply rooted perspectives on urgent ecological concerns. BY

PAMIR KICIMAN

14 A preview of The View UpStairs at North Raleigh Arts and Creative Theatre and a review of RedBird Theater Company's Red BY BYRON

WOODS

16 Two new American Idol hopefuls keep the Tar Heel tradition of talent on the show strong. BY

KYESHA JENNINGS

18 "I want to continue to be a shapeshifter," folksinger Willi Carlisle says, interviewed ahead of his upcoming performance at The Pinhook.

BY NICK MCGREGOR

THE REGULARS

3 Backtalk | Op-ed 20 Culture Calendar

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Lawrence, Glenn McDonald, Nick

McGregor, Gabi Mendick, Shelbi

Polk, Dan Ruccia, Byron Woods

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Popa Chubby performs at Lincoln Theatre on Sunday, March 12. (See calendar, page 20.)

PHOTO COURTESY OF LINCOLN THEATRE

Last week for the web, we ran an op-ed by Raleigh resident and community organizer Reeves Peeler with some suggestions on how to make Raleigh’s future municipal elections more fair and inclusive of all residents, the biggest being to limit individual campaign contributions to candidates. Readers were mostly on board, though a few had some thoughts on the influence of PACs.

From DUSTIN INGALLS on Twitter:

I don’t disagree in theory, but something to think about: interested donors can always fund Super PACs to influence the elections, and lowering donation limits gives candidates less money to respond to attacks.

Reader IAIN BURNETT elaborated via email:

I also wish elections were fair, but then we notice the 800-pound gorilla riding the elephant in the room. Even if individual direct contributions were limited to $500, PACs for local candidates are legal in this state, each accepting the maximum. Independent expenditure PACs can accept unlimited donations from people, businesses, unions, or trade groups. Allowing some money is a good idea—it’s an indicator of candidate worth if a lot of people put money in. But i think splitting hairs on how candidates get money misses the big problem—our election system rewards candidates who are good at raising money and turning out voters (and being outrageous or making unrealistic promises can do both things). We need an election system that rewards candidates who will do a good job for the entire constituency, not just the subset who voted for them. And that is going to be a hard problem to fix.

Safeguards Needed

S arah Edwards also reported for the web last week on the closing of Durham diner Jack Tar and the Colonel’s Daughter. We had lots of upset readers bemoaning the closing on our Instagram page.

From @UNIONSPECIALBREAD : Beyond sad to read this.

From @WOOFSPACE: what?! there’s always a multi-hour wait whenever I try to go there never even got to try it! so sad :(

From @DEREKALANROWE : This place is a gem! Such a staple for me and my family and friends here in Durham. Soooooo sad to see it go. RIP Jack Tar, Saint James, Dos Perros AND Quarter Horse

From @DRESSESYOURTRESSES : The corner booth in the photo is where me and my husband had brunch after we got married in our living room

From @WEBLOREART: One of the best things I’ve ever ate was from there. It will be missed

From @REBSUZ: Such a shame. I love this place.

And from @MISSIONPIZZAWS, who puts it best: This fucking sucks.

BY SHERRI ZANN ROSENTHAL backtalk@indyweek.com

My neighbor, a single mother with an infant, is anxiously watching her house and lot get flooded by the smalllot development next door.

The developer is in the process of building five houses where there were previously two and an ADU. There is only a net gain of two residential units; however, the destruction is tremendous. The developer cut down the tree canopy, then scraped every tree, bush, and blade of grass off the lots. The rain erodes off the topsoil into our water supply, picking up pollution along the way.

Then he built gutters and pipes that send the rainwater into my neighbor’s lower-lying yard, where it laps up against her foundation and erodes its support. Soon, the water will make her foundation crack.

It’s a threat to her home’s value, her health, and the health of her infant child. The savings she put into buying her modest home may be destroyed.

Rebecca tried for months to contact the developer and called various city staff members. Nobody called back.

After a while she wrote the mayor. Soon she got an email.

The development complied with the city’s planning and development ordinance small-lot provisions, and so it is a civil matter between neighbors, said the city’s email.

My neighbor can’t afford to sue anyone, much less a developer. Worse, once this developer sells the houses or lots, there will be not one but up to five different parties to possibly sue and try to come to agreement with for a settlement. That gets very expensive.

This is a terrible burden to put on our residents, to try to negotiate for reasonable stormwater handling after the fact, for what a developer just built, while under the pressure of damage being done to their homes.

My neighbor wrote, “This issue will likely drive me out of my home within the next couple of years. I cannot afford single-handedly to create drainage infrastructure for my whole block to redirect water from five lots, and advocating to change the city ordinance feels like a losing battle.”

This woman’s plight foreshadows what will happen to many people all over town if the city council votes to accept the “Anthony amendments” (“SCAD”) this spring, which will expand small-lot development into many more parts of Durham and remove or erode the few protections afforded by the existing small-lot option rules.

As density increases, the need for conscious, deliberate stormwater and other utility planning also increases. Instead, three years ago, the city decided to allow individual developers to do as they please “as of right.” Now the city denies any responsibility for the predictable mayhem that is resulting.

My neighbor’s flooding is just one real-world example of the problems that occur when the city abandons its responsibility for strategic growth planning and oversight, and instead deregulates development. W

As density in Durham increases, the need for conscious, deliberate stormwater and other utility planning also increases.

Sherri Zann Rosenthal is a retired Deputy City Attorney for Durham and resident of the Watts-Hillandale neighborhood.

Orange County

Course Miscorrection

Orange County’s new school board has ousted superintendent Monique Felder. Does this mark a departure from the focus on student equity?

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

For months, parents and teachers in Orange County have worried that a new school board, composed of more moderate members who were elected last May, would reverse the progress a progressive board has made in the past few years.

In January, those fears seemingly became reality when the new board ousted longtime superintendent Dr. Monique Felder, who focused on promoting student equity.

Felder was first hired as superintendent in November 2019. In 2020—the first year of the COVID pandemic—the school board officially offered Felder a one-year extension to her three-year contract, voting unanimously to keep her on as superintendent through 2024.

On top of that, Felder received a $10,000 bonus for “outstanding performance.” At the time, all board members agreed Felder had done an outstanding job of leading schools through the pandemic, which had created an unprecedented crisis for students and teachers.

Since then, Felder’s employment contract was extended once, with the school district agreeing to keep her on through June 2025. Earlier this year, however, when her contract again came up for extension, the new school board denied it, “effectively showing her the door,” said Hillary MacKenzie, former school board chair, during a meeting last month.

“All seven of you know that this inaction is a quiet way to push a superintendent out of a district,” MacKenzie told the board members. She noted the significant progress Felder has helped students make since the 2020-21 school year.

In fact, in 2022, students in 10 of the district’s 12 schools exceeded the state’s

expectations for academic growth (that is, how much students learn over time), according to the NC Department of Public Instruction (DPI). That’s a higher percent age than in any other district in the state. (It’s worth noting that when it comes to student test results, the district is in worse shape than it was before the COVID pandemic, like many school districts across the nation.)

“While [Orange County Schools] still has a long way to go, our students are growing. Our data are moving in the right direction for the first time in more than a decade,” MacKenzie said. “I am grateful that [Felder] has moved the needle for our students.”

In a written statement to the INDY, Felder didn’t directly address the board’s decision to deny her another contract extension. But she mentioned how, in spite of the district’s progress, “some will always exploit times of uncertainty to advance their own limited or destructive agendas.”

“This is not new, nor is it exclusive to our district. From a leadership perspective, however, it is entirely unacceptable,” Felder wrote. “More than anything, our students, staff, families, and community are craving stable leadership as schools and school systems everywhere continue to regain their footing after COVID …. For over 32 years, I have worked tirelessly and exclusively for the service of all children, and right now we have a priceless opportunity before us to keep things moving in the right direction.”

Before Felder was hired, the Orange County school district saw seven superintendents (or interim superintendents) serve in 10 years. That’s a faster rate of turnover than the North Carolina standard, which is typically about three years, according to a

2014 report from the Brookings Institution.

By 2025—the year Felder’s contract expires—the superintendent will have served a little over five years. But that doesn’t mean the district can’t benefit from her continued leadership.

Accomplishments

When Felder joined the Orange County school district, she immediately turned her focus to addressing the district’s racial disparities, particularly in student performance and discipline. Her efforts had an immediate impact.

In the four years since Felder became superintendent, graduation rates for Black students have improved, going from 87.2 percent in 2018-19 to 88.7 percent in 2021-22, according to NC DPI.

In addition, racial disparities in school discipline have lessened dramtically. In 201819, Black students composed 46 percent of short-term suspensions despite being only 15 percent of the student population. Last school year, Black students were suspended much less, making up about 29.2 percent of suspensions even as the student population increased to 20 percent.

Part of that may be due to the district’s new “code of conduct, character, and support.” Released in 2021, it encourages teachers to handle student misbehav-

ior with prevention and intervention techniques before defaulting to suspensions.

