INDY Week March 22, 2023

THE FOILIES 2023

Recognizing the worst in government transparency, p. 6

Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill March 22, 2023

Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill

VOL. 40 NO. 12

CONTENTS

NEWS

6 The 2023 Foilies: Recognizing the worst in government transparency. BY ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION/ MUCKROCK

8 North Carolina Republicans get a second chance to gerrymander our elections. BY JASMINE GALLUP

10 Durham Public Schools’ new absence policy outrages high-achieving students. BY CHARLOTTE KRAMON

ARTS & CULTURE

16 Magic Tuber Stringband makes old-time music for postmodern people on Tarantism, the band’s fourth album. BY BRIAN HOWE

17 "The Tao is a playful thing," says The Tao of Glass creator Phelim McDermott. The performance comes to UNC-Chapel Hill's Memorial Hall this weekend. BY BYRON WOODS

18 Learning along with adventurous sommelier Doreen Colondres, director of the Vitis House. BY JASMINE GALLUP

THE REGULARS

2 Backtalk 3 Op-ed 20 Culture Calendar

Last week for print, Thomasi McDonald wrote about Durham’s experience with a guaranteed income program, which provides about $6,600 in annual assistance to roughly 100 formerly incarcerated residents to help with their transition back to society. The one-year pilot program, which launched a year ago and ended in February, was funded through a $500,000 grant.

22, 2023 INDYweek.com

Steve Gunn performs at Motorco Music Hall on Tuesday, March 28. (See calendar, page 20.)

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The story profiles some beneficiaries of the program, underscoring its potential to reduce recidivism. Durham mayor pro tem Mark-Anthony Middleton is a believer of the program and tells us he wants the city to allocate $1 million in the budget to keep it going.

With budget negotiations approaching, Middleton says his fellow council members have expressed an “openness to my request for a $1 million placeholder” and that he’s hopeful the program will be continued.

The response to the story among readers was mostly positive, but guaranteed basic income has its critics, including a couple of users who weighed in on Instagram.

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“Terrible idea to gift criminals !! Great to enable and encourage criminals!!” user @TEDMAYNOR wrote.

Another commenter, @EVOLVINGINTENTIONALLY, had a similar gut reaction: “This is a terrible idea!! There are open jobs everywhere. Middleton needs to be removed from office.”

Negativity was far outweighed by emojis of applause and hearts across our social media accounts, however, and could be summarized by a note from @JACORONILLA: “great way to break the cycle and help people get on their feet. love it”

PHOTO COURTESY OF MOTORCO

The Purpose of Zoning Is To Prevent Affordable Housing

Why I support the SCAD amendments.

BY BOB CHAPMAN backtalk@indyweek.com

Istrongly support the Simplifying Codes for Affordable Development (SCAD) text amendments to Durham’s zoning code. I helped initiate SCAD and think its smallscale changes to the zoning code will help lead to more small-lot housing, more neighborhood-scale retail, more mixed-use projects, more renters who can become owners, and more missing middle housing. It will also help Durham become a more walkable, less automobile-dependent, friendlier, and more interesting place to live.

This is the third time in the past 25 years that I sponsored or cosponsored code amendments. Four years ago, I was part of the team of small-scale development practitioners who helped bring the successful Expanded Housing Choices (EHC) amendments. The small-lot reforms we initiated in 2019 bent the curve. Despite being the tightest market in the Triangle, the Bull City has 28 new homes under $400,000 currently for sale on the market. Raleigh has one. Chapel Hill has zero. These reforms, led by Mayor Steve Schewel, have resurrected starter-home markets that are otherwise nonexistent in the Triangle’s three cities.

In 1998, Duke University asked me to build a new neighborhood on eight vacant acres they owned behind East Campus. As a new urbanist, I wanted to build a neighborhood that maintained the architectural character of its setting, but that turned out to be illegal. I had to introduce 12 code amendments to be able to build on smaller lots, to retain and build the platted alleys, to build single-family houses close to the street, to build town houses that didn’t try to look like individual houses glued together, and even to plant street trees in the street tree planter strip between the curb and the sidewalk. Then, with these 12 amendments, we were told that our plan was still illegal: it was 20 percent denser than the rules allowed.

Fortunately, our planning director, possibly with a wink and a nod, declared that if the existing streets were called “buffer areas,” he would rule that we were a “suburban cluster subdivision” and qualified for a 20 percent density bonus. From that experience, I learned what a ridiculous obstacle course awaited anyone trying to do something that didn’t align with the rule book.

When I came to Durham as a college student in 1965, Durham’s zoning code was 23 pages long. Compact walkable development wasn’t outlawed. In fact, the Durham code permitted “70 families per acre” in Trinity Park. (As a result, Trinity Park still

around, not only in the South but nationwide: Racial segregation could be maintained implicitly, if not explicitly. All a city had to do was down-zone. Aggressive down-zoning took place across America and across Durham, especially in affluent neighborhoods. The base zoning for the heart of Trinity Park was changed from 70 units per acre to eight.

For more information, please read Richard Rothstein’s groundbreaking book The Color of Law, which details how municipalities across America intentionally preserved racial segregation through their zoning codes. Or consult M. Nolan Gray’s book

that gobbles up regulatory frontiers as fast as it can think them up.

It also hindered the Black community’s ability to rebuild itself.

What happened?

The Fair Housing Act accompanied federal model cities and urban renewal programs that destroyed large swaths of Durham’s Hayti neighborhood as well as the beating heart of the Black community—the Pettigrew Street commercial district. The damage was irreparable. It remains so even today.

The worst parts of this urbicide were embedded in the zoning code. Today’s code fundamentally reflects the same set of values as the racist code that was implemented in 1969. It is built on the hallmarks of modern planning discrimination, including density maximums, parking mandates, and highly complex permitting regulations with unpredictable and arbitrary outcomes that are so expensive to negotiate that large national developers with deep pockets have a huge advantage over usually smaller local practitioners.

has much-admired and sought-after multifamily apartment buildings “grandfathered in” on nearly every block.)

Then, the world changed.

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

On April 11, 1968, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act. It outlawed discrimination based on race, religion, and national origin in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. It appeared that America’s tradition of outright housing discrimination was no longer legal.

But communities quickly found a work-

Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It, which provides more specifics and offers solutions.

Within 11 months of the enactment of the Fair Housing Act, the size of Durham’s zoning code increased by 1,300 percent, successfully codifying economic discrimination as an effective substitute for racial discrimination. The creation of new affordable housing was effectively outlawed in all of Durham’s more affluent neighborhoods.

Today, Durham’s land-use regulations fill more than 2,300 dense pages. It’s become a corpulent Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man

The good news is that Durham has been moving in the right direction. Four years ago, the city council directed our planning department to invite a group of smaller-scale local developers to discuss with them what was preventing the construction of more affordable housing. I was a member of this practitioners’ panel. It collaboratively worked with the city to produce the zoning code amendments included in EHC, which reduced minimum lot sizes and eliminated single-family zoning in central Durham.

Zoning has a long history of discrimination that continues today. Lisa Prevost’s book Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate documents how suburban communities use zoning to exclude poor people, minorities, the young, and middle-class families. Zoning allows “not in my back-

“Zoning allows ‘not in my backyard’ NIMBYs to require that government planning departments enforce NIMBY prejudices. This is not a coincidence.”

yard” NIMBYs to require that government planning departments enforce NIMBY prejudices. This is not a coincidence. Preventing affordable housing has long been a primary purpose of zoning.

The people lobbying to prevent zoning reform today also seek to prevent affordable housing, particularly near them. It’s not new. NIMBY groups will probably always exist, but they are on the wrong side of history. For example, earlier this year, Congress enacted and President Biden signed 10 specific “yes in my backyard” (YIMBY) provisions with funding for municipalities that remove barriers to affordable housing from their zoning codes. Last week, the Washington State House of Representatives passed a bill that would eliminate single-family zoning and legalize duplexes and fourplexes in virtually every city statewide. The question is: How does Durham deal with the anti-affordable-housing provisions embedded in our own codes?

Zoning reform is perpetually necessary because codes are so incredibly complex, and practitioners are constantly learning new things. Frontline feedback should be processed into better codes and, ultimately, a better quality of life for all.

Durham is in a unique position to lead here. The small-lot reforms in 2019 may

have bent the curve, but there is always more to do. There are ways to make these smalllot homes better. Market feedback is showing that the zoning code requires driveways to be too large and thus undesirable. Gutter requirements leave builders unable to deal with downspouts in reasonable ways. Parking mandates turn what could have been nice courtyards into unneeded (and unwanted) parking lots. All are easily fixable through simple reforms.

