INDY Week February 5, 2025

Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill

February 5, 2025

A Symphony of Brotherhood

The Durham Symphony Orchestra's Valentine's Program is grounded in grief, hope, resilience, and the work of a talented young Black composer who died in police custody.

By Tasso Hartzog, p.

16

Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill

NEWS

7 Is a new convention center Durham's next big attraction? And is it worth the estimated half-billion dollar price tag? BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW

10 The NC DOJ warns a proposed deal undervalues Saint Augustine's University's land and could jeopardize its nonprofit status. BY CHLOE COURTNEY BOHL

11 INDY writers joined volunteers across the Triangle to survey unhoused people during this year's annual Point-in-Time counts. BY CHLOE COURTNEY BOHL AND JUSTIN LAIDLAW

CULTURE

13 "The further I got along on my healing process, I started to think about how powerful it could be to have a collection that would potentially help other women," Durham poet Bridget Bell says. BY SARAH EDWARDS

15 New movies coming to theaters near you. BY GLENN MCDONALD

16 The Durham Symphony Orchestra's powerful new program is grounded in three major works by three Black composers. BY TASSO HARTZOG

18 Afters Dessert Bar, now located in Brightleaf Square, playfully invites passersby to stop, take a break, and try a treat. BY LENA GELLER

Publisher

John Hurld

Editorial

Editor-in-Chief

Sarah Willets

Raleigh Editor

Jane Porter

Culture Editor

Sarah Edwards

Staff

Writers

Lena Geller

Justin Laidlaw

Chase Pellegrini de Paur Report For America Corps Reporter

Chloe Courtney Bohl

Contributors

Mariana Fabian, Jasmine Gallup, Desmera Gatewood, Tasso Hartzog, Elliott Harrell, Brian Howe, Jordan Lawrence, Elim Lee, Glenn McDonald, Nick McGregor, Gabi Mendick, Cy Neff, Andrea Richards, Barry Yeoman

2 February 5, 2025 INDYweek.com

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Afters Dessert Bar co-owner Stephen Kennedy places raspberry sugar on top of chocolate crémeux (See story, page 18.)

PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

Last week, Jane Porter wrote about the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority’s plans to develop Lake Crabtree County Park, turning much of the recreational area into an “entertainment destination.”

Readers shared their thoughts.

From reader LINDA FISH:

I read about the changes RDU wants to make to the acreage that they once leased that has become a park. Even though I do not live in that area I feel that to allow this to happen would be an injustice. I lived in Wayne County years ago and traveled to work into RDU. My children and I frequently went to Crabtree Valley Mall, downtown Raleigh for theater productions, restaurants, museums, cultural events, etc. At one point there was discussion, perhaps just rumor, that a train service was going to be built from Raleigh to Durham and Chapel Hill. Of course if that idea was real it never happened. I always felt we were cheated. Now RDU wants to take back and develop land that is now used by many for recreational purposes. I can think of no worse idea. RDU already covers vast territory in the middle of congested roads, work places, living spaces, and shopping spaces. If the noise is bad now it will become horrible if this plan goes forward. Not to mention the loss of any chance of affordable housing so desperately needed. The traffic congestion and air pollution would foul the area. There is no mention of commuter trains con-

necting the various cities and towns in the area and that one idea would solve a multitude of problems. Just think, instead of driving to RDU battling traffic you could get on a commuter train and go to the airport. But then RDU will probably win and the people that live in the area will lose. What a choice to balance, runways and plane noise or places to live, work and play.

DPS parent Peter Crawford’s recent op-ed on the need for more disagreement in Durham politics stirred conversation among readers.

From reader and former Durham city council candidate SHERRI ZANN ROSENTHAL:

I heartily agree with Peter Crawford that the false “unity” of supporting People’s Alliance candidates has been terrible for basic functioning of our schools.

It’s also been terrible for the basic functioning of our city and county governments. I speak from my perspective as a 30-plus year employee of the city.