Felder also led the district in creating a comprehensive plan to address equity issues, conducting regular surveys of students and staff with questions such as “how diverse, integrated, and fair [is] school for students from different races, ethnicities, and cultures?”

Earlier this year, 65 percent of respondents answered that question favorably, a big jump over the 43 percent who answered favorably last winter, according to Sarah Patterson, a social worker at New Hope Elementary School.

“During [Felder’s] tenure, I have seen historically marginalized students be more supported in schools,” Patterson said last month during a school board meeting. “Students no longer have to worry about being deadnamed in front of their peers, because they are now protected by our gender support policy. Students get to celebrate the joy of Black History Month through our first-ever district-wide student expo [in February].”

“All of these improvements are because of Dr. Felder and the steps she has taken as superintendent to support all students in this district,” Patterson concluded.

Under Felder’s leadership, “social-emotional learning” has become a priority for staff. In the past few years, the district has made regular updates to its antidiscrimina-

MOMS 4 LIBERTY PARENTS’ BILL OF RIGHTS

WE DON’T CO-PARENT WITH THE GOV’T

10 of 12 schools

IN

tion policy—one of the strongest in the state—providing guidance to staff on how to support students who experience “oppressive words or actions” because of their race, sexuality, gender identity, or disability.

The district also released a new code of “conduct, character, and support” in 2021, which encourages teachers to handle student misbehavior with prevention and intervention techniques before defaulting to suspensions.

Felder has sent out regular newsletters addressing issues of race. Following George Floyd’s death in 2020, Felder wrote an open letter outlining the district’s commitment to “acknowledging and denouncing the racism and racial injustice we see and experience in our country.”

“Our district will not tolerate our students feeling unsafe in their own skin,” Felder wrote. “Every single one of our students deserves a future untainted by the byproducts of racial injustice. As a school district, it is essential that we help secure this future for our students.”

An Orange County parent and school employee speaking before the school board last month echoed concerns that Felder leaving would have a negative impact on students and staff.

“Dr. Felder is the first superintendent in my 16 years to visit our schools and have real conversations about our experiences and our needs and then actually follow up on our concerns with possible next steps,” said Rosemary Deane, a family outreach staffer at New Hope Elementary School.

“We are all beginning to see glimpses of her vision that all students may experience academic success, but we have a long way to go. I urge the board to extend her contract so that we may continue this powerful and urgent work.” School board chair Will Atherton and other members declined to comment on the board’s decision to deny Felder a contract extension. Atherton wrote, via email, “The board cannot discuss confidential personnel information, as it is protected by state law and our ethics policy.”

The new school board

When Orange County held elections for the school board last year, MacKenzie was one of two liberal board members who had decided not to seek reelection. MacKen-

zie’s decision followed a turbulent tenure marked by angry parents railing against mask mandates, Moms for Liberty members accusing board members of “grooming” children (with LGBTQIA+-inclusive books), and white supremacists gathering outside board meetings.

Two newcomers were elected to the school board: Andre Richmond, a captain with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, and Anne Purcell, a former principal. Richmond and Purcell joined school board veterans Atherton and Bonnie Hauser to create a new four-person voting bloc that occasionally overrides the three other more liberal board members—Sarah Smylie, Jennifer Moore, and Carrie Doyle. Together, the bloc voted to make Atherton the new board chair and Purcell the new vice chair.

In the nine months since the new board was elected, members have appeared mostly united in ongoing efforts to improve student performance, support teachers, and create equity for Black and minority students. But there have been a few stumbles.

In October, Atherton, Hauser, Purcell, and Richmond voted against instituting a stress management program for teachers that could have reduced burnout and turnover. Purcell cited concerns from teachers that the administrator of the program was “bullying” or “disrespectful.” Hauser said she had also heard some “bad press.”

Felder, who recommended the program, argued it was selected based on requests from staff and was vetted before being brought before the board. Nevertheless, her proposal was shot down.

Later that month, the same four board members voted down the school improvement plan for Gravelly Hill Middle School, created after the state designated the school as “low-performing.” When Felder and district staff presented a revised version of the plan in November, the voting bloc shot it down for a second time. Shortly afterward, the principal of Gravelly Hill Middle School resigned.

In Orange County, as in every other county across the state, votes by the school board on “personnel matters” (those relating to employees) are secret. So there’s no way to know which board members may have voted for or against extending Felder’s contract. MacKenzie, however, is worried the board’s recent actions will mark the start of more resignations across the district.

“When we lose superintendents and members of district leadership, we lose principals and [assistant principals],” MacKenzie said during the February meeting. “And when we lose school leadership, we lose teachers and other support staff members.”

In the meantime, Felder says she is simply resolved to do the best she can for students while she is still superintendent. In her statement, she also declined to comment on personnel matters, “out of concern for the integrity of that process, and because I have no desire to take away from the one thing needed,” she wrote.

“What children need right now is our relentless focus … on making every hour and every day fruitful for every child,” Felder said. “While this is not rocket science, it certainly requires laser-like focus on eliminating any barriers or impediments to learning. That’s it. Every single day, that is what you will find me doing with my teams and with everyone in our community who supports this work.” W

2022, OCS’ 4-YEAR GRADUATION RATE WAS:

A Troublesome Photo Finish

A Guilford County couple is mired in litigation after retired judge Jim Hardin Jr. evicted them, causing them to lose their business and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com

The Red Carpet Selfie Studio on Ninth Street in Durham opened late last year. It was booked solid last weekend, according to its website, and is already advertising itself as the number one selfie photo studio in the Triangle.

The studio features more than 20 colorful interactive photo booths. An olivegreen-painted booth features two ornate, cream-colored Victorian thrones. There’s a Durham Bulls baseball team booth with a home plate and brand-new baseball bat. There’s a kid-size all-terrain vehicle (ATV), that sits atop fake snow in an orange-redcolored booth decorated with white plastic snowflakes. Yet another booth has a gray wall backdrop plastered with fake $100 bills.

According to the Red Carpet website, the studio opens on Thursdays and Fridays at four p.m. and on weekends at noon. Patrons can also visit the place by appointment on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.

“Our exhibits are completely unique to Red Carpet Selfie Studio and cannot be found anywhere else,” the owners state on the business’s website. “Drawing on our unique and diverse set of customers in the Triangle area, we design interactive exhibits that can be enjoyed by anyone and offer a flare of local flavor enjoyed by Triangle residents and visitors alike.”

Guilford County couple Joseph Wooten

and Erica Bishop previously operated the Bull City Selfie Museum at the same location before the building’s owner, retired Durham superior court judge Jim Hardin Jr., evicted them a little over a year ago.

On April 29, Bishop and Wooten filed a countercomplaint in superior court claiming in their 31-page affidavit that they were wrongfully evicted.

In a complaint dated February 23 of last year, Hardin stated that the couple “failed to make the rent payment that was due on February 1.”

Hardin also claimed the couple violated the terms of their lease agreement when they “took steps towards seeking a permit to sell alcohol in connection with their business at the premises.”

Michael Moore, the owner of the construction company that transformed the basement of the two-story building into a selfie studio, is also seeking nearly $40,000 in damages from the couple.

Wooten and Bishop deny both allegations, saying they paid Moore about $140,000 for upfitting the basement.

The couple’s complaint claims that Moore did not even have a general contractor’s license when he did about $140,000 in renovations to the basement on their behalf to create the selfie museum booths and exhibits.

Wooten and Bishop claim that, as a con-

sequence of Moore’s Construction Company not having a certified contractor, they were unable to obtain a building permit after an inspector with the Durham Fire Department “determined the Bull City Selfie Museum could not be granted a Certificate of Occupancy.”

A January 22 report from last year issued by fire department inspector Chris Wilcox determined that the “property must go through a change of occupancy” as an amusement center, that “the space was not permitted for use at this time in the current capacity,” and that “exit signs were needed,” according to the couple’s complaint.

Wooten’s and Bishop’s grievances have attracted the attention of local and state authorities.

This week, Frank Weisner, executive director of the NC Licensing Board for General Contractors, confirmed that Moore’s Construction Company is under investigation for potential violations of the state statutes concerning general contractors.

Weisner told the INDY that his office

opened the investigation on September 8, exactly one year after Wooten and Bishop signed a lease to rent the basement space of the Couch Building at 714 Ninth Street.

Weisner said the investigation should be completed by the spring, and the state board will determine what actions need to be taken or dismiss the case altogether.

Moore’s attorney, David Lewis of Durham, told the INDY that paperwork had been exchanged between his client and the state licensing board, but he declined further comment on an ongoing investigation

Wyatt “W. C.” Blalock, Durham’s chief building inspector, said he will “review available information” to determine if the basement of the Couch Building is operating under a limited “scope reduction,” which Hardin and Moore submitted to his office soon after Bishop and Wooten were evicted, or as an assembly venue “with over 50 people in attendance.”