SCAD reforms invest in the vision of a better city. The Japanese call it kaizen—perpetual improvement. There is no perfect. There is no end. There is just constant learning and betterment. The post-1969 code was so bad, it might take 60-plus years to steam clean it. EHC was a start, SCAD is another step, and our planning director Sara Young’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) rewrite over the next few years should improve it further still. It will never be done. Cities never are. But the work must continue, and reform is inherent to that mission. Zoning exists to discriminate, and Durham does not. That’s why reform is necessary. W

Bob Chapman lives in Durham and is involved in community projects including developing affordable housing and walkable neighborhoods.

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The Foilies 2023

Recognizing the worst in government transparency

BY ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION AND MUCKROCK NEWS backtalk@indyweek.com

It seems like these days, everyone is finding classified documents in places they shouldn't be: their homes, their offices, their storage lockers, their garages, their guitar cases, between the cracks of their couches, under some withered celery in the vegetable drawer … OK, we're exaggerating—but it is getting ridiculous. While the pundits continue to speculate whether President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and President Joe Biden put national security at risk by hoarding these secrets that ultimately might not be the biggest problem.

What we know for sure is that these episodes illustrate overlapping problems for government transparency. It reveals an epidemic of overaggressive classification of documents that could easily be made public. It means that an untold number of documents that belong to the public went missing—even though we may not get to see them for at least 25 years, when the law requires a mandatory declassification review. And then there's the big, troubling transparency question: If these officials pocketed national secrets, what

other troves of non-secret but nonetheless important documents did they hold on to, potentially frustrating the public's ability to ever see them?

It doesn't do much good to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records that have mysteriously disappeared.

Misbehavior like this is why we created The Foilies, our annual tongue-in-cheek “awards” for agencies and officials that thwart the public's right to government information or otherwise respond outrageously to requests for documents and records. Each year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and MuckRock News, in partnership with the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, publish this list of ne'erdo-wells to celebrate Sunshine Week in March—an annual event to raise the profile of the democratic concept of government transparency.

It may be many years before the public learns what secret and not-so-secret documents weren't turned over by past administrations to the National Archives. But when we do, we'll be sure to nominate them for the top prizes. In the meantime, we have no shortage of redaction rascals and rightto-know knaves, from agencies assessing astronomical fees to obtain documents to officials who overtly obstruct openness to protect corporate interests. Read on and get to know the 2023 who's who of government opacity.

(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone to Transparency Award: Federal Bureau of Investigation

We are all lucky that the FBI is always on the lookout for “left wing innovations of a political nature,” especially those nasty “subliminal messages.” That's why, in 1967, it sent an informant to a Monkees concert, who reported on the band's antiwar sentiment to add to the FBI's growing file on the band.

Micky Dolenz, the band's sole surviving member, is suing for that file under FOIA. As his complaint points out, the FBI spied on many musicians of that era, including Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon.

Dolenz sued after the FBI failed to produce the file beyond the heavily redacted portion that it already published online. The

FBI has since provided five more redacted pages, Dolenz's attorney tells us. Hopefully, this will shed more light on the FBI's heroic war against Beatles, Monkees, and other subversive members of the animal kingdom.

The Redactions Don't Gitmo Surreal Award: The U.S. Southern Command

The U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay regularly serves up both insults and injuries. A number of people still held there have been subjected to torture and other inhumane treatment at U.S. “black sites”; many are imprisoned indefinitely; and the Pentagon considers detainees' artwork to be property of the U.S. government. The whole thing is a bit surreal, but U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has more techniques for turning up the dial.

Bloomberg reporter Jason Leopold submitted a FOIA request in 2017 for artwork created by those detained at Guantanamo Bay. SOUTHCOM finally fulfilled the request last spring, and it took its own creative liberties with the release.

To the hundreds of pages of colorful paintings and drawings created by Gitmo prisoners, the military added hundreds of little white redactions. FOIA requires redactions to be very particular and to specifically cite applicable exemptions. It seems there were plenty of very particular elements with which the agency took issue, claiming that amid trees of leaves and other scenes were materials that were ineligible for release due to personal privacy concerns and the risk that they would betray law enforcement techniques. When prisoners' art could potentially disclose military secrets, we're well through the looking glass.

“Gitmo, after 20-plus years, is not only a black box of secrecy,” Leopold said, “but it has its own Orwellian rules when it comes to transparency.”

We Can Neither Confirm nor Deny the Existence of This Award: National Security Agency

Sometimes agencies will respond to your FOIA request with a stack of documents.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE. PHOTOS VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, U.S. GOVERNMENT, AND UNSPLASH.

Other times, they will reject the request out of hand. But some agencies choose a third route: they tell you they can neither confirm nor deny whether the information exists, because the subject matter is classified or because a positive or negative response would expose the agency's hand in whatever intelligence or investigation game they're playing.

This so-called Glomar response is derived from a Cold War–era case, when the CIA refused to confirm or deny to the Los Angeles Times whether it had information about the USNS Hughes Glomar Explorer, a CIA ship that was used to try to salvage a sunken Soviet spy sub.

"The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press [RCFP] is studying the prevalence of so-called 'Glomar' responses to FOIA requests across the federal government," RCFP senior staff attorney Adam Marshall told us. "As part of that project, it has submitted FOIA requests (what else) to every federal agency regarding their Glomar volume over a five-year period."

So far, RCFP has learned that the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission sent four Glomars; the U.S. Department of Energy Office of the Inspector General sent 14; and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General sent 102.

The National Security Agency (NSA) came back with an astounding 2,721 Glomar responses over the five-year period. As Marshall noted on Twitter, in fiscal year 2021 alone, Glomars accounted for at least 41 percent of all the FOIA requests the NSA processed. And so we honor the NSA for being so transparent about its lack of transparency.

The Leave No Coffee Mug Unturned Award: General Escobedo, Mexico

When an agency receives a records request, an official is supposed to conduct a thorough search, not poke around half-heartedly before generating a boilerplate rejection letter. What's rare is for an agency to send a photo essay documenting their fruitless hunt for records.

That's exactly how the city of General Escobedo in Nuevo León, Mexico, respond-

ed to a public records request that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed for documents related to a predictive policing law under Mexico's national transparency law. The “Inexistencia de Información” letter they sent included a moment-by-moment photo series of their journey, proving they looked really hard, but couldn't find any records.

First, the photos showed they were outside the city's security secretariat building. Then they were standing at the door to the police investigative analysis unit. Then they were sitting at a computer, looking at files, with a few screengrabs. Then they were looking in a filing cabinet.

The next photo almost caused us to do a spit take: They were looking in the drawer where they keep their coffee mugs–just in case there was a print-out jammed between the tea bags and the stevia. See, they looked everywhere

Except … those screengrabs on the computer they breezed past were exactly the kind of documents we wanted. EFF appealed the case before the state's transparency board, which eventually forced Escobedo to release a slideshow and receipts showing the city had wasted more than 4 million pesos on the Sistema de Predicción de Delitos project.

The Digital Divide Award: U.S. Office of Personnel Management

Strolling through the independent records clearinghouse Government Attic offers a wide range of interesting, useful and refreshingly creative ideas for records to request, such as government agency intranet home pages.

Producing a copy of an internet home page should be a pretty easy task for an agency: Open up your browser in the morning; click “Save As”; and, boom—kick back after a job well done. You don't even need to talk to your colleagues! But after five years of inexplicable transparency purgatory, a lead government information specialist at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) responded curtly to one such request with the following:

“The FOIA does not require agencies to create a record. The records you seek

would require the creation of records. Therefore, OPM is unable to provide you any records.” Even odder, the agency's FOIA log for last year notes the request but writes that it was closed with “no records” rather than being rejected. Keep that in mind when calibrating the reliability of FOIA annual reports and other official transparency statistics.

Happily, we can report that other agencies are more digitally adept when responding to these types of requests, even if they do have a maddening tendency to print out the pages and mail them rather than just sending the actual digital files. We can only hope that the Office of Personnel Management manages to get some better-equipped personnel when it comes to understanding that simply copying bits is one of the least creative acts a computer—or FOIA officer— can do, and they should take these requests as a gift rather than a challenge.