While talking a “progressive” line, PA leadership has actually endorsed a number of incompetent people, often with a self-interested axe to grind, who have eroded delivery of core services.

However, for several decades, no one has been elected to the city council, county commission or school board without the endorsement of either or both of PA and the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People.

It would help if voters had information in order to do due diligence when deciding who to vote for. The INDY would provide a tremendous service by compiling a tally of council member, commissioner and school board member votes on key agenda items, so that voters could understand their elected officials’ voting patterns.

Readers continue to respond to Chloe Courtney Bohl’s first-person account of finding herself on the list of voters whose ballots are being challenged by Supreme Court candidate Judge Jefferson Griffin.

From reader CHARLES STOPFORD:

After losing last year’s state Supreme Court race, Republican Jefferson Griffin is asking the state Supreme Court to throw away the lawful votes of 60,000 North Carolinians and overturn the election. The NC Supreme Court blocked the state from certifying Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs’ 734-vote victory over Republican Jefferson Griffin in the race for a seat on the court. The Republican-majority court halted the State Board of Elections from finalizing the contest and agreed to hear Griffin’s challenges to over 60,000 ballots. I join people across our state in expressing my outrage over this blatant and shameful attempt to silence the will of the people. As a North Carolina voter, I am outraged that the state Supreme Court has taken this attack on our democracy into consideration, as it is

not only abhorrent, but unconstitutional. Multiple recounts and careful election audits confirmed that Justice Allison Riggs won. Throwing away these votes would set a dangerous precedent. Our voices and our votes will not be silenced by corrupt politicians who think that they can cheat their way into victory after clearly losing. I call on Jefferson Griffin to immediately withdraw his appeal and concede the election to Allison Riggs.

Finally, readers enjoyed Chloe’s report on attempting to commute by train between Raleigh and Durham.

From reader LAWRENCE KEVIN:

I agree, the only way to make it cost-effective is a 10-ride or a monthly pass.

I rode Amtrak Capitol Corridor from Hayward, CA, to Santa Clara/ Great America station. Worked great and was very comfortable. I was also able to get a bike locker after a year on the waitlist that I used for the last three miles of my commute.

Many commuters were coming from distances of 100 miles or more. I rode the first train on the schedule and usually the second to last train home.

I think self-driving vehicles and transit will eventually limit the demand for rail service. Transit planners have money to spend with sales tax revenue.

From reader JOHN SESSOMS:

Many years ago, before interstate highways and air travel, there were multiple daily passenger trains between Raleigh and Wilmington. Day-tripping down to the beach was a thing.

I wish the NC railroad would make it a thing again.

Another DPS Budget Debacle and Still No Accountability

Students and staff pay the price for management’s budget mistakes. Durham Public Schools needs a real meet-and-confer policy so that workers can use our collective power to ensure transparency, accountability, and equity.

BY SONYA LOPEZ backtalk@indyweek.com

One year after the Durham Public Schools budget debacle that led to pay cuts for thousands of classified employees, DPS administration has once again mismanaged the budget and once again school staff and students will pay the price. In a year that has already seen a transportation crisis, recent revelations show that the district has mismanaged the budget, this time by almost $35 million, and the administration is proposing balancing the budget through cuts to key staff and school resources. Predictably, these cuts to our school budgets have involved no input from staff, students, or the community. Unfortunately, mistakes of this magnitude come as no

surprise to DPS workers. This is what happens when a few people downtown have all the power to make decisions (and mistakes) with no transparency or accountability. While they replaced some executives, the Board of Education has spent the last year reluctant to do anything to actually fix this broken status quo. They have dragged their feet despite thousands of workers and community members emphatically calling for a meet-and-confer process that would finally allow workers the chance to collaborate with management, hold them accountable, improve the way our district is run, and stop these crises from happening in the future.