Wooten and Bishop take stern and considerable exception to the Red Carpet owners’ claims on their website that they designed the interactive exhibits. They say

Erica Bishop, Joseph Wooten, and their daughter PHOTO COURTESY OF BISHOP & WOOTEN

WOOTEN

September 8, and Bishop basement space Ninth Street. investigation should the state actions need to altogether.

Durham, had been the state declined further investigation

Durham’s chief “review availthe baseoperating reduction,” which his office were evict“with over 50 and conRed Carpet that they They say

Red Carpet Selfie Studio poached their creativity and are now claiming it as their own.

“Everything in there, we created,” Wooten told the INDY this week. “Everything you see; the money room, the ATV—I still have the pictures of when I bought the ATV— even down to the paint on the walls.”

Bishop says when Bull City Selfie was at the location, one of the goals was to promote the work of local visual artists and photographers.

“One of our pieces was by a female artist who had done a thing with the word ‘love,’” Bishop says. “It’s still up, but they crossed out her name.”

Red Carpet was closed late Thursday afternoon, but the place was booked from four to nine p.m. Saturday and all day Sunday, from noon until five p.m., according to its website. The bookings consist of 30 people who each pay $29 per hour to take selfie photos in the interactive booths.

“They’re even using our business model,” Wooten says.

“Everything else is exactly the same,” Bishop adds. “Literally, exactly how their website is set up is how ours was set up. The same thing with ticket sales. We were doing 25 to 30 people an hour, with ages five and under free, ages 6 to 12 $10, and a general adult admission of $25. They basically took our whole business model.”

Red Carpet owners did not respond to any INDY emails or phone calls.

This week, Hardin’s attorney, J. Gray Wilson of Durham, told the INDY in an email that even though the website states otherwise, “Red Carpet Studio is not yet (and has not been) open for business.”

Wilson’s assertion does not align with what the INDY has learned about the business after talking with several people who have visited the selfie studio in recent days, including Sunday, the day before Wilson’s statement.

Kandace Rice is the owner of Freedom Beauty and Aesthetics in Raleigh. Rice told the INDY that in late January, she contacted Red Carpet to book an hour of selfie photo fun with three of her friends to celebrate her birthday on February 19. She found the business online, spoke with a man over the phone, and booked a slot for February 18 at three p.m.

“I walked in and I was amazed,” Rice told the INDY this week.

Rice said a woman greeted them, gave them a tour of the place, and explained that the business had “just opened up” and they were “trying to get their name out there.”

“When I walked in and saw the exhibits I thought it was Black-owned with a white employee,” Rice says. “It’s a beautiful place and so inspiring. The $29 we paid was

worth it. It’s one of a kind. I mean, I did an entire photo shoot.”

After Rice posted photos of her visit to Red Carpet on social media, she says a couple of her friends visited the place.

“One just went yesterday,” she told the INDY on Monday.

Hardin is a formidable legal titan. In the early 2000s, he attracted global attention as the lead prosecutor in the trial of Michael Peterson, the former Herald-Sun columnist, novelist, and Durham mayoral candidate who was convicted in 2003 for the murder of his wife, Kathleen Peterson. The case has been featured on HBO and Netflix.

In 2021, Hardin retired after serving for nearly three decades in Durham’s legal system and judiciary and became president of the Couch Development Company, his family’s commercial real estate business. Hardin apparently wanted to knock the Bull City Selfie Museum down after evicting its owners.

day parties. They say the retired judge was not averse to the suggestion, telling them to “research” the subject. But they never applied for an ABC license.

Hardin put no such alcohol prohibitions on the new tenants.

“The owner of Red Carpet Selfie Studio intends to seek a permit to sell beer and wine in the space and I believe he has already made those types of inquiries of city and county authorities,” Hardin wrote in an email to Blalock. “Although I personally believe there are too many hurdles to scale to obtain such a permit, that is not my concern at this point. My immediate objective is to make sure he can operate this photography business (without selling alcohol) in the space as it currently exists. Please confirm that Red Carpet Selfie Studio is able to operate (without selling alcohol) in the space as it is currently designated so that I can relay this information to the owner.”

Last week, after a 10-hour mediation meeting, the two parties’ efforts to reach an out-of-court settlement were unsuccessful.

according to their complaint, including an additional $6,750 paid to Moore’s Construction Company “to locate old building wiring connected to the whole building’s electrical system, which had preexisting problems.”

Two months after the upfitting process began, the selfie museum tenants say Hardin told them “Couch didn’t have the money” when they approached him about reimbursing them for the unexpected expenses. Instead, their landlord provided the reimbursement with an amended lease the tenants received on November 17, according to the complaint.

“The first month of the amended lease term was February 1, 2022,” Davis stated in the complaint. On February 7, Hardin sent Wooten and Bishop another letter demanding a rent payment by February 9.

On February 8, one day after receiving Hardin’s letter, Wooten and Bishop pulled into the parking lot of the Couch Building and saw someone changing the locks of the main entrance door. Wooten, according to the complaint, “went back to his truck, told Erica what he saw, and said, ‘Hardin is kicking us out.’”

The former tenants say Hardin then went upstairs to his office and returned with a typed letter “dated February 9, 2022, but that had been marked through with a handwritten date of February 8.”

Bishop says Hardin told them they were trespassing and that they needed to hand over their keys and leave.

Blalock, the city and county’s chief building inspector, shared emails with the INDY that indicated that on February 24 of last year Hardin requested modifications to a building permit that would allow him to demolish the exhibits Wooten and Bishop created and paid for.

Hardin, via email, asked Blalock to “please reduce the scope of the permit to authorize the demolition of the wing walls and for the reconstruction of the wall petitions as they existed prior to modifications made or directed by the Bull City Selfie Museum, LLC.”

But with the new Red Carpet business, Hardin, on January 2 of this year—days before Moore applied for a building permit—sent Blalock an email indicating he had spoken with Moore and an architect to meet all needed “requirements so that the space can eventually be designated as assembly/event space.”

When they were tenants, Bishop says they spoke to Hardin about the possibility of serving beer and wine to their patrons for special events like bridal showers or birth-

Garrett Davis, the couple’s attorney, says the two parties have until April to settle the issue before going to court for active civil litigation.

“We still could settle,” Davis says. He adds that he doesn’t fault the owners of Red Carpet, who are just trying to get their business up and running.

The INDY previously chronicled the Guilford County couple’s dream of opening a selfie studio on Ninth Street, one of the city’s most eclectic retail corridors.

“It is part portrait studio, part art gallery, and serves as a flexible space for special events and other gatherings,” Davis stated in the complaint.

The couple’s dream turned into a financial nightmare with Hardin’s claim that they owed him nearly a quarter of a million dollars—$237,000 plus 12 percent annual interest—after he evicted them.

Wooten and Bishop said from the outset that the project was plagued by issues posed by the building. As a consequence they ended up paying for “work related to the entire building and common areas,”

The Wootens shared a copy of Hardin’s letter with the INDY, which appears as described. The date is marked through, and a handwritten statement indicates it was delivered to Wooten shortly after noon.

Hardin, in the letter, indicated his company would “defer and forebear action” if Wooten and Bishop made a rent installment payment of $2,221.70, along with a late fee of $200, by February 9.

Wooten and Bishop are the parents of a two-year-old daughter and three-monthold son. The young couple expected to marry last year but had to put their marital plans on hold after Hardin’s demand that they pay his company nearly a quarter of a million dollars, with an interest clock running. All told, they lost about $250,000.

Bishop says she sometimes scrolls through social media and sees patrons exclaiming how much they enjoyed their visit to the Red Carpet Selfie Studio and cries.

“They’re enjoying the benefits of my labor,” she says. “I want Hardin to recognize the wrong that was done to us. I don’t think people understand how traumatizing this has been for us.” W

“Everything in there, we created. Everything you see; the money room, the ATV—even down to the paint on the walls.”

Blackout Fallout

Despite progress, questions remain about the Christmas week blackout that left senior and disabled residents of Durham’s JJ Henderson apartments at risk.

BY CHLOE NGUYEN backtalk@indyweek.com

On December 23 and 24, a blackout at JJ Henderson Senior Apartments left residents confused, afraid, and at risk. Now Durham Housing Authority (DHA) officials say they are working with the building managers, California Commercial Investment Companies (CCI), to improve response in future emergencies. But communication with residents has been scarce, and some details about what happened during the blackout remain unclear.

At a virtual meeting February 14, members of DHA’s Resident Services and Operations Committee described improvements to the building’s electronic locks, possible new emergency charging stations, and plans for improved communications. They also pushed back on residents’ statements that no one checked on them until December 27, saying that someone did check on the building during the blackout.

JJ Henderson is an apartment community that provides affordable housing for seniors and disabled people. During the blackout in December, building residents said their health equipment, such as heart monitors, equipment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and electric wheelchairs, stopped working. The electronic locks to the building failed, they said, allowing strangers to enter.

They said that the lights went out in their apartments, and the heat failed in some units. And they said that no one from building management or DHA checked on them for several days.