I Wanted to Clarify That My A** Is Covered Award: White House

Backroom dealers sometimes struggle to keep their deals in the backroom, especially when they inadvertently reveal them in emails that are presumptively public records. That's when they follow up by saying, “I wanted to clarify that the email I sent was pre-decisional and privileged information,” hoping these magic words will exempt the email from disclosure should anyone file a records request.

On June 23, 2022, a White House staffer revealed to the Kentucky governor's office that President Biden planned to nominate Chad Meredith as a federal judge the next day. Days later, the White House official then tried to use the follow-up “clarification” email as cover. But the Louisville Courier-Journal got the story, and the Kentucky governor's office released the emails confirming the nomination plans, despite the weak follow-up email trying to claw them back into secrecy.

The president ultimately scrapped Meredith's nomination entirely after pro-choice advocates criticized Biden's apparent backroom trading on judicial nominations with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Meredith had defended Kentucky's anti-abortion laws under the previous

Republican governor.

The whole ordeal, which was overshadowed by the Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade on the very day Meredith would have been nominated, shows the ridiculous ways officials will try to keep public records secret.

The Burn After Reading Award: Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Though it might be surprising, sometimes an agency will fulfill your request— and realize afterward they'd like to hit the undo button. Generally, however, the First Amendment protects your right to keep the records and publish them, even when the government could have originally withheld them.

That's what happened to the well-known, oft-feared FOIA warrior and journalist Jason Leopold after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) used the wrong highlighter when they responded to his request for information on Department of Homeland Security (DHS) activity in Portland, Oregon, in the wake of George Floyd's murder during the summer of 2020.

Leopold asked ICE for communication and documents from the DHS about the training and placement of DHS personnel in Portland that summer and received a “DHS Component Actions Report” in response. Among the information in the report that ICE later claimed was sensitive enough to warrant a gimme-back: the exact numbers of helmets, crowd-control shields, and pepper-spray projectiles that the DHS loaned to the U.S. Park Police, the police force of the National Park Service. W

The Foilies were compiled by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (Director of Investigations Dave Maass, Senior Staff Attorney Aaron Mackey, Frank Stanton Fellow Mukund Rathi, Investigative Researcher Beryl Lipton) and MuckRock (Cofounder Michael Morisy, Data Reporter Dillon Bergin, and Investigations Editor Derek Kravitz), with further review and editing by Shawn Musgrave. Illustrations are by EFF designer Caitlyn Crites. The Foilies are published in partnership with the Association of Alternative Newsmedia.

Judicial Redo

After Republicans won a majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court, GOP legislators get a second chance to gerrymander a decade of elections.

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

In a near-unprecedented move, the North Carolina Supreme Court reheard a consequential voting rights case last week that could affect the 2024 elections.

Harper v. Hall focuses on the long-standing issue of partisan gerrymandering—when one political party draws the boundaries of electoral districts in its own favor so it can stay in power. Often, that means dividing blocks of voters, like Black voters, across different districts to dilute their voting power.

Harper v. Hall pits North Carolina Republican lawmakers, who approved a gerrymandered electoral map after the decennial census, against local voting rights groups, who argue the map is unconstitutional.

The NC Supreme Court originally struck down the gerrymandered map in February of 2022 in what seemed like a major win for voting rights groups and Democrats. The court, which had a Democratic majority at the time, ruled in favor of voting rights groups in a 4-3 vote along party lines.

Now, however, that decision may be reversed. Despite the fact that the supreme court has already ruled on the case, Republican lawmakers are asking a new, Republican-controlled supreme court to weigh in.

During the 2022 election, Republicans gained two seats on the state supreme court, giving them a 5-2 majority. In an unheard-of move earlier this year, Republican lawmakers asked the new court to rehear Harper v. Hall, although there were no new laws or facts that could influence the outcome. Essentially, they asked for a do-over like a child shouting for a rematch after losing a game.

What’s at stake

The court’s decision earlier this year to grant Republican

lawmakers’ request for a rehearing sends the message that they’re willing to possibly reverse the original Harper v. Hall decision. It immediately sparked condemnation from Democrats and nonpartisan voting rights groups. Democratic justices Anita Earls and Michael Morgan joined in a dissent.

“It took this Court just one month to send a smoke signal to the public that our decisions are fleeting, and our precedent is only as enduring as the terms of the justices who sit on the bench,” Earls wrote in her dissenting opinion. “The majority has cloaked its power grab with a thin veil of mischaracterized legal authorities. I write to make clear that the emperor has no clothes.”

Last week, during the Harper v. Hall rehearing, Morgan also questioned why the court should revisit its earlier decision.

“What has happened over the course of the past 88 days since we issued our opinion in this case that would mandate and compel a different result?” Morgan asked Phil Strach, the lawyer representing Republican lawmakers.

In the past 30 years, the state supreme court has agreed to rehear cases only twice and never when the only change was the court’s own political makeup. Historically, rehearings are used to make minor changes to existing opinions, such as adding a citation for an important precedent or incorporating new facts.

If the state supreme court uses the Harper v. Hall rehearing to reverse its earlier decision, it could set a precedent that gives future courts the ability to revisit cases they disagree with.

Republicans, in the meantime, are arguing that the former Democratic-majority court was also influenced by politics, thus the need for a rehearing.

In a news release, Republican House Speaker Tim Moore accused the former court of “judicial activism” and implied

that its decision was not based on the rule of law. State senator Phil Berger (R–26th District) has made similar statements, arguing the court was influenced by politics when it made its original decision.

Political pressure on the court has increased in recent years. With redistricting and other voting rights issues continually coming before the judicial branch, activists from out of state have poured millions of dollars into judicial campaigns in North Carolina.

“This really comes down to stare decisis. The decisions and the law in the state should not change with the composition of the court,” says Hilary Harris Klein, senior counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which represents voters in Harper v. Hall.

“[Everyone] needs to have certainty that when the supreme court issues a legal ruling, that ruling is not just going to change after the next election. Even if you have partisan judicial elections like we do … there is an expectation that you will check your partisanship at the door.”

The future of gerrymandering

It seems clear, however, that the court today has been influenced by politics to some degree. In addition to rehearing Harper v. Hall, the court also reheard Holmes v. Moore last week, a case challenging voter ID. In both cases, lawyers retread old arguments.

Strach, the lawyer representing Republican legislators, argued that partisan gerrymandering is not explicitly prohibited by the state constitution. The court’s original decision, he said, was based on “vague constitutional provisions that do not say anything about partisanship and redistricting.”

ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE

“Are you saying because the word ‘fair’ does not appear in the constitution, that elections do not have to be fair?” asked Morgan. “That it’s all right for them to have predetermined outcomes based on where the legislature decides where to draw the lines?”

The issue of fairness, Strach responded, should be left up to the people, not the courts or the executive branch.

Meanwhile, Lali Madduri, representing voting rights groups, argued that justices must make a decision based on whether all voters have equal power to make their voices heard. In a barrage of questions, Republican Chief Justice Paul Newby raised issues of how the maps used in the 2022 election were drawn, whether politics influenced the process, and who should determine whether maps are fair or not.

“The ultimate standard here is whether the voters have substantially equal voting power,” Madduri said. “It’s a principle of the free elections clause that elections should reflect the will of the people.”

If the court rules in favor of voting rights groups, they are asking the state to continue using the maps used in the 2022 election, which were drawn with the help of three experts and are “constitutionally valid,” says Klein.

Republican lawmakers, on the other hand, are asking to again redraw the electoral maps if they win the case, rather than defaulting to the original (gerrymandered) maps they approved in 2021. The request directly conflicts with a constitutional prohibition on “mid-decade redistricting,” which says that once “established,” lines cannot be redrawn, says Klein.

“[Republican] legislators have asked for free rein to draw new state legislative districts,” Klein says. “The legislators are saying that even if every legal argument falls in their favor, the court should not go back to the 2021 maps. They want permission to just redraw everything. And that’s squarely prohibited by our constitution.”

Decisions on the two cases are likely to

be made later this year or early next year. If the maps are changed, they will be in effect for the 2024 elections.

How will this affect Moore v. Harper?

The resurgence of Harper v. Hall also has big implications for a case the U.S. Supreme Court heard late last year. Moore v. Harper started as an appeal of the NC Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Harper v. Hall. The federal case raises questions about how much power the legislature has to govern elections.

In appearances before the U.S. Supreme Court last year, North Carolina Republicans argued that state lawmakers should have almost complete power over elections and that state courts have no authority to strike down election laws and impose new ones, as they did in 2022.