As a social worker, I know firsthand about DPS’s broken promises. Last spring, our union campaigned for the largest local funding increase in Durham history—$27.4 million in desperately needed new funds. With a small amount of that money, the DPS Board of Education promised to reinstate master’s pay to all those impacted by the state’s 2013 decision to end it. However, when we returned to work this fall, we found out master’s pay would only be restored for classroom teachers, excluding social workers and other instructional support staff. The explanation for breaking the board’s commitment to social workers and instructional staff was to save the district an estimated $200,000. In November, when the board of education was prepared to right this wrong and vote to reinstate master’s pay for those excluded, Superintendent Dr. Anthony Lewis interrupted the vote, pleading for just four more days to finalize accurate numbers and present a plan. Two months later, we’re still waiting. Meanwhile, decision-makers downtown decided to create a new assistant superintendent position with a starting salary of $155,000.

My social worker colleagues and I serve the most vulnerable students and families in our community—a community that will face increasing systemic inequity under the new Trump administration. On any given day at school, we know our students will bring us devastating challenges ranging from suicidal ideation or fears of deportation to sexual assault or their families getting evicted. In DPS, social workers have caseloads significantly higher than Wake and Chapel Hill school systems, often four times higher than the nationally recommended standards, and yet we continue to show up—because we love our students like they are our own children. Now, many social workers, who often work multiple jobs to support their own families, are left considering if a future in DPS is possible. When skilled social workers or bus drivers or cafeteria workers or teachers leave the district we love because we have been routinely misled and devalued, the effects are devastating. These broken promises aren’t just a betrayal of workers—they are a betrayal of our most vulnerable students and their families who will bear the brunt of these decisions. Years of DPS mismanagement has created an equity crisis.

If you believe in public education and want the best for Durham’s children, this can all feel demoralizing. Fortunately, there is a solution to all this. Ever since the last budget debacle, our union (which represents a majority of all DPS workers) has been calling on the board to adopt a meetand-confer policy that would create a set of public meetings where a team of democratically elected worker representatives from the union could meet with a team of decision-makers from management to collaborate on things

DPS social worker Sonya Lopez speaks at a rally in Fall 2024.

PHOTO BY DELANEY O’CONNELL

like district policies and the budget. This is the norm in school districts and workplaces all over the country and it leads to real improvements—and it is legal in North Carolina despite our ban on public sector collective bargaining. It would empower employees to speak with one united voice and create a new level of transparency and accountability for district decision-makers. The staff who work with students every single day, who understand their needs and understand the stakes, would finally have a powerful voice at the table to force conversations about, for example, whether we should prioritize new positions downtown or essential, frontline staff.

For the last year, instead of embracing the resounding call for a meet-and-confer policy, the board has deferred to Dr. Lewis and the administrators downtown. Unsurprisingly, management has put forward a watered-down, anti-union version of “meet-and-confer” that would ensure no new accountability for themselves and keep workers divided and powerless. Instead of creating serious, public collaboration between management and our democratic organization representing thousands of workers, their version would create simple roundtable listening sessions for the superintendent where he would hand-pick individual workers he wants to hear from and any organization that wants to come would be invited. Similar meetings have been happening in DPS for years, including this year, and have never led to real change. Management would keep all the power, make no commitments, and still have no accountability. For social workers, classified staff, teachers, and other essential workers facing questions about our pay, this simply is not good enough.

The board of education and Superintendent Dr. Lewis often speak of their commitment to equity and fiscal responsibility. Yet, their actions repeatedly contradict their words. Whether it’s the unfulfilled promise of master’s pay, the transportation crisis, flagrant mismanagement of district finances, or anti-union tactics to avoid accountability, DPS leadership in the last 12 months has repeatedly failed to prioritize staff and student needs. This latest budget debacle should make it clear that it’s time to stop the excuses and stop defending the status quo. We need a real meet-and-confer policy in DPS so that workers can use our collective power to help bring a new level of transparency, accountability, and equity. W

Sonya Lopez is a Durham Public Schools social worker, a Durham native, and a member leader in the Durham Association of Educators.

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Is a New Convention Center the Next Big Attraction in Durham?