“I was scared to death,” Pearlie Williams, a resident of JJ Henderson, said in an interview. “I was like, ‘Help me, what is going on?’”

News of the JJ Henderson blackout and its handling was first reported by The 9th Street Journal on February 3, after residents brought their concerns to a city council work session.

CCI has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

At the recent DHA meeting, Anthony Snell, the director of development at the housing authority, said that the building’s electronic locks, which failed during the outage, are now connected to the building’s emergency generator. He also said that he and CCI would explore creating emergency charging stations for residents’ medical devices and telephones.

Originally built in the 1970s, JJ Henderson was recently renovated by DHA in partnership with other companies, including CCI.

The $31.2 million renovation, part of DHA’s Downtown and Neighborhood Plan, utilized a $2.9 million loan from the City of Durham.

When the building reopened in October, DHA chief executive officer Anthony Scott hailed the JJ Henderson renovation project as a “model” for affordable housing in Durham. But with the renovation came a transition in management from DHA, which managed the building for many years, to CCI, a private company. Some residents are unhappy with how CCI handled the blackout, and three of those residents reported their concerns to the city council at a work session January 19.

The blackout was announced to residents over the JJ Henderson PA system, according to DHA. However, some residents say they didn’t hear the announcement. Scott said at the meeting that he planned to verify that the system worked.

Residents also say that no one from building management or DHA came to check on them until Tuesday, December 27, three days after the outage. But at the meeting, Scott said that according to CCI management, someone did visit the building during the blackout “to check on the building and make sure things were OK.” However, Scott said he was concerned about residents’ complaints.

“A part of the complaint that I think has some merit was just the notion that no one checked on them,” Scott said at the meeting. “CCI and I are going to have

some continuing conversations to make sure that there is a true check in on our residents when something like that happens. And again they said that someone did go to the building, so everyone who is there is not necessarily going to see the person.”

At the meeting, DHA representatives also discussed whether residents attempted to contact management during the blackout. Communications manager Aalayah Sanders said JJ Henderson management told her they received no emails or voicemails from residents during the blackout. She said she was not aware of any residents connecting with DHA via Facebook, text, or email during the power outage.

Scott said that he and Sanders would follow up to make sure no residents attempted to contact DHA through its emergency hotline.

Scott also reiterated that the building’s backup generator provided emergency lighting, elevator use, and heating in apartments during the blackout. However, some residents say that heat failed in their apartments. Residents also say although hallway lights functioned, apartments were dark.

The 9th Street Journal requested further information from DHA and CCI

JJ Henderson Senior Apartments PHOTO BY ABIGAIL BROMBERGER

Durham Housing Authority Statement

DHA would like to remind the 9th Street Journal that JJ Henderson provides independent living for seniors. As was previously stated, DHA and CCI have reviewed the concerns by some residents regarding the city-wide power outage to look at ways to improve. JJ Henderson residents should call 911 if an emergency occurs that needs immediate attention so proper emergency personnel can respond. If a unit did not or does not have heat, rather its during a citywide power outage or during normal operations, they are to call the emergency number that all residents have so the proper repair can be performed. Lastly, the claim that no one checked on the residents for several days is not accurate.

about their response to residents’ complaints. CCI representatives did not respond to the request or to earlier requests for comment.

DHA issued an emailed statement but did not elaborate on improvements further. The statement urges residents facing an emergency requiring “immediate attention” to call 911 and if their heat fails, to call a separate emergency number.

In the email, DHA also stated that “the claim that no one checked on the residents for several days is not accurate.” DHA provided no further details about any checks that may have taken place during the blackout.

Rafiq Zaidi, a 17-year-long resident of JJ Henderson, was one of three residents who spoke at the city council work session on January 19 about the blackout. He recently met with Scott to discuss the power outage.

Zaidi said he was only aware of a few steps building management has taken to respond to the blackout or to discuss it with residents.

“[CCI] did put up a poster on the bulletin board … in reference to resources that we can contact like the fire department, the disaster services, and EMS, ambulance—which we already had,” he said. “Other than that we haven’t had any communication.”

Zaidi added that the building management recently planted new shrubbery and grass in front of JJ Henderson.

“They have made the outside what we would call ‘presentable,’” he said.

CCI also recently held a Valentine’s Day event for residents, with catered services, Zaidi said.

Neither Zaidi, Williams, nor Daniel Marshburn have been contacted by CCI to discuss their concerns since they

reported their blackout experiences at the city council work session, they said. All three are longtime residents of JJ Henderson.

Williams hopes that residents and JJ Henderson staff will have a better relationship in the future.

“I’m hoping that there will be more unification between the staff and the residents,” she said. “We used to have a thing called the resident council, where the people address their issues with the staff. And my hoping is that we get that portion back.”

Zaidi expressed similar concerns, saying that the building no longer holds general meetings where residents can air grievances with staff.

“Prior to CCI coming in, being in partnership with DHA, we used to have monthly meetings, which we would call resident council meetings,” he said. “We would be able to talk to staff. And if you have any grievances, we would be able to let staff know what those grievances were.”

Despite some progress at the building, such as the improvements to the building locks, Zaidi worries that changes will stop once the public is less focused on this issue.

“Well, from our experiences in reporting conditions here with DHA for the last 17 years … they will respond, and once they think that everything is over with, the complaints have simmered down, there is no light being shined on what’s happening, they’ll go back to usual,” he said. W

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

CAT'S CRADLE

3/9 TH & 3/10 FR AN EVENING WITH YO LA TENGO

3/14 TU EMILY SCOTT ROBINSON / ALISA AMADOR / VIOLET BELL

3/21 TU RIVERSIDE

W/ THE CYBERIAN DUO

3/22 WE WHITE REAPER

W/ MILITARIE GUN, MAMALARKY

3/25 SA ARCHERS OF LOAF W/ TRUTH CLUB

3/26 SU ARCHERS OF LOAF W/ MJ LENDERMAN

3/28 TU WUNCMUSIC PRESENTS: IBEYI W/ OJERIME

3/29 WE CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS: OUR LAST NIGHT / FAME ON FIRE / RAIN CITY DRIVE

4/2 SU THE RESIDENTS

4/3 MO JAWNY W/ WALLICE

4/4 TU JOYWAVE W/ ELIOT LEE

4/6 TH THE CHURCH THE HYPNOGOGE ALBUM TOUR

4/7 FR DUSTER W/ WIDOWSPEAK

4/13 TH TAY TAY PARTY TAYLOR

SWIFT INSPIRED DJ DANCE PARTY

4/15 SA BUILT TO SPILL W/ DISCO DOOM, ORUÃ

4/16 SU CAROLINE ROSE W/ HAMMYDOWN

4/17 MO FLYLEAF BOOKS PRESENTS: MICHELLE ZAUNER PRESENTS HER MEMOIR CRYING IN H MART

4/18 TU SAMIA W/ RALPHIE KENT

4/21 FR THE DIP W/ BOULEVARDS

4/22 SA THE MOUNTAIN GOATS W/ ADEEM THE ARTIST

4/23 SU THE MOUNTAIN GOATS W/ ADEEM THE ARTIST

4/24 MO THEO KATZMAN

4/25 TU FRUIT BATS

4/29 SA DAVID CROSS W/ SEAN PATTON

5/3 WE YAEJI ($25/$28)

5/9 TU HOODOO GURUS

5/11 TH DOPAPOD

5/19 FR SUECO W/ TEENAGE DISASTER

5/27

3/26 SU NICOTINE DOLLS ($15/$17)

3/27 MO MAGIC GIANT ($18/$20)

3/28 TU CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS: PHONEBOY W/ BREAKUP SHOES

3/29 WE SHAWN MULLINS + LARRY CAMPBELL & TERESA WILLIAMS

3/30 TH COSMIC RAYS LIVE AV

3/31 FR WYATT EASTERLING W/ CAROLINE COTTER

4/3 MO ETRAN DE L’AÏR

4/4 TU FREE THROW

W/ CAN’T SWIM, HEART TO GOLD, EARLY HUMANS

4/5 WE WIKI W/ AKAI SOLO, PAPO2OO4

4/8 SA JPHONO1, JENNYANYKIND, MAYFLIES USA

4/9 SU HIGH VIS

4/12 WE THE BOBBY LEES W/ COR DU LUX

4/13 TH COCO & CLAIR CLAIR W/ GRANDMA

4/14 FR HAPPY LANDING

4/15 SA DONOVAN WOODS & HENRY JAMISON W/ ISABEL PLESS

4/16 SU GARCIA PEOPLES & CHRIS FORSYTH

4/20 TH SAM BURCHFIELD & THE SCOUNDRELS W/ VIRGINIA MAN

4/21 FR THE OLD CEREMONY W/ DISSIMILAR SOUTH

4/22 SA DEVON GILFILLIAN

3/10 FR BILMURI W/ HARBOUR

3/11 SA CURTIS WATERS W/ TOMMY RICHMAN

3/13 MO RUNNNER W/ WAVEFORM*

3/16 TH DUCK W/ FLORENCIA & THE FEELING, ELORA DASH

3/18 SA CELARIS W/ EARTHER, ANTIGONE, THE CARDINAL ENDEAVOR

3/21 TU CHEEKFACE W/ SAD PARK

3/24 FR MEDIUM BUILD W/ ZINADELPHIA

3/25 SA JERVIS CAMPBELL W/ THOMAS AUSTIN

4/23 SU ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS: ACID DAD W/ WINE LIPS