Their argument is based on the “independent state legislature theory,” a belief that state legislatures have the sole power to govern elections without being constrained by the state constitution or court. It’s a theory that has been widely debunked by legal experts.

Moore v. Harper could give North Carolina’s Republican-dominated legislature unfettered power to approve gerrymandered maps and impose voter ID, which has alarmed and mobilized voting rights activists. But the U.S. Supreme Court is now questioning whether it has the power to issue a decision in the case at all.

Earlier this month, the court asked parties in the case, including the Biden administration, to write legal briefs addressing whether the court still has the power to issue a decision, since the underlying case (Harper v. Hall) is now being reheard in state court.

Those briefs were submitted earlier this week. The Supreme Court has yet to make a decision on whether to move forward with the case. W

“It took this Court just one month to send a smoke signal to the public that our decisions are fleeting, and our precedent is only as enduring as the terms of the justices who sit on the bench.”

Absent Without Reprieve

Durham Public Schools’ new absence policy outrages high-achieving students.

BY CHARLOTTE KRAMON backtalk@indyweek.com

Ana Bursac, a junior at Durham School of the Arts (DSA), was involved in a car accident last semester that kept her in the hospital for 10 days. In October, she caught mononucleosis. Around the same time, a friend passed away.

Despite the turbulence, Bursac maintained all As and Bs. As a result, she thought she’d be exempt from finals because of a shift in the Durham County School Board’s exams policy the previous year. But in November, she learned that the board had changed the policy again. She’d have to take her exams after all.

“You’re telling students to not put themselves first,” Bursac said at a school board meeting in January. “You are forcing unhealthy habits upon students.”

DSA students say that they felt blindsided by the shift and that they received minimal communication before November, when they got the news in a school-wide email.

The policy adds extra stress to high achievers who get sick or need to miss days for reasons such as college tours and sports, students say. They contend that it also encourages students to attend school while ill.

“We didn’t really have time to intervene, like on the front hand,” DSA student Ella Perin told the 9th Street Journal in an interview. “So going to the board meeting was, like, hoping that they’ll get it back on their

agenda and rethink it.”

Under the policy, high school students are exempt from exams if they have an A average in a course and no more than three absences for the semester, or six absences for the year. For students with B averages, that number is two absences per semester, or four per year. These totals include both excused and unexcused absences.

On September 23, 2021, the school board suspended the attendance requirements for exams not mandated by the state. But the board restored the policy in full for this school year.

At January’s meeting, Chloe Daniel, DSA’s student body president, asked the board to change the policy so that only students with 10 unexcused absences are required to take exams.

School board member Natalie Beyer said she appreciated the students sharing their experiences at the meeting. Some end-ofcourse exams are required by state law, she said, but the school board may be able to ease its policy regarding local exams, as it did during the pandemic.

“We want our policies to be supporting students and their mastery of learning and not be punitive,” Beyer said. “And we certainly don’t want students coming to school sick.”

Beyer said that she hopes to continue

the conversation about updating the policy with teachers and administrators.

Last fall, Janiak Stein, a freshman at Riverside High School, had the contagious respiratory syncytial virus, which attacks the lungs and breathing passages, he said in an interview with the 9th Street Journal. He also has asthma. He is a straight-A student, but he was too bedridden to attend school, he said. He still had to take a final exam.

Stein’s brother, Isaac, said that Riverside High teachers do not consistently enforce the policy, leaving students confused.

“If that is the policy—they want people to come to class on time and be consistent with that—it shouldn’t mean that that is also the case when you’re sick,” said Isaac, who did not hear that the absence policy would return until November or December. “That shouldn’t be considered good attendance.”

Parents also worry about the absence policy’s impact on their children’s mental and physical health.

Kelly Harris Perin, Ella Perin’s mother and a former schoolteacher, said that she was “impressed” with how Durham Public Schools (DPS) managed the school system during the pandemic. Given the health precautions DPS took then, the policy’s reinstatement surprised her.

“I certainly understand that we need to incentivize students to come to school and we want them to be in class and learning,” Kelly Harris Perin said. “But I don’t think this particular policy really does that …. I’ve heard of a lot of kids going to school sick, not doing things like taking time for mental health or doctor’s appointments.”

Lauren Formy-Duval is a psychologist in Durham and has two students at DSA. She emailed members of the school board in August, encouraging them to waive the absence policy again.

Students can catch up when they are absent and still master the material, especially when they have access to computers, she said.

“If a student has an A in the course, then they are understanding the material and they’re understanding the contents of the course,” Formy-Duval said. “How many times they’ve been absent or present feels kind of irrelevant, other than it’s just a motivator that they’re trying to use to get kids to come for more often.” 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. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.

PHOTO VIA UNSPLASH

2023

Festival & Event Festival & Event DIRECTORY

Springtime is here, and with it comes the annual slew of festivals and events. From Dreamville, which returns to Raleigh’s Dorothea Dix Park in early April, to Cosmic Rays Film Festival, to summer music festivals and concerts, to food and wine, art, film, Pride, beer, strawberry picking, and many more festivals than we can describe here—there’s no dearth of things to do in the Triangle and beyond this calendar year.

Check out our exhaustive festival and event directory to find what most interests you—there’s always something fun to do with your friends, family, or on your own. Save this special pull-out section as a reference guide for the rest of the year!

MARCH

MARCH 17 - APRIL 15

The Mind’s Eye: Third Friday Public Reception

5 Points Gallery, Durham 5pointsgallery.com

MARCH 23

Real Dad / Rachel Hirsh / John Vogel

Perfect Lovers, Durham https://www.facebook.com/ events/146687414662813/

MARCH 24

"The Times," a mixed media installation

Skylight Gallery, Hillsborough skylightgallerync.wordpress.com

MARCH 25

Marchtoberfest

The Glass Jug Beer Lab, RTP https://www.facebook.com/events/111609371867775

MARCH 25

Spring Block Party by Brookside Bodega and The Optimist

1000 Brookside Dr., Raleigh https://www.brooksidebodega.com/

MARCH 30-31

Cosmic Rays Film Festival

Varsity Theater, Chapel Hill & Cat's Cradle, Carrboro www.cosmicraysfilmfest.com

APRIL

APRIL 1

Tacos 'N Taps - Cary

Koka Booth Amphitheatre cary.tacosntaps.com

APRIL 1

Find Your Inner Changemaker! Activate Good's Annual Campaign Kick-Off Event

The Loading Dock — Beryl, Raleigh https://www.eventbrite.com/e/find-your-innerchangemaker-annual-campaign-kick-o -eventtickets-546146287247

APRIL 5-23

Theatre Raleigh presents Jersey Boys

Theatre Raleigh https://theatreraleigh.com/

APRIL 6

Orquestra Gar Del LIVE@Lake

Raleigh

Lake Raleigh, at the corner of Main Campus Drive & Campus Shore Drive go.ncsu.edu/LIVEatLakeRaleigh

Special Advertising Section: Festival & Event Directory

APRIL 8

Duke Homestead Egg Hunt Duke Homestead, Durham dukehomestead.org

APRIL 15

Create Your Personal Civic Action Plan with Activate Good!

Unity of the Triangle, Raleigh

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/create-your-personalcivic-action-plan-tickets-565652129747

APRIL 15

"A Toast to Pets!" Brunch

Fundraiser for Paws4ever

The Rizzo Center, Chapel Hill paws4ever.org/brunch

APRIL 16

Run for Malawi 5K

Southern Village Green, Chapel Hill www.run4malawi.org

Hopscotch Music Festival, 2022

PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

APRIL 19

Spring Fling Treasure Hunt

Vault Craft Beer, Raleigh https://springflingtreasurehunt2023.eventbrite.com

APRIL 20

Hank, Pattie & The Current LIVE@ Lake Raleigh

Lake Raleigh, at the corner of Main Campus Drive & Campus Shore Drive go.ncsu.edu/LIVEatLakeRaleigh

APRIL 21

Jim McKeon Featured Artist5 Points Gallery

5 Points Gallery, Durham 5pointsgallery.com

APRIL 22

Trunkshow and Tap Yard

Raleigh's Spring Market

Trunkshow and Tap Yard, Raleigh https://www.trunkshowraleigh.com/events

APRIL 22

Bearthday - a fundraiser to celebrate the Farm's 12th birthday and Earth Day

800 North Bloodworth Street, Raleigh raleighcityfarm.org/events/bearthday2023

APRIL 22

ClydeFEST

Chatham County Agriculture and Conference Center, Pittsboro chathamartscouncil.org/clydefest-2023-coming-soon/