Durham Mayor Leonardo Williams has a vision for an “innovation center” that brings business and residents alike downtown. Is it worth the price?

BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW jlaidlaw@indyweek.com

If Mayor Leonardo Williams is Durham’s ringmaster, then a new convention center might be his big tent. At his 2024 State of the City address last April, Williams described something more than a convention center only frequented by out-of-towners attending conferences.

“We must envision paths to energize Durham’s economy downtown and community-wide,” Williams said in the speech. “We need to invest now in projects that build the kinds of opportunities and features that continue to make Durham a great place to live, work, and visit. These decisions require the foresight to collectively envision the type of community that we’d like to become.”

Williams, always looking for new ways to sell the public on his ideas, is marketing the project as an “innovation center” that would offer modern amenities for local residents and visitors alike, generating revenue while bene-

fitting surrounding businesses. The mayor and his allies see downtown Durham’s next big capital project as much more than a traditional convention center, rather as a way to differentiate Durham from peer cities.

Marquee capital improvement projects make a splash. Politicians could solidify their legacy by putting their stamp on an eye-popping sports arena or convention center. But not everyone is sold that a new convention center will have the transformative effect on downtown that Williams hopes. These projects take time and significant investment, and there’s no guarantee the ground-breaking would come in time to help businesses that are already struggling, or that Williams will still be in the mayor’s seat. Can Williams and his allies make the case that the convention center’s big splash will have the desired ripple effect?

‘Outmoded, Outdated’

The Durham Civic Center, as it was originally known, and the adjoining Omni Hotel were originally built in 1989. Both my parents and my Oma worked at the hotel when it opened.

Durham was still suffering from an economic downturn after the tobacco industry collapsed. Local officials set out to revitalize downtown with the civic center and hotel as the anchors.

But downtown Durham remained desolate.

Shopping malls were hollowing out commerce in city centers across the country. At the turn of the century, city and county officials collaborated with the private sector, resulting in an explosion of redevelopment that included the American Tobacco Campus in 2006 and the Durham Performing Arts Center in 2008.

The convention center was no longer a centerpiece of downtown’s attractions. These days, unless you’re planning a trip to the convention center, you’d probably miss it. The outside of the building, which nests between the Marriott hotel and Carolina Theatre on Foster Street, is nondescript and gives passers-by few hints as to what’s happening inside.

In 2024, the center held over 136 events, ranging from big ticket activities like Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and NC Comicon, to quinceañeras and graduations. Two-thirds of the events hosted at the convention center were locally based, says Susan Amey, CEO of Discover Durham. But Amey says even though it’s routinely booked, the center is simply too small, especially as event planners seek out more space post-COVID.

“The convention center is so tiny that you’d only really do one event at a time, maybe two,” Amey says. “A significant convention center can do two or three or four. We could have all the local events and also attract regional or even national or international events.”

A 2024 study by Chicago-based real estate advisory firm Hunden Partners suggests the same: the current center, even renovated or expanded, leaves too much on the table.

“This business is performing for you, but you are outmoded, outdated, and in a small building relative to who you are as a destination,” founder Rob Hunden, who has been advising on the convention center for 20 years, told the Durham City Council in September. “You’re so unique and authentic as a destination. The challenge is that it is physically hamstrung in the center of town in terms of what it can do to expand.”

Hunden estimates that expanding the current convention center would cost about $93 million. This includes

PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS, ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE

adding 11,000 square feet of meeting rooms and 30,000 square feet of exhibit space next to the Durham Armory across the street, which is also managed by the city. Even with the added 41,000 square feet of space, Hunden says the updated convention center wouldn’t be competitive in the region.