4/28 FR KILL ALTERS

W/ DELI GIRLS, MURDER PACT

4/29 SA CHESSA RICH ALBUM RELEASE

5/6 SA DESTROYER ( SOLO)

W/ THE REDS, PINKS & PURPLES

5/10 WE TRANSVIOLET W/ JAGWAR TWIN

5/12 FR VIENNA TENG

5/16 TU ANNIE DIRUSSO W/ HANNAH COLE

5/22 MO MATTHEW LOGAN VASQUEZ W/ DANNY GOLDEN

5/27 SA WESTERMAN

5/28 SU THE CRYSTAL CASINO BAND ($15/$18)

6/14 WE NRBQ

6/24 SA ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS: BAYONNE

6/25 SU JOE PUG ($25/$28)

WILD PINK RITZ (RALEIGH)

3/8 WE THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS

3/27 TU TENNIS – THE POLLEN TOUR W/ KATE BOLLINGER 5/10 WE AN EVENING WITH FEIST

5/27 SA BACKSEAT LOVERS MOTORCO (DURHAM)

3/ 21 TU SOULSIDE W/ J ROBBINS (BAND)

3/27 MO AVEY TARE W/ SHAM

5/1 MO UPSAHL

5/5 FR PUMA BLUE

5/10 WE SHAME W/ BEEN STELLAR

5/22 MO OFF! (RESCHEDULED)

6/5 MO FENNE LILY AND CHRISTIAN LEE HUTSON RED HAT AMPH (RALEIGH)

4/14 FR MT JOY

TU 3/14 @CAT’S CRADLE EMILY SCOTT ROBINSON & ALISA AMADOR & VIOLET BELL

Survival Stories

The Nasher Museum of Art’s Spirit in the Land exhibition offers deeply rooted perspectives on urgent ecological concerns.

BY PAMIR KICIMAN arts@indyweek.com

Discussions about the future of our planet are often framed as either/or scenarios: either we’re going to make progress mitigating climate and environmental challenges, or doomsday is already here.

What visitors can expect, instead, at the Nasher Museum of Art’s new exhibition is a rich and layered third narrative. Thoughtfully organized by curator Trevor Schoonmaker (now the museum’s director), Spirit in the Land offers a global perspective and creates an alternative touchstone that counters fears of planetary collapse with an enduring cultural, nature-based, and spiritual mythology that already exists in the folkways of many peoples.

Bringing together 30 artists in 69 total multimedia works, the exhibition runs through July 9. Admission to the Nasher Museum is free to the public.

It is difficult to be optimistic about the health of our planet. The contemporary works presented here don’t suggest it isn’t. Rather, they provide a deep dive into interconnections

and highlight the existing supportive web of practices, Indigenous cosmologies, plant medicine, and folkloric remedies.

“Interconnectivity is explored in many ways, and histories of environmental degradation overlap and intersect with the legacies of colonialism and slavery, making the case that environmental justice is racial and social justice,” says Schoonmaker.

The basic message: nature is important. This is conveyed in a nonpreachy and emotionally resonant way throughout. The featured artists provide a thought-provoking and heart-opening experience that comes from ancient heritage but feels current, as it’s one that wrestles with the issues of today—and not just environmental ones.

The exhibition’s stellar catalog is a collection of writings solicited by Schoonmaker from the artists and imparts a wealth of knowledge. (With the exception of Stacy Lynn Waddell, the following artist quotes in this article are taken from the catalog.)

The artist Andrea Chung—whose collages combine archi-

val photographs of enslaved people with herbal culture— writes, for example, about the ways that Black women brought their knowledge of herbal medicines to the New World: “Enslaved midwives were able to provide women with the power of resistance in the form of reproductive autonomy…with assistance in contraception, pre– and postnatal care, and even abortifacients.”

“The earth has no tongue, but it has its own language,” writes the textile artist Marie Watt, whose work reflects the symbiosis between humans and animals. “It communicates through natural phenomena like rainfall, hurricanes, sunshine, and drought.”

Or the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.

“Speaking from a wide variety of cultural perspectives [and artistic media],” Schoonmaker says, “the artists help us see ourselves in nature and remind us that we are not only connected to it but in fact part of the natural world.”

“My relationship to nature is fundamental to who I am,” writes Florida artist Allison Janae Hamilton, whose art and creative methods are linked to the land. “My experience of community, family, self, and culture are all inextricably linked to the natural environment.”

Schoonmaker notes that the artists’ works demonstrate that nature already holds the solutions to our planetary problems.

“We as people, as a society, just have to recognize this and take the appropriate actions to harness the restorative and healing potential of nature,” he says. “The broader message from the show is that biodiversity and cultural diversity not only make us stronger but are essential to our survival.”

Experiencing the works collectively at the Nasher Museum and reading through the catalog evokes a strong sense of grief and loss. Nature isn’t only important because it makes life possible but also because our identities are rooted in the land—and ice. Dario Robleto, whose piece “The Naturalist’s Lament” in part includes natural elements, writes in the catalog, of glaciologist Dan Fagre, “To be a glaciologist is to be a mourner.”

Robleto describes Fagre as being in a category of scientists “who mid-career, must enfold the staggering loss and possible extinction of their chosen subject into their science.”

Still, as Schoonmaker says, the exhibition is “one that very intentionally is not didactic or heavy-handed but seen organically through the nuanced and poetic lenses of the 30 artists.”

This is true. Viewing Spirit in the Land and reflecting on it afterward, I was left with deeply affecting feelings of

Stacy Lynn Waddell, “A View of Asheville, North Carolina under a Radiant, Infrared Sky (for R.S.D.), 1850/2022.” Courtesy of the artist and Candice Madey. PHOTO BY BRIAN QUINBY

SPIRIT IN THE LAND

Through July 9 | The Nasher Museum of Art, Durham | nasher.duke.edu

caring and commonality about our present challenges—and how they are served much better by acting and working collectively rather than separately.

Painter Christi Belcourt’s canvas is a large, meticulously painted floral scene depicted in highly detailed acrylic that is painted to look like traditional beadwork.

“I think about the coming generations,” she writes, “not only about our species, but also about all species the baby bears or the baby birds coming to this world in the next five hundred years, I wonder if they will have clean air to breathe and lands to be born into? What about the fish in a thousand years, will they have clean water to be born into?”

Durham artist Stacy Lynn Waddell, who grew up in rural North Carolina, often uses fire to make marks in her artwork.

“Burning paper is my drawing process,” she tells the INDY. “Burnt marks are indelible and evidence of material having transformed from one state to another. Transformation holds a deep well of ideas.”

Waddell’s personal history plays into her art too. She describes how her great-grandfather bequeathed land to each of his 14 children, “in a time and place where Black men and women typically weren’t able to initiate enduring security.”

“This legacy ensured that my family’s origin story would forever be embedded in the dirt, rocks, trees, and fields that have continued to nurture us,” she says.

Look closely at the marks made with fire, especially on “A View of Asheville, North Carolina under a Radiant, Infrared Sky (for R.S.D.), 1850/2022” and you can feel Waddell’s heritage burned into the foreground.

Waddell’s work also routinely includes treatment with gold leaf and shifts from 2-D works to installations and projections.

“African American painter Robert S. Duncanson has long been of interest to me,” Waddell says. “When invited to participate in this exhibition, I immediately knew that I wanted to reinterpret Duncanson’s “A View of Asheville, North Carolina (1850).”

Depicted in three circular handmade paper pieces, replete with burn marks, gold, silver, and aluminum leaf, Waddell’s piece also uses blue pencil and ink.

“Ink,” she says, “provides the watery and atmospheric.”

In Waddell’s reimaginings of Duncanson, there’s a sense of the curtain closing. The sky is dominant, the horizon constricted, the singular blue of the mountains compressed, and the foreground seems to be suffocating.

“The proportions represent the realities of our disregard for the environment,” she says. “The curtain or window of opportunity is literally closing.”

Spirit in the Land marks the beginning of a fresh conversation regarding humanity’s challenges and how we can repair and regenerate in those areas. W

Allison Janae Hamilton, “Floridawater II,” 2019. Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND MARIANNE BOESKY GALLERY, NEW YORK AND ASPEN

After the Ashes

Manbites Dog co-founder returns in a triumphant RED and a surprisingly upbeat musical commemorates the UpStairs Lounge fire.

BY BYRON WOODS arts@indyweek.com

Playwright and composer Max Vernon’s The View UpStairs careens dizzily through a soundtrack of glamrock, soul, gospel, Latin rhythms, and alt-folk ballads.