APRIL 22-23

The 10th Annual Festival of Legends: MAGIC Optimist Farm, Apex festivaloflegends.com

APRIL 23

Durham Earth Day Festival

Durham Central Park https://www.dprplaymore.org/299/Earth-Day-Festival

APRIL 24

Moral Monday Revival

Raleigh facebook.com/PPCNC

APRIL 29

Bull City Beer Mile

Durham Central Park https://runsignup.com/Race/NC/Durham/ BullCityBeerMile

APRIL 29

Movement & Meaning: 2023

Benefit Show

Stewart Theatre, Raleigh https://www.32auctions.com/bemoreatstagedoor23

APRIL 29

Born at Duke Homestead

Duke Homestead, Durham dukehomestead.org

MAY 2

Greensboro Stamp Club May Philatelic Auction

Hemphill Branch Library, Greensboro andreaschmidt.usa@gmail.com

MAY 4

Laurelyn Dossett LIVE@Lake Raleigh

Lake Raleigh, at the corner of Main Campus Drive & Campus Shore Drive go.ncsu.edu/LIVEatLakeRaleigh

MAY 6

Big Spoon Roasters’ Mother’s Day Shopping Event at new Hillsborough HQ

500 Meadowlands Dr., Hillsborough bigspoonroasters.com/blogs/blog/

MAY 8

Triangle Stamp Club May Philatelic Auction

Church of the Holy Family, Chapel Hill andreaschmidt.usa@gmail.com

MAY 12-13

Longleaf Film Festival

North Carolina Museum of History LongleafFilmFestival.com

MAY 18

Caique Vidal & Batuque LIVE@ Lake Raleigh

Lake Raleigh, at the corner of Main Campus Drive & Campus Shore Drive go.ncsu.edu/LIVEatLakeRaleigh

MAY 19

Donna Stubbs - 5 Points Gallery

Featured Artist Third Friday Reception

5 Points Gallery, Durham 5pointsgallery.com

MAY 19-20

Beaufort Music Festival

Gallants Channel, Beaufort beaufortmusicfestival.com

MAY 20

Spring

The Glass glass-jug.com/events?category=RTP

MAY 27

Benefit Ukraine/Turkey! Blue Skies near the blueskiesmapleview.us

MAY 31

Theatre Weight Theatre theatreraleigh.com

JUNE 3 Bimbé Rock Quarry dprplaymore.org/281/Bimbe-Cultural-Arts-Festival

JUNE 3 Chapel Peace & 140 West chapelhillarts.org

JUNE 6Alley Twenty Alley Alley Twenty-Six, alleytwentysix.com

JUNE 9

Two Durhams Sister Cities Durham sistercities-durham.com

JUNE 10

Summer Bodega

1000 Brookside brooksidebodega.com

JUNE 17 Chapel

Juneteenth

Hargraves Chapel Hill chapelhillarts.org

JUNE 24

Out! Raleigh

Fayetteville outraleighpride.com

Special Advertising Section: Festival & Event Directory

MAY 20

Spring Swing with Tea Cup Gin

The Glass Jug Beer Lab, RTP glass-jug.com/events?category=RTP

MAY 27

Benefit for World Central Kitchen Ukraine/Turkey!

Blue Skies of Mapleview, Hillsborough near the Mapleview Ice cream store blueskiesmapleview.us

MAY 31 - JUNE 11

Theatre Raleigh presents: The Weight of Everything We Know Theatre Raleigh theatreraleigh.com

JUNE 3

Bimbé Cultural Arts Festival

Rock Quarry Park, Durham dprplaymore.org/281/Bimbe-Cultural-Arts-Festival

JUNE 3

Chapel Hill Pride Promenade

Peace & Justice Plaza and march to 140 West Franklin chapelhillarts.org

JUNE 6 - SEPTEMBER 10

Alley Twenty Six’s Islands in the Alley

Alley Twenty-Six, Durham alleytwentysix.com

JUNE 9

Two Durhams Beer Festival by Sister Cities of Durham Durham Central Park sistercities-durham.com

JUNE 10

Summer Block Party by Brookside Bodega and The Optimist 1000 Brookside Dr., Raleigh brooksidebodega.com

JUNE 17

Chapel Hill-Carrboro

Juneteenth

Hargraves Community Center, Chapel Hill chapelhillarts.org

JUNE 24

Out! Raleigh Pride

Fayetteville Street, Raleigh outraleighpride.com

JUNE 24

American Summer w/ Peak City Band

The Glass Jug Beer Lab, RTP glass-jug.com/events?category=RTP

JUNE 24

Family Farm Animal Day

Duke Homestead, Durham dukehomestead.org

JULY

JULY 4

July 4th Fireworks

Southern Community Park, Chapel Hill chapelhillarts.org/calendar/fireworks

JULY 11

Summer Wonder Treasure Hunt

Vault Craft Beer, Raleigh originovel.wixsite.com/winterwise/summer-wonder

JULY 14-16

ConGregate (Science Fiction Convention)

Winston-Salem, NC con-gregate.com

JULY 14 - AUGUST 12

Uproar Festival of Public Art

Downtown Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough uproarfestnc.com

JULY 15

Hops & Blues

The Glass Jug Beer Lab, RTP glass-jug.com/events?category=RTP

JULY 15

Pick-a-Ton FUNdraiser

Botanist & Barrel, Cedar Grove botanistandbarrel.square.site

JULY 20, 27 AND AUGUST 10, 17

Movies Under the Stars

Forest Theatre, Chapel Hill chapelhillarts.org

AUGUST

AUGUST 2-13

Theatre Raleigh presents: The Prom Theatre Raleigh theatreraleigh.com

Special Advertising Section: Festival & Event Directory

INDY DAILY

Wka e up with us

AUGUST 4-5

Beer Bourbon & BBQ FestivalCary

Koka Booth Amphitheatre cary.beerandbourbon.com

AUGUST 5

MINDURO - a wee less grueling bicycle race and festival

The Laboratory at Pine State Co ee / Runologie manduro.rocks

AUGUST 19

Yacht Party with Heavy Weather Band

The Glass Jug Beer Lab, RTP glass-jug.com/events?category=RTP

AUGUST 19

Bright Leaf Harvest Day

Duke Homestead, Durham dukehomestead.org

AUGUST 26

Packapalooza

Hillsborough Street at NC State University, Raleigh packapalooza.ncsu.edu

SEPTEMBER

SEPTEMBER 9

Triangle Fermentation Fest

Botanist & Barrel, Cedar Grove botanistandbarrel.square.site

SEPTEMBER 16

Rocktoberfest: 9th Anniversary Party

The Glass Jug Beer Lab, RTP glass-jug.com/events?category=RTP

SEPTEMBER 16

Live at Legion

1714 Legion Rd, Chapel Hill chapelhillarts.org

SEPTEMBER 18-24

Negroni Week

Various bars around the Triangle, including The Willard Rooftop, The Durham Hotel, and The Mayton negroniweek.com

SEPTEMBER 23

Whiskey Wine & Fire - Cary

Koka Booth Amphitheatre cary.whiskeywinefire.com

SEPTEMBER 23

Vintage Baseball Game

Historic Durham Athletic Park dukehomestead.org

SEPTEMBER 28

Arcane Carolinas: Spooky Season Kickoff

Arcana Durham facebook.com/arcanecarolinas

SEPTEMBER 30

Apple Fest

Botanist & Barrel, Cedar Grove botanistandbarrel.square.site

OCTOBER

OCTOBER 4-6

Paint it Orange Plein Air Paint-out Orange County artsorange.org/paintitorange

OCTOBER 6-7

Slingshot Festival

The Fruit, Durham Slingshotfestival.com

OCTOBER 7

Fall Into Soul

The Glass Jug Beer Lab, RTP glass-jug.com/events?category=RTP

OCTOBER 8

Festival of Nations by Sister Cities of Durham Durham Central Park www.sistercities-durham.com

OCTOBER 9-15

SparkConQuest Treasure Hunt Downtown Raleigh sparkconquest.com

OCTOBER 13

The VrroomVIP JAZZ

Experience (Grand Finale) featuring Marqueal Jordan Durham Arts Council vrroomvipjazzfest.com

OCTOBER 13

The VrroomVIP JAZZ

Experience (Grand Finale) featuring David P Stevens Durham Arts Council vrroomvipjazzfest.com