Instead, the firm recommends the city consider constructing a new, two-story convention center at an estimated cost of $315 million and an adjoining 500-room hotel at $225 million. That’s more than half a billion dollars in total construction cost, a staggering price tag. Those figures don’t include the cost of acquiring seven acres of land to house the new 403,000 square-foot complex, nor the additional reconstruction of roads and other infrastructure connected to the project. But scared money don’t make money. For Williams and other leaders invested in the future viability of downtown, a new convention center is part of a larger vision for a more vibrant city center. Driving that vision is Discover Durham, the city’s tourism agency, and a new companion 501(c) (3) called Durham Next. In 2024, Discover Durham unveiled its Destination Master Plan, a community-driven roadmap forecasting the infrastructure and amenities— like a revamped convention center—needed to keep Durham an attractive destination for visitors and residents over the next 20 years. Other ideas to come out of the initiative include a sportsplex and a freeway cap, which would create an urban park over NC-147.

“We can’t think small,” Williams says. “We can’t think, ‘oh, this is expensive so we have to do a convention center or something else.’ But instead, how can we build an innovation center that can host conventions and also weave itself into the fabric of our community?”

Monuments to a Bygone Era

Traditional convention centers are not a lucrative business. According to The New York Times, big convention centers are a dying breed, and cities that spend money on them are erecting monuments to a bygone era, like if Rome built a new coliseum to host gladiator fights. Even Rob Hunden, the person who sold Durham city council on the concept for a shiny new center, told the Times just three months ago that “most of the 175 convention centers across the country operate at a loss.”

National trade shows that historically draw big audiences have seen attendance slide in the past few years. It’s difficult to

February 5, 2025 INDYweek.com

know if this is the lingering effects of a global pandemic, or a new normal. Uncertainty about the future makes building a new convention center a hard sell to folks who see more immediate needs in the community.

Shawn Stokes, owner of a number of downtown businesses including Luna, says that Durham is already missing basics like more efficient public transit, more sidewalks, public art and parks that would benefit residents, visitors and local businesses.

Stokes points to initiatives like the Raleigh Illuminate Art Walk or the new seven-acre Downtown Cary Park as accessible public amenities that draw a crowd without the proposed convention center’s $500 million-plus price tag.

“I know people in my friend group who are taking their kids to Cary to go check out the cool park that they just built there,” Stokes says. “How sad is it that families are leaving Durham to go to Cary to spend time in their public parks? Maybe after we’ve built a beautiful city that functions well for our own citizens, and it functions well for everyday tourists both regionally and nationally. Then it makes sense to build a convention center where the people that are coming to these conventions want to go explore the city.”

Stokes and others have also raised concerns that existing public works projects are sorely lagging behind. The Durham Rail Trail, a proposed 1.8 mile multi-use path connecting North Durham to downtown, has been planned since the city bought the land in 2018. According to the city, it will be another year before construction

begins. Stokes says projects like the Rail Trail give him little faith that the city can execute something like a convention center in time for current business owners to reap the benefits.

Not everyone on the city council is ready to rubber stamp a new convention center, either. After the Hunden presentation last year, freshman council member Chelsea Cook expressed concern over the center’s price tag, especially with large convention centers nearby.

“Land is extremely expensive, and it’s a very precious commodity in downtown Durham,” Cook told the INDY. Convention centers may already be a saturated market just in North Carolina.

Raleigh is set to invest millions of dollars into renovating its own convention center, adding a whopping 500,000 square feet of additional space. Koury Convention Center in Greensboro offers 250,000 square feet, and Charlotte, the state’s largest city featuring two (lousy) professional sports teams, just opened a newly-renovated convention center in 2021 with 600,000 square feet of meeting space.

“We don’t need to be competitive in every single lane,” Cook says. “Convention centers struggle to make money, and that is why they are owned by cities and not by private developers.”

An ‘Innovation’ Center That Goes Beyond Convention

Williams and his allies believe a new

Durham convention center could be a different story.

According to Hunden Partners, Durham’s current convention center is punching above its weight. Last year, unlike many peers, it did not operate at a loss: the center reported operating at a net gain, bringing in $4 million in revenue after losing money for several years. Hunden also says that $27 million in economic impact was lost over the last five years because of constraints to the current site, including meeting room size and date availability— suggesting a bigger, more modern convention center could thrive, despite trends in the industry.