But North Raleigh Arts and Creative Theatre’s artistic director Tim Locklear is sober and succinct when asked why he put the 2017 off-Broadway musical on his company’s calendar: “History repeats itself if we don’t know about it.”

Fifty years later, one thing’s clear: no one wants the historic massacre that took place in 1973 at the UpStairs Lounge repeated.

In the 1970s, when most of the show takes place, the second-story nightclub on the southern edge of the French Quarter was a nerve center for blue-collar gay culture in New Orleans. Since it was also the home of the city’s Metropolitan Community Church—a pro-LGBTQ Christian denomination that began just five years before in Los Angeles—the UpStairs Lounge was a literal as well as metaphorical sanctuary for its racially and sexually disparate clientele.

But despite the Big Easy’s reputation as a liberal, laissez-faire city, organized civic gay purges had previously taken place in the 1950s and ’60s. The UpStairs had become a rare, safe space for gays who were still subject to arrest, loss of employment, homelessness, and even deportation under statutes criminalizing not only drag and public displays of gay behavior but employing and renting property to “sex perverts.”

“I remember. You could be arrested for simply walking with a quote-unquote twitch in your walk,” Locklear says. “If I was still being spit on and having bricks thrown at me in the late 1980s for simply going into a gay bar in Fayetteville, in 1973 it was much, much worse.”

“Every time they left the four walls of the UpStairs, they

were in danger,” says actor Amir Feinberg, who plays the musical’s central character, Wes. “They were worried for their livelihoods, their lives, their families.”

That danger found them out on Sunday, June 24, when parties unknown set fire to the building during a beer bash after church services at the club. Thirty-two people died in the conflagration. It was not only the largest fire in the history of New Orleans; for the next 42 years, it would remain the deadliest attack on a gay club in the United States, until the mass shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub in 2016. Historical research following that atrocity focused new attention on the UpStairs arson—and prompted Vernon to write the musical.

In it, Wes, a snarky, present-day queer fashion designer who’s desperate to make a break outside of New York, goes out on a limb to jump-start his brand by buying the rundown, damaged building where the UpStairs had been. As he lingers after the realtor hands him the keys, ghosts and echoes from the past repossess the property, and plunge Wes into a vivid time he has no knowledge of.

“The whole show is a confrontation with the past,” Feinberg notes. Wes has to learn a lot in a hurry—including how much the behaviors he takes for granted as a modern-day queer place the people he’s among in jeopardy. The past also has him reflect on the comparatively soulless commodifications of the present, where he sings “gay marriage is now legal / though in four years, who can say?”

Still, Vernon’s driving, upbeat songs including “Some Kind of Paradise,” “Completely Overdone,” and “Sex on Legs”

make this musical a kaleidoscopic commemoration and celebration of the patrons and performers at the club.

For Feinberg, the importance of The View UpStairs comes in reconnecting gay generations of the present with a history that isn’t taught in public forums. “Because it’s moments like this, when we forget that we came from, that we start having things like bills being introduced in different state legislatures to ban mentioning the word ‘gay’ in schools, drag in Tennessee, and gender-affirming care for kids.”

In light of those developments, we call The View UpStairs a period piece at our own peril.

In a rumpled blue work shirt daubed with the paint of his trade, the agitated, gaunt and aging artist stands looking through round silver spectacles at his creation. Wholly focused and unguarded, his eyes disclose a palpable vulnerability: worry, concern, and frustration, tinged with more than a little fear. “Come on, come on,” he cajoles in the silence, “what does it need?”

When his young assistant dares to offer a single word, “red,” the painter mutters, “I wasn’t talking to you,” before he wheels about, enraged, and yells at him, “DON’T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN!”

We had missed signature moments like these of quicksilver psychological drama at point-blank range since the 2018 closing of Manbites Dog Theater, the award-winning company that, over a 31-year run, set indispensable standards for artistic and social integrity in independent theater. The regional community of practice has frequent-

Cast members of The View UpStairs PHOTO BY CINDY MCENERY

RED | HHHH1/2 RedBird Theater Company | Durham Bottling Company

ly struggled to maintain both in the time since they transitioned to a philanthropic organization, even with the funds they’ve generously granted.

Ticket sales were brisk when RedBird Theater announced it would produce Manbites director and cofounder Jeff Storer’s return to the independent scene after a five-year hiatus, in a staging of Red, John Logan’s biography, pensive and explosive by turns, of mercurial 20th-century abstract expressionist Mark Rothko.

Interest intensified when we learned the show would mark a reunion with noted longtime collaborators Sonya Drum, who would design the set and props, and lighting designer Chuck Catotti. Anchoring the production: veteran actor Derrick Ivey, who racked up four five-star reviews from the INDY’s critics during his years at Manbites.

Saying the least, expectations were high. Frequently they are met and occasionally surpassed in this compelling production.

Under Storer’s direction Ivey probes, in extensive detail, the proposition that great art often comes in—and out of—damaged packaging. The theatrical impasto of the Rothko they’ve created gives depth to the character’s contradictory dimensions, setting an artist’s ego that is tyrannical at times alongside poignant moments of fundamental self-doubt.

In Logan’s script, Rothko struggles to create the “Seagram Murals,” late-stage works that reflect his own struggles, and that of our culture, between darkness and life—not light—as conflicting colors shimmer and vibrate from an already muted palette. The

Festival & Event Festival & Event DIRECTORY

play’s discourse is a coercive master class, frequently delivered under fire-hose pressure, for his young assistant, a rising New York painter named Ken.

But Red would hardly be among Storer’s best work if it didn’t seek to raise new and pointed questions out of the 2009 text. Casting Trevon Carr, a young Black actor, as Ken, causes us to re-see and reevaluate more than their turbulent relationship.

The superstructure of privilege and gatekeeping historically inherent in visual art is exposed and interrogated when a white Rothko berates a Black artist, “Where have you earned the right to exist here with me and these things you don’t understand?”

The line lands differently earlier when Rothko opines, “To be civilized is to know where you belong in the continuum of your art and your world.”

In 1959, a Black artist’s knowledge of their supposed place in both entities would necessarily exceed Rothko’s grasp.

It’s a lot to ask any actor to match Ivey’s work at full intensity, and on the production’s second night a clearly talented Carr was still calibrating his claims to space on stage, and the velocity required to counter Rothko’s boorish excesses. Elsewhere, his Ken resonated with understated but growing confidence and certitude.

You have to watch the quiet ones. Ken’s ultimate and wordless assessment of Rothko—as a teacher and a cautionary lesson— serves the famous painter back his most famous aphorism, with top spin: silence is so accurate, after all. W

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Trevon Carr and Derrick Ivey, in RedBird Theater’s Red PHOTO COURTESY OF REDBIRD THEATER

Tar Heel Voices

American

Idol hopefuls Ashley Tankard and Elijah McCormick keep North Carolina’s long streak of talented contestants strong.

BY KYESHA JENNINGS music@indyweek.com

American Idol is no stranger to North Carolina talent.

To date, the Tar Heel State remains home to the most winners of the popular reality television singing competition. And on February 19, American Idol premiered its 21st season, featuring two North Carolina natives who have shots at becoming top-10 finalists: Durham’s Ashley Tankard and Raeford’s Elijah McCormick.

Tankard received her ticket to Hollywood during week two of American Idol auditions. Producers of the show were first impressed by her rendition, via Zoom, of Ed Sheeran’s “Hearts Don’t Break Around Here,” which she accompanied with her guitar. During her Vegas audition, where she sang in front of Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie, Tankard shared that she has tried out for American Idol a total of 15 times. The now 22-year-old pushed through visible nervousness and sang Tate McRae’s “You Broke Me First,” her unique, jazz-like vocals impressing the judges enough to offer her some grace. Perry allowed her to perform the song again and offered specific advice. Richie also empathized

with her experience.

“My first look on a stage was the curtains opened up and I walked off the stage because I was scared to death,” he told Tankard. “I know how debilitating that can be. This is something you can get over.”

Tankard tells INDY Week that she has always struggled with shyness and performing for a public audience.

“Throughout the entire process I was so calm, but the second I got tapped on the shoulder to go to the judges’ room, I almost had a heart attack,” Tankard says. “I didn’t know how I was gonna make it through the audition. I literally couldn’t breathe. I was singing and trying to breathe at the same time.”

Tankard experienced a series of hardships growing up, she says, and music became a form of catharsis. At the age of 11, she taught herself to play guitar after watching her older sister play; she also plays piano. She cites former American Idol and fellow North Carolina native Fantasia Barrino as inspiration for joining the competition.

To prepare for her next American Idol performance, Tankard plans to perform at a number of open mics in the Durham area, like the Hayti Kitchen & Cocktails open mic events, to build her confidence.

“I knew that I would be capable of performing in front of people one day,” Tankard says. “But other people didn’t think so. They kept telling me I was too shy.”