OCTOBER 14

The International Festival of Raleigh

Dix Chapel, Raleigh facebook.com/FocusNC

OCTOBER 14

PlantFest (plant sale and garden festival)

Orange County Center, Hillsborough orange.ces.ncsu.edu/2023/03/plantfest_2023/

OCTOBER 14

The VrroomVIP JAZZ

Experience (Grand Finale) featuring Jeff Lorber Fusion Durham Arts Council vrroomvipjazzfest.com

OCTOBER 14

The VrroomVIP JAZZ

Experience (Grand Finale) featuring Kim Scott Durham Arts Council vrroomvipjazzfest.com

OCTOBER 14, 21, 28

Festifall Arts Market & More

140 West Franklin St, Chapel Hill chapelhillarts.org/festifall-arts-market-more

OCTOBER 18-29

Theatre Raleigh presents: Barbecue

NOVEMBER 11-12

Durham Pottery Tour

Participating pottery studios across Durham County durhampotterytour.com

NOVEMBER 12

Thanks + Giving Food Truck

Rodeo and Non-Profit Showcase

1714 Legion Rd, Chapel Hill chapelhillarts.org/calendar/thanks-giving-food-truckrodeo

NOVEMBER 13

Triangle Stamp Club Annual BIG Philatelic Auction

Church of the Holy Family, Chapel Hill andreaschmidt.usa@gmail.com

NOVEMBER 17-18

American Indian Heritage Celebration

The North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh ncmuseumofhistory.org

DECEMBER

DECEMBER 1

Christmas by Candlelight

Duke Homestead, Durham dukehomestead.org

DECEMBER 8

Christmas by Candlelight

Duke Homestead, Durham dukehomestead.org

Duke Homestead's Halloween Phantasmagoria

Duke Homestead, Durham dukehomestead.org

NOVEMBER

NOVEMBER 4-5, 11-12

Tenth Annual Ignacy Jan

Paderewski Piano Festival of Raleigh

North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh paderewski-festival.com

NOVEMBER 7

Greensboro Stamp Club BIG

November Philatelic Auction

Hemphill Branch Library, Greensboro andreaschmidt.usa@gmail.com

DECEMBER 13-24

Theatre Raleigh presents: The 1940's Radio Hour Theatre Raleigh theatreraleigh.com

DECEMBER 9

Chapel Hill-Carrboro Community Holiday Parade

Beginning at the intersection of Church & Franklin Streets in Chapel Hill and ending at Carrboro Town Hall chapelhillarts.org/calendar/chapel-hill-carrboroholiday-parade/

Feb. 17 | Feeding Tube

The Other Side of the Rabbit Hole

Magic Tuber Stringband makes old-time music for postmodern people on Tarantism, the band’s fourth album.

BY BRIAN HOWE music@indyweek.com

Evan Morgan and Courtney Werner made their fourth Magic Tuber Stringband album in the spider-infested basement of a ramshackle house clinging to the side of half a mountain. From the front, this was an ordinary scene in the western tip of North Carolina. But around back, the mountain had been blown to bits to make a gravel pit.

This image is a pretty good metaphor for the music of Durham’s Magic Tuber Stringband, in which deceptively traditional Appalachian folk conceals a world of deconstructed detail, and which likewise juxtaposes the natural and mediated, the timeless and modern, the beautiful and the blighted.

Living with spiders wasn’t the only reason Morgan and Werner named the album Tarantism. They like to clad their instrumentals in concepts, and the title refers to a 1,000-year-old Southern Italian folk tradition dealing with a plague, spread by spider bite, that causes uncontrollable dancing. Its only treatment is the tarantella, and on Tarantism, one sits in the middle of the album’s web, an energetic folk dance that takes on a warped, urgent feel.

You might remember the old Tom Waits song: “Well, you play that tarantella, all the hounds will start to roar. The boys all go to hell, and then the Cubans hit the floor. They drive along the pipeline; they tango till they’re sore. They take apart their nightmares, and they leave ’em by the door.”

But Morgan and Werner found their inspiration deeper in the record crate, on an obscure compilation album from South-

ern Italy released in 1950. It included a tarantella for zampogna, a kind of Italian bagpipe—a great match for their sound, which blends plucked and bowed strings with pumped drones—and they spread its parts across tracks of fiddle and banjo with a shruti box, a harmonium-like bellows instrument used in Indian classical music.

This is to say that, rather than your usual old-time band, Morgan and Werner are the specific kinds of music lovers whose interests have propelled them almost past the bounds of music and into the realms of field recordings and sound art. Werner is immersed in the place-making sonic collage of artists like Kate Carr, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Bernie Krause. Both of them love 1960s minimalism— Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Tony Conrad—and its many offshoots, an influence that they’re exploring more overtly on the record they’re working on now.

But Tarantism is rooted in their crate-digging, web-trawling impulse to discover traditional music from the far corners of time and space, mediated by technology. Morgan resonates with something that Mike Gangloff, from fellow old-time alchemists Black Twig Pickers, once told him.

“He likes music that sounds like it’s electronic but it’s fully acoustic,” Morgan says. “A lot of these fifties and sixties ethnographic recordings fit into that, and they also sound like sixties minimalist pieces. I think that’s the zone we’re coming from, quite often.”

Morgan lives in Durham, while Werner is currently in a master’s program for

wildlife management at the University of Georgia. When we all convened on Zoom, she’d just been at a Superfund site catching radioactive birds in nets, something it’s almost impossible to imagine them not making an album about. She’s been taking plenty of field recordings.

“I have to scan myself out every time to make sure I’m not contaminated,” she says. “It’s a whole weird psychological situation.”

Morgan and Werner, both 26, met in 2015 as undergraduates. They both worked at Duke Coffeehouse and deejayed at WXDU, experiences that immersed them in experimental music as they discovered the joys of old-time. In fact, these idioms swirled together in local pockets like Three Lobed Recordings, Paradise of Bachelors, and the Brickside Festival—pockets in which they encountered artists like Lonnie Holley, Sarah Louise, and Daniel Bachman.

Morgan was also getting into fingerstyle guitar, directly through an old friend from Houston, Will Csorba, and indirectly through the likes of John Fahey and Jack Rose. Morgan and Werner spent a couple of years improvising and going to old-time jams in Durham before they formed their duo in 2018. Before, Werner had put aside her classical violin, but when she picked it back up as a fiddle, something was different—truly experimental.

“Playing old-time was just fun,” she says. “I had to unlearn everything and learn a new

style. It felt like it was the start of me being a musician instead of following the curriculum laid down in front of me.”

She also plunged into extended techniques, or unusual ways of producing sounds from an instrument. As writer Dan Ruccia noticed in his INDY review of the band’s third record, When Sorrows Encompass Me ’Round, the spry fiddle tunes and experimental jags that had once alternated were starting to run together. This proves out in Tarantism, which seems to flicker back and forth, excitingly undecided. They’ve all but broken away from traditional songs; other than “Tarantella,” all of the compositions here are originals.

“We were taking things in chunks a lot before, and now we’re taking the actual practice of playing tunes and extended techniques and weaving them all together in the same pieces,” Werner explains.

Tarantism, recorded in the early days of the pandemic, is touched by that time; it took so long to come out on Feeding Tube, the label of legendary music critic Byron Coley, only because of familiar pressing-plant delays. But as you’ve likely observed, this music is on its own trip, hardly a standard “pandemic record.” Magic Tuber Stringband has ventured too far from “Cumberland Gap” to look back, and on the other side of the rabbit hole, they’ve come out into the bracingly songful air of a less-discovered land. W

Courtney Werner and Evan Morgan of Magic Tuber Stringband PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

MAGIC TUBER STRINGBAND: TARANTISM

Holding Pattern

An evening-length series of meditations illuminates the music of Phillip Glass.

BY BYRON WOODS arts@indyweek.com

It’s a moment of assessment, as a child-sized puppet looks up at creator Phelim McDermott and, after a moment, reaches out to take his hand. But a surreal, dreamlike quality suffuses the two of them (technically three, including puppet captain Sarah Wright, who animates the dark-haired youth) as they set out on a brisk walk around an empty, circular stage.

As composer Philip Glass’s arpeggios gently build momentum upward, a second puppeteer lifts the child’s feet off the ground, his legs dog-paddling as he gleefully swims through the air. A third puppeteer takes him even higher, as he soars above McDermott’s head and careens across the stage in a literal flight of fancy.