Elijah McCormick, a 21-year-old from the small town of Raeford—which has a population of less than 5,000 and sits about an hour and a half from Raleigh—wowed the judges with his soulful, confident rendition of “Bless the Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts.

McCormick hit every note effortlessly, making his performance arguably one of the top performances of the night. Richie was immediately moved to tears and by the end of the performance, all three judges embraced McCormick in the middle of the performance floor.

McCormick was raised in a musical family and started singing around the age of six in church. His father plays

AMERICAN IDOL | Airs Sunday nights at 8 p.m. on ABC

Ashley Tankard PHOTO COURTESY OF ABC

the drums and his mother was in a singing group with her sisters. And like Tankard, this isn’t McCormick’s first time auditioning for American Idol.

Three years ago, McCormick’s mother signed him up for the show, but a serious car accident left him fighting for his life. He underwent 10 surgeries and spent a total of 79 days in the hospital.

“I just feel like what I went through really wasn’t for me,” says McCormick. “It was for other people to be encouraged just by me being here.”

During his audition, it was crystal clear that the judges fully agree. Richie nicknamed him “the golden child”—a name that, unbeknownst to the judges, McCormick says he was also called during his hospital stay.

“God brought you back for a reason,” the Idol judges reminded McCormick more than once during the audition.

“I went in with the mind-set of OK, these are just people,” says McCormick when asked about whether he was nervous prior to auditioning. “We bleed the same blood. But as soon as I walked in and saw them, in person, it just all hit me and everything became a blur. I just had to take a deep breath to get myself

in the right mind-set and live in the moment.”

Leading experts on near-death experiences often say that it changes people, including the way they approach life. And at the Idol audition, McCormick’s confidence, poise, professionalism, and groundedness could be keenly felt, even through a TV screen.

McCormick says he is most inspired by John Legend, and it’s easy to hear a similarity to the R&B singer in the tone and cadence of his voice. Former Idol contestant Jennifer Hudson is also an inspiration.

“She didn’t win the competition, but she’s winning at life,” he says of the singer, who is also now an actress and talk show host.

Regardless of the outcome of the American Idol competition, McCormick hopes to be a representative of Raeford.

“There’s a bunch of people trying to make it in my hometown and me being one of those people is crazy,” he says. “Currently I’m the one that everybody’s looking at. I’m doing it not only for myself but for Raeford and the surrounding counties.”

North Carolina is beyond lucky to have two talented young stars who can saanng (not just sing—there’s a difference) and represent our great state. W

Elijah McCormick PHOTO COURTESY OF ABC

The Shapeshifting Bard

Revelatory weirdness, idiosyncratic creativity, and disorganized development with folk singer Willi Carlisle.

BY NICK MCGREGOR music@indyweek.com

Willi Carlisle is a man of many angles. Call him a folk singer, a raconteur, a humorist, a poet, or a punk, and you’re speaking equal amounts of truth. Thoughtful and impulsive, hilarious and heart-wrenching, bluntly profane and profusely kind, the Ozark native—born in Missouri, now residing in northwest Arkansas—has spent the last decade perfecting a raucous blend of old-time tradition and modern vernacular.

His best songs bounce between belly laughs and tearjerkers, just as the virtuosic Carlisle glides between acoustic guitar, banjo, fiddle, accordion, and harmonica. Potent quotables litter the lyric sheets of his three albums—2016’s Too Nice to Mean Much, 2018’s To Tell You the Truth, and 2022’s Peculiar, Missouri. But it’s the wild-eyed emotion baked into his baritone boom that has Carlisle catapulting to success.

Early singles like “Cheap Cocaine” and “Boy Howdy, Hot Dog!” celebrated the unhinged side of Americana, but Carlisle flipped that script with a compelling mix of originals and arrangements on last year’s release on Free Dirt Records. He voices complicated queer desire on “Life on the Fence,” authentic acceptance on “Your Heart’s a Big Tent,” and the tragicomedy of the open road on “Vanlife.” He charts a neurodivergent performer’s poignant rise and fall on “Tulsa’s Last Magician” while

retrofitting everything from conjunto classics to cosmic cowboy laments and the absurdist verse of e. e. cummings. He even anchors Peculiar, Missouri with a titular seven-minute talking blues about suffering a panic attack in the cosmetics aisle of a midwestern Walmart.

Carlisle’s sharp character studies reshape the way we view America’s misfits—those tender hearts and tough cases so often left behind while struggling to learn to love themselves. It’s an iconoclasm that comes easy for the former football player turned theater nerd, who makes it clear that you can revere rural life while rebuking its revanchist tendencies—and celebrate urban inclusivity while bemoaning its performative radicalism.

But all this brainy folk-geek arcana buries the lede about Willi Carlisle: he’s one of the most dynamic live artists operating in America today. Last year, he was playing house shows and dive bars, admitting in a moving personal essay for No Depression that “down and out is only a few mistakes away in this profession.”

This year, he’s selling out midsize venues on a marathon two-month run, even as his concerts promise live-show fellowship and communalism. Ahead of his March 12 stop in Durham, INDY Week caught up with Willi Carlisle on the telephone one Friday afternoon in February as he prepared for his whirlwind tour.

INDY WEEK: How are you getting ready for the road, Willi?

WILLI CARLISLE: Well, last night I was up all night. I have not yet gone to sleep. I was working on the next record. There’s a song on it that’s an epic—it might even be seven or eight minutes long. [It’s] a badman ballad that’s a true story about this marijuana moonshiner in rural Arkansas 20 years ago. So yeah, I should be getting ready for tour, but you know what? That’s a form of getting ready.

That’s a perfect example of interpreting older folk traditions through a contemporary lens. Has that blend changed as you’ve grown?

Me and my buddies used to just sing the Pete Seeger songbook cover to cover. I also used to just play old-time music, period. If it wasn’t old-time fiddle music, it was like, “What is this garbage Americana music?” Then I started to play something closer to Americana. So it has been really twisty, and the combination comes out differently every time.

How about your craft as a songwriter?

Some songs take years to germinate based around random notes in commonplace books that eventually coalesce by accident around a melody. Or they’re the intentional work of a few days or a few minutes of manic energy that occur unbidden. I will take a walk, then slug a whole pot of coffee, then do too many push-ups, and then take a four-hour nap. I tend to work on other hobbies, too. I fix accordions, and I like to read about things totally unrelated to folk music. I’m very disorganized in that way. Some of it has to be grit, too. You need to be interrupted. There needs to be too little time [laughs]. It really helps when there’s a deadline for me.

Let’s talk about performance style and stage confidence. You clearly know how to command an audience. How long did it take you to reach that point?

My parents wanted me to go to business school because they said I had a line of shit a mile long and an inch deep. I was the classic performer kid … you realize that, if you’re funny or charming, you can get love. To tell the truth? That’s scary. Right now, it’s just trying to stay surprised. [To] stay off-balance so that the truth is still real, and it’s not just some truth-y shit that I’ve grown accustomed to saying. Actually be honest and maintain a purpose—a “why”

Willi Carlisle PHOTO BY TIM DUGGAN

WILLI CARLISLE AND WILLY TEA TAYLOR

Sunday, March 12 at 8 p.m. | The Pinhook, 117 W. Main St., Durham | $15

for being there. I love vaudeville and silent films and clowns. [There’s] something about people that can make you laugh just by doing something stupid—and then creating some deep pathos with that. I’m informed by the calculated stupidity. I like that I have theater in my blood. Because in theater, you make a whole world, right? Sometimes in music we believe that just creating the sound is enough. And I like to build a whole damn thing.

You’ve admitted to code- switching for different audiences in different places. Will that continue as your tours and audiences grow?

I’m trying to lean away from being actively inflammatory. Everybody has so much more in common than they have apart. When we’re talking about folk music, everybody has access to their history—to a vernacular that they’ve been deprived of by the moneyed interests of corporations that want you to buy who you are instead of just being that thing.

I want our explorations of history to look with revision and revulsion and reverence at old things with an eye toward taking them on fully. I personally find that healing, revealing, and wonderful.

So yeah, I will absolutely code-switch. But that’s because in New York City I’ve been at a poetry reading where somebody finds out I’m from Arkansas and asks me if I fuck pigs or own shoes. There’s just no reason for any of us to put up with any of that shit.

I wonder what kind of commentary you’d deliver on North Carolina, a Southern state where rural reverence, deep musical history, and rapid urbanization rub shoulders—often at the same concert.

It is wild as hell. God, in Raleigh, it’s like all these weird high-rises—miniature down-

towns springing up all over downtown. A beautiful thing about North Carolina is that all the venues are old. Going to a concert that isn’t at an arena, there actually is a plurality of people. Whereas playing in San Francisco, not a single person there was in an income bracket that I can understand [laughs]. I actually feel like I can be myself in North Carolina. Honestly, I would live in the Triangle—or just outside the Triangle, ’cause I couldn’t afford to live in it—if I wasn’t already in a very quickly gentrifying Southern area on the outskirts of town in northwest Arkansas.