We’ve seen nothing yet, as the sequence unfolds in The Tao of Glass, an evening-length series of meditations on the famous avant-garde composer, who wrote 10 new songs for the work. The show will take place on Saturday, March 25, at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Memorial Hall.

Puppeteers open the doors, panels, and sides of an old black upright piano to release a world within—as music so often does itself. A panel of gossamer fabric, seemingly fashioned from pages of sheet music, unfurls from it. It’s a projection surface for shadow puppets that disclose the child’s airborne, moonlit journey through a tale of Maurice Sendak, as impressionist layerings of puppetry depict the bespectacled head of Glass himself in passionate engagement with a grand piano.

“Glass’s music invites us to see the world in a different way,” McDermott tells the INDY Week from a studio in London, where his revival of the Glass opera Akhnaten just opened last week. “It can invite you to see a bigger pattern, a deeper pattern, in what the world is doing.”

While the bold cadences in works like the score for the film Koyaanisqatsi have no problem claiming primacy with a listener, the shifting and repetitive structures that form the basis of Glass’s compositions can often serve an ambient or meditative function as well. Much of his work doesn’t seek to overwhelm or block out everything else that’s happening as we listen; instead, it often coexists with—and can filter,

frame, or give different context to—all of the other experiences that are taking place at the same time.

McDermott cites the opening movement from Glassworks, which he uses in his show.

“It’s an extraordinary piece of music,” he says. “It echoes moments that you felt in the past, but it always brings you back into yourself in the moment.”

As McDermott listens onstage, he observes, “I’m amazed that this piece of music can still break me open.”

It’s been doing so for years. After his production of Satyagraha, Glass’s epic opera on the life of Mahatma Gandhi, first bowed in 2007, four subsequent revivals of the work have been produced at the English National Opera and the Metropolitan Opera. McDermott’s current production of Akhnaten is his third since 2016. The works join a decidedly varied portfolio for the British stage artist, whose West End and New York directing credits have ranged from Shockheaded Peter and The Addams Family to a musical version of Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro last year.

McDermott is slightly hesitant to talk about the connections he finds between Taoism and Glass’s music.

“It sounds very heavy and serious, but it’s actually a very playful show,” he says. “The Tao is a playful thing.”

The religion has roots dating back to the fifth century BCE in China, with precepts recorded in works like the Tao Te Ching. It posits the Tao as the subtle principle that underlies and forms the source, pattern, and substance— the “way”—of all that exists. Often referenced in analogies involving the movement of water, Taoism explores

living in harmony with what it finds as the ever-animated, ever-changing natural order of the universe.

“It’s like the bubbling of a brook, the sound of leaves rustling,” McDermott says. “Add Philip’s music to those things, and you’re getting to a good show.”

Puppetry and Taoism have something fundamental in common. Indirection is a necessary part of both. According to Taoist scholars, “the Tao can’t be said,” McDermott notes. “You can only point in its direction.” Similar to Taoist texts, puppets only reference and point to the people and things they represent.

To underscore the point, McDermott and colleagues use newspaper and adhesive tape to make some puppets throughout the show. “The thing about those materials is you can’t quite control them. The more you try to make a well-made puppet, the more it falls apart.”

The resulting state requires what the creator calls a Taoist conversation with the materials. “They’re Taoist puppets. If you stay open, and you find out what the material wants to do, it animates itself—usually through the mistakes that happen.”

In every performance, the players make a different puppet of Glass playing at a piano. “Every time it’s slightly different,” McDermott says. “If the puppetry is open, it has this sense of a prism or a lens through which a doorway to dreaming can come through. It’s a dream door, which connects us from consensus reality, down to the essence.”

“I have no idea how you explain that to anyone,” he laughs. W

The Tao of Glass creator Phelim McDermott PHOTO BY TRISTRAM KENTON

THE TAO OF GLASS Improbable | Carolina Performing Arts Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill | Saturday, Mar. 25 |

Balancing Act

A day in wine school with adventurous Raleigh sommelier Doreen Colondres.

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

In a small, warehouse-like classroom, chef and sommelier Doreen Colondres pours herself a glass of wine. The sparkling Austrian white is a pale gold that flows into the crystal-clear glass with a fizz.

“Acidity is what makes us salivate,” says Colondres, leading up to her first invaluable tip of the two-hour Wine 101 class. “It’s what makes the wine feel refreshing. The beauty of high-acid wines is they pair with everything …. When in doubt, serve bubbles!”

Colondres’s presence is as bubbly as the wine she serves—she’s overflowing with enthusiasm to share her deep knowledge of wine and wine making, at this class, with 14 near strangers. She jokes easily with everyone in the room, chatting about why mimosas are the best pairing for a big American brunch.

“Acidity in the wine will reduce the fattening [taste of the food], and the fattening food will reduce the acidity of the wine, making them both perfect—so we can eat more and drink more,” she says, prompting laughter from the class.

Colondres, originally from Puerto Rico, founded her own wine school, Vitis House, in 2019, just before the pandemic. Now, as COVID recedes, she’s adding more and more classes to her roster, including level 1, 2, and 3 wine courses for people in the restaurant industry, which lead to internationally recognized certifications.

Colondres didn’t start out in wine. Before becoming a sommelier, Colondres worked as a chef and food blogger, writing about healthy and flavorful recipes people could make at home. Her passion for food eventually led to appearances on cooking shows and the publication of her

own cookbook, La Cocina No Muerde (translated as “The Kitchen Doesn’t Bite”).

“I’ve been always in love with the kitchen,” Colondres says. “[Both] my grandparents were chefs, and we used to have a lot of ingredients in the backyard. Cooking was always number one for my family.”

For Colondres, quality food starts with fresh, in-season ingredients. She’s a big fan of broccolini and heirloom carrots, which are rich in flavor and nutrients, and she likes to make roasted vegetables and soups, which can also be used as an accompaniment to seafood, she says.

As a chef, Colondres has a particular love for Mediterranean food and traditional Hispanic dishes, which she grew up cooking and eating.

“At the end of the day, it’s fresh and bright and tasty food that we can … come back to the house and make,” she says. “And it’s food that will keep us healthy.”

Health is an important piece of Colondres’s cooking philosophy. She’s spread awareness about obesity and diabetes through her cooking show appearances, where she encourages people to cook at home when they can, instead of buying processed meals or fast food. Colondres wants to teach people how to both eat and drink well, so many of her cooking appearances include basic kitchen techniques, tips for grocery shopping, and suggestions for quality ingredients and recipes.

“I don’t know when we started thinking that we were smarter, eating cheaper and eating faster,” Colondres says. “People see cooking as a duty, and we have to see it as a lifestyle. Buying ingredients fresh, and buying ingredients in season, we add so much flavor to what we do.”

It’s that philosophy of cooking that makes Spain the chef’s favorite place to visit, Colondres says. She’s traveled across South America and Europe, but she always comes back to the Spanish people.

“They live,” she says. “They live, and they live a healthy lifestyle. Their culture, their traditions, it reminds me of my childhood. It’s like people always have time to connect with others and to enjoy good food and good wine.”

Colondres has always loved the Spanish wines served in her hometown, she says, but her interest in learning more about wine started as an accident—literally. In her early twenties, while cooking at the house of a friend, she reached for a bottle of very expensive, very rare wine to add to a veal stew she was making.

“The owner of the house where I was cooking almost killed me,” she says with a loud, throaty laugh. “That day, I was like, ‘I need to learn more about wine.’”

Thus started a journey to France, where she helped harvest grapes; to Spain, where she judged a 2011 vintage in a wine competition; and to other places around the globe, where studied wines and eventually earned the title of sommelier through classes and tests from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust.

Colondres’s easygoing approach makes learning about wine less intimidating for newcomers, especially people who are mystified by questions about what flavor notes they get on the nose or whether the body of the wine is light or heavy.

Colondres doesn’t hide her opinions, either. During the Wine 101 class, her digs at pretentious wine trends and

Doreen Colondres PHOTO BY LINDA NGUYEN

VITIS HOUSE

1053 E Whitaker Mill Rd #115, Raleigh | vitishouse.com

“ick” noises at a particular Italian wine had everyone smiling, making the complex, elite world of wine seem a little more accessible.

Still, you get the feeling that an introductory class only scratches the surface of Colondres’s encyclopedic knowledge of wines, grapes, and production methods, among other wine-related topics.

“I always say, one life is not enough to taste all the grapes in the world,” she says. “The world of wine is so huge that one life is not enough to cover it all. There are thousands of grape varietals in the world. So that’s the beauty of it. You’re learning constantly.”