2023 really feels like a pivotal year for the development of your career. How are you dealing with that, and how have your future plans changed because of it?

The growing pains have been real. I can’t always respond to every message. I was so proud for years that I got back to every email. I’m making zines to sell at shows because I want to be able to talk to people more. It used to [be I] was just trying to write to get something off my chest. Now I feel like I can be of service to people, and that’s a huge honor. That’s what makes me hungry. In the next couple of years, I want to make a couple more records. The next one is going to be darker and more intense. I want to continue to be a shapeshifter. I want to keep keeping it weird. I want to make music that people have to actually engage with—not something that’s just catchy. Which I know limits your audience immediately. And that’s OK. W

“I want our explorations of history to look with revision and revulsion and reverence at old things with an eye toward taking them on fully.”

R

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Annabel Monaghan: Nora Goes Off Script Thurs, Mar. 9, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Gennifer Weisenfeld: Gas Mask Nation Thurs, Mar. 9, 6 p.m. The Nasher, Durham.

Second Sunday Poetry Series: Chapman Hood Frazier and Maria Rouphail Sun, Mar. 12, 2:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Will York: Who Cares Anyway? Post-Punk San Francisco and the End of the Analog Age Tues, Mar. 14, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Duke Symphony Orchestra with Soprano Caroline Bergan and Pianist

David Heid Wed, Mar. 8, 7:30 p.m. Baldwin Auditorium, Durham.

An Evening with They Might Be Giants (Flood Show) $25. Wed, Mar. 8, 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Paisley Fields / Charles Latham and the Borrowed Band $10. Wed, Mar. 8, 8 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Queer Country Night Wed, Mar. 8, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Thumpasaurus $15. Wed, Mar. 8, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

8, 2023

An Evening with Yo La Tengo SOLD OUT. Mar. 9 and 10, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Geeked / Bonies $5. Thurs, Mar. 9, 8 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Model/Actriz $15. Thurs, Mar. 9, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 $50+. Mar. 10 and 11, 8 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

’70s Dance Party with 8-Track Minds

Fri, Mar. 10, 7:30 p.m.

Bralie’s Sports Bar 1, Durham.

Bilmuri SOLD OUT. Fri, Mar. 10, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

INDYweek.com

Carnaval Constante with DJ Bagaceiro $5. Fri, Mar. 10, 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Friday Favorites: Selections from Peer Gynt $39+. Fri, Mar. 10, 12 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Jerry Cantrell: Brighten Tour 2023 $47+. Fri, Mar. 10, 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Jim Ketch Swingtet $25. Fri, Mar. 10, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Kem and Ledisi: Soul II Soul Tour $82+. Fri, Mar. 10, 8 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh.

Mary & Megan: Travelin’ Mercies

$10. Fri, Mar. 10, 7 p.m. The Eno House, Hillsborough.

Nashville Songwriters $29+. Fri, Mar. 10, 7:30 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

Curtis Waters $15. Sat, Mar. 11, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Esteban Castro Trio $25. Sat, Mar. 11, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Key Glock: Glockoma Tour $56. Sat, Mar. 11, 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Leah Woehr Sat, Mar. 11, 5 p.m. The Oak House, Durham.

Taylor Fest, a Taylor Swift Dance Party!

$20. Sat, Mar. 11, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Uncle Devin $5. Sat, Mar. 11, 11 a.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Distributed Systems / Jaguardini / Ari Swim / B.L.E.W. $10. Sun, Mar. 12, 8 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

Plastic Picnic $15. Sun, Mar. 12, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Popa Chubby $18. Sun, Mar. 12, 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Chamber Music

Raleigh Presents Helios Piano Trio $31. Sun, Mar. 12, 2 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

Second Line Stompers $25. Sun, Mar. 12, 4 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Greta Van Fleet: Dreams in Gold Tour $77+. Mon, Mar. 13, 7 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh.

Runner $15. Mon, Mar. 13, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Bring Your Own Vinyl Night Tues, Mar. 14, 6 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Emily Scott Robinson / Alisa Amador / Violet Bell $20. Tues, Mar. 14, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Il Divo $50+. Tues, Mar. 14, 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

Marc Broussard $25+. Tues, Mar. 14, 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

CinemaDURM Presents: The Taking of Pelham

1-2-3 Wed, Mar. 8, 7 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

music screen art

Curator Talk with Lia Newman and Tom Stanley Thurs, Mar. 9, 6 p.m. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh.

Blade Runner and Tetsuo: The Iron Man $10. Fri, Mar. 11, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Ithaka with Live Q&A $11. Sun, Mar. 12, 4 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Raleigh.

Opening Reception for Kimberly English’s Something in the Water Fri, Mar. 10, 6 p.m. Peel Gallery, Carrboro.

They Might Be Giants performs at the Ritz on Wednesday, March 8.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE RITZ

stage

They Do Not Know Harlem $20+. Mar. 1-12, various times. PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill.

Trixie and Katya Live $152+. Wed, Mar. 8, 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

Carolina Ballet: Mozart Symphony No. 40 $42+. Mar. 9-26, various times.

Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Miranda Sings, Featuring Colleen Ballinger $33+.

Thurs, Mar. 9, 7:30 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Open Mic StandUp Comedy with Ashley & Ebony

Fri, Mar. 10, 8 p.m.

Durty Bull Brewing Company, Durham.

The ComedyWorx Show Matinee $9. Sat, Mar. 11, 4 p.m. ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

Down & Durty Variety Show with Ivy Sublime $25. Sat, Mar. 11, 8 p.m. Durty Bull Brewing Company, Durham.

The Monti StorySLAM: Friends in Low Places $12. Tues, Mar. 14, 7:30 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Miranda Sings performs at the Carolina Theatre on Thursday, March 9.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CAROLINA THEATRE

P U Z Z L E S

If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzles page” at the bottom of our webpage.

In-Store Shopping Curbside Pick Up

720 Ninth Street, Durham, NC 27705

Hours: Monday–Saturday 10–7 | Sunday 10–6

su | do | ku

© Puzzles by Pappocom

this week’s puzzle level:

There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box. The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered. Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.

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

“puzzles page”.

Best of luck, and have fun! www.sudoku.com

C L A S S I F I E D S

EMPLOYMENT

Beginning Zen Practice

A class at the Chapel Hill Zen Center with David Guy. Monday evenings, 7:30-9. 6 weeks, March 13th to April 19th. $60. Must be vaccinated and wear a mask. Scholarships available. 919-641-9277

davidguy@mindspring.com www.davidguy.org

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Sr. Quality Test Engineer

Sr. Quality Test Engineer sought by LexisNexis USA in Raleigh, NC to conduct continuous delivery & build quality in the entire software development process. Minimum of Bachelor’s degree or foreign equiv in Computer Science, Computer Engg, Info Systems, or rltd + 5 yrs exp in job offered or rltd required. EE reports to LexisNexis USA office in Raleigh, NC but may telecommute from any location within US. Interested candidates apply by mail to T. Hayward, RELX Inc; 1100 Alderman Dr, Alpharetta, GA 30005. Ref job code: 00078.

Senior Software Engineer

Senior Software Engineer sought by LexisNexis USA in Raleigh, NC to contribute to research & design for software development assignments in various development environments such as Agile & Waterfall for specific software functional areas/product lines. Minimum of Bachelor’s degree or foreign equiv in Computer Science, Info Systems, or rltd + 5 yrs exp in job offered or rltd required. EE reports to LexisNexis USA office in Raleigh, NC but may telecommute from any location within US. Interested candidates apply by mail to T. Hayward, RELX Inc; 1100 Alderman Dr, Alpharetta, GA 30005. Ref job code: 00755.

Energy Policy Assistant Durham climate justice nonprofit, NC WARN, is hiring a motivated professional to help implement our energy policy at the state level. Salary commensurate with experience. FT or PT. www.ncwarn.org/about-us/our-board/ for more info. We encourage women, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ candidates to apply.

Multiple Openings

Technodeed LLC has Multiple Openings in Morrisville, NC.

Business Analyst: Determine, analyze, dvlp, work, create & conduct hardware & sw assessment for the end-users. Computer Programmer: Write, collab, implement, correct, create & update code libraries. Software Developer: Analyze, review, plan, prep, design, assist & track all coding changes using help desk & version control sw.

Software Engineer: Respon, involve, work, perform & dvlp & maint web srvcs test scripts. Sr. Business Analyst: Analyze, work, create & oversee implementation projs from beginning to completion. Sr. Software Developer: Dvlp, resolves, conduct, research, troubleshoot, provide & serve as a task leader. Sr. Software Engineer: Design, Dvlp, Respon, maint, work, participate & resolve customer system issues post deployments. All positions reqs trvl/reloc to various unanticipated client loc’s throughout the U.S w/expenses paid by employer. Mail res & position to HR Mgr, Technodeed LLC, 10404 Chapel Hill Rd, Ste. 106, Morrisville, NC, 27560.

LAST WEEK’S PUZZLE

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