Colondres doesn’t just want to teach people about wine, however. She also wants to teach them about the cultures, traditions, and foods of other countries. Not everyone can afford to travel to France or Italy, but “with food and wine, you can bring those countries to you,” Colondres says.

Earlier this month, for example, Colondres taught a wine class for residents of a Raleigh apartment building. But “we were in Spain all night,” she says.

“It was such a relaxing experience,” Colondres says. “In the end, it’s all about how we can get you out of the craziness of life during the day and transport you to an atmosphere where you can discover something new, taste something new, have fun, meet people.”

As business booms at Colondres’s wine school, she has a slate of plans for the future. Eventually, she wants to offer regular cooking classes. Colondres also hopes to start organizing international trips for Raleigh locals, so they can experience the food and wine of other countries.

Colondres already has an extensive network of former students and wine-loving friends, but with every class, she makes more. As people trickle out of her Wine 101 course, one couple stops to ask Colondres if she has any recommendations for an upcoming trip overseas.

“Email me!” Colondres replies. “If you need any help.” W

“The world of wine is so huge that one life is not enough to cover it all.”

C U LT U R E CA L E N DA R

music

Talisk $25. Wed, Mar. 22, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

White Reaper $19. Wed, Mar. 22, 7:30 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Duke Chorale and SONAM: Mozart Requiem $10. Thurs, Mar. 23, 7:30 p.m. Baldwin Auditorium, Durham.

Erie Choir / Booster Club Thurs, Mar. 23, 8 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Hits! The Musical $29+. Thurs, Mar. 23, 7:30 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Brahms Symphony No. 3 $50+. Fri, Mar. 24 and 25, 8 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Abbey Road LIVE! $8+. Fri, Mar. 24, 1 and 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Big Wild: The Efferusphere Is Here Tour $49+. Fri, Mar. 24, 8 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

COLORS: A Colorful Dance Party Experience $20+. Fri, Mar. 24, 8 p.m. The Matthews House, Cary.

Dreaming of the ’90s Dance Party $7. Fri, Mar. 24, 10 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Franki Raimi: Music of Bach and Weinberg for Solo Cello Fri, Mar. 24, 7:30 p.m. Nelson Music Room, Durham.

Kenny PhelpsMcKeown Quartet: Tribute to Buster Williams $20+. Fri, Mar. 24, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Larry & Joe’s Nuevo South Train Album Release Party $25. Fri, Mar. 24, 7 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

Medium Build SOLD OUT. Fri, Mar. 24, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Nikki Meets the Hibachi / Bob Bedell $15. Fri, Mar. 24, 7 p.m. The Eno House, Hillsborough.

Perfect Kiss: AllVinyl New Wave and ’80s Dance Party with Bug Spray (Mac Superchunk) and Fifi Hifi $5. Fri, Mar. 24, 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

S.G. Goodman / H.C. McEntire $25+. Fri, Mar. 24, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Archers of Loaf $25. Mar. 25 and 26, various times. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle: Orpheus and Eurydice $9+. Sat, Mar. 25, 7:30 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

DJs Ill Digitz and Play Play $5. Sat, Mar. 25, 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Fourth String / Thirsty Curses $10. Sat, Mar. 25, 8 p.m. Bond Brothers Eastside, Cary.

Jervis Campbell SOLD OUT. Sat, Mar. 25, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Jess Klein Album Release Show $15. Sat, Mar. 25, 7 p.m. The Eno House, Hillsborough.

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

Late Night Lowlights Sat, Mar. 25, 7 p.m. Durty Bull Brewing Company, Durham.

LeCrae: The Final Church Clothes Tour $25+. Sat, Mar. 25, 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Living Rhythms: African Drumming Sat, Mar. 25, 11 a.m. Alston-Massenburg Center, Wake Forest.

Los Tigres del Norte $49+. Sat, Mar. 25, 8 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Queer Agenda: Latinx Edition $7. Sat, Mar. 25, 10 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Smidley $12. Sat, Mar. 25, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Trio du Jour: Blues, Soul, Jazz, and NOLA Groove Sat, Mar. 25, 7 p.m. Succotash Durham, Durham.

The Unsustainables Sat, Mar. 25, 4 p.m. Durty Bull Brewing Company, Durham.

Nicotine Dolls $15. Sun, Mar. 26, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Venezuelan Market with Latin Beats Sun, Mar. 26, 12 p.m. Durham Central Park, Durham.

Avey Tare $20. Mon, Mar. 27, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Magic Giant $18. Mon, Mar. 27, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Tennis: Pollen Tour 2023 $25. Mon, Mar. 27, 8 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Ibeyi $25. Tues, Mar. 28, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Jeremy “Bean” Clemons Jazz Trio $8. Tues, Mar. 28, 9 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham.

North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra Concert $25. Tues, Mar. 28, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham. Phoneboy $18. Tues, Mar. 28, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Steve Gunn $18. Tues, Mar. 28, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Tedeschi Trucks Band $224+. Tues, Mar. 28, 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

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

Ibeyi performs at Cat’s Cradle on Tuesday, March 28. PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT’S CRADLE.

Carolina Ballet: Mozart Symphony

No. 40 $42+. Mar. 9-26, various times.

Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Comedy Night

Wed, Mar. 22, 8 p.m. Tobacco Wood Brewing Co., Durham.

Flight $25. Mar. 23–Apr. 2, various times. Firebox Theatre Company, Wake Forest.

Trevor Noah $263+. Mar. 24-27, various times. DPAC, Durham.

R

An Evening with Beverly McIver and Liza Roberts $45+. Thurs, Mar. 23, 6:30 p.m. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

Hanes Visiting Artist Lecture

Series: Abigail DeVille Thurs, Mar. 23, 7 p.m. Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill.

Opening Reception for Damian Stamer’s Collaborations: New Paintings Sat, Mar. 25, 5 p.m. Craven Allen Gallery and House of Frames, Durham.

Churchill $60+. Fri, Mar. 24, 7:30 p.m.

Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

The Second City Swipes Right $33+. Fri, Mar. 24, 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Straight Jokes No Chaser: Mike

Epps, Cedric the Entertainer, D.L. Hughley, Earthquake, and DC Young Fly $158+. Fri, Mar. 24, 8 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh.

The ComedyWorx Show Matinee $9.

Sat, Mar. 25, 4 p.m. ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

Amendment: An Immersive Work of Social Choreography Tues, Mar. 28, 6 p.m. Rubenstein Arts Center, Durham.

Sam Morril: The Class Act Tour $33+. Tues, Mar. 28, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

RetroGothic Film Series $8+. Mar. 24-26, various times. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Rising against Asian Hate: One Day in March Tues, Mar. 28, 6:30 p.m. D.H. Hill Jr. Library, Raleigh.

Nathan Ballingrud: The Strange Wed, Mar. 22, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Bart D. Ehrman: Armageddon Thurs, Mar. 23, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Nita A. Farahany: The Battle for Your Brain Thurs, Mar. 23, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

An Evening of Romance with Annie Rains, Reese Ryan, and Nancy Naigle Fri, Mar. 24, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

T. Kingfisher: A House with Good Bones Tues, Mar. 28, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

like to plan ahead?

like to ahead?

Craven Allen Gallery hosts an opening reception for Damien Stamer’s Collaborations: New Paintings on Saturday, March 25. Artwork by Damien Stamer.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CRAVEN ALLEN GALLERY

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.

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.

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

HEALTH & WELL BEING

919-416-0675 www.harmonygate.com

Senior Project Analyst/ Senior Business Analyst Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings in Durham, NC seeks a Senior Project Analyst/ Senior Business Analyst to elicit requirements and develop User Stories. Reqs BS+5yrs or MS+3 yrs exp.; To apply, submit resume to: labcorphold@labcorp.com. Ref: 20230303

EVENTS AND FESTIVALS

JungNC.org

Friday, 3/24/23 7:30pm Lecture $10 Archetypal Symbols in Fairytales”

Saturday 3/25/23 @ 10am-4pm

FAIRYTALE WORKSHOP $40

Steven Buser, MD Editor, Collected Works of von Franz Church of Reconciliation, Chapel Hill 919 604-0427, JungNC.org

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To adver tise or feature a pet for adoption, please contact adver tising@indyweek.com

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classy@indyweek.com

To adver tise or feature a pet for adoption, please contact adver tising@indyweek.com

To adver tise or feature a pet for adoption, please contact adver tising@indyweek.com