But if local officials want an innovation center, they’ll have to come up with innovative ways to fund it that don’t overly burden Durham residents.

“We collect property tax, and we try to do every damn thing out of the property tax,” Williams says. “How do we get what we want without having to beat taxpayers over the head with this? So what I’m trying to do is be really creative in this approach. I’m trying to create something that’s going to pay for itself.”

Williams says corporate contributions are an option.

“There are organizations that are looking to make a name for themselves in our area,” Williams says. “…They ask us for something that’s going to make a significant, multi-generational impact. I can’t go to them with these small asks, but I can go to them and say, look, we have land, we have vision, we have a plan, and we have

“We can’t think small… How can we build an innovation center that can host conventions and also weave itself into the fabric of our community?”

The current Durham Convention Center. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

a space for you to put your name on this significant investment. I have to create those opportunities.”

In June, the state legislature, led by former state senator Mike Woodard, approved a new bill that changes how Durham allocates funds it collects when visitors pay taxes on hotel bookings. Starting this year, Discover Durham can spend hotel/motel occupancy tax funds on capital expenditures like a new convention center or sports complex—not just marketing.

While visitors and spending are up near pre-pandemic rates, according to Discover Durham (in 2023, 13 million visitors generated $80 million in sales tax revenue), costs for local residents and businesses are also up, and incoming sales and occupancy tax revenue is negligible compared to the half-billion dollars necessary for the new convention center.

But Williams and Discover Durham hope a new “innovation” center that goes beyond the conventional would lead to increased revenue and help offset costs—not only by attracting investors, but by bringing in more business for the center and drawing local residents, who would in turn support downtown businesses. Amenities could include a virtual reality space and other interactive studios akin to exhibits you might find at the Museum of Life and Science.

Durham can compete in a saturated market because of the unique flavor of downtown, argues Williams, who is acutely aware of the challenges businesses face as the owner—alongside his partner, Zweli—of two downtown restaurants. Most of Durham’s downtown businesses are locally-owned instead of chains, which Williams says distinguishes Durham from its competitors and keeps more money in the community.

“Imagine that the innovation center was able to host a four to five thousand person convention, but we go underground to build it, and above ground, it’s a beautiful open park and we put a Ferris wheel in downtown Durham and put an amphitheater out there where we can host concerts or speaking events on top of the innovation center. We’re just reimagining the use of our space,” Williams says.

Thinking 30 Years Ahead

The promise of economic windfall from a future convention center is enticing. Hunden partners projects that in a new convention center’s first 30 years, visitors would spend $5.1 billion at the center, adjoining hotel, and surrounding businesses, and the city would gain $101 million in tax reve-

nue. But the common refrains from those skeptical of the project remain; could the money be more effectively deployed elsewhere, and will the convention center come online quickly enough to support businesses struggling now?

Billionaire sports team owners run the same playbook when trying to sell the public on supporting a new arena. They make the case that the tax break, or direct investment from the state and local governments, will pay dividends in new jobs and local business stimulation down the road. Williams is making a similar pitch to residents of Durham.

When asked about a new convention center, most folks on the street respond with a tepid shrug. Traditional convention centers like the one currently in downtown Durham aren’t the kind of place you happen upon on a stag night with the boys, or during a date with your partner.

“It is important what residents want to see in the future. But they’re not going to say a convention center, they’re just not. They’re going to say other things like family friendly activities and places to go, things to do,” Amey says. “…But every community is in competition with all other communities for resources and talent. The average person on the street doesn’t think about building capital improvement projects, but city leadership has to be thinking 10, 20, 30 years into the future about what’s going to get us to where we need to be.”

Is the convention center a necessary asset for Durham’s future, or a vanity project for a mayor looking to leave a lasting legacy during an election year? Are the two mutually exclusive?

Durham Performing Arts Center had its own complicated development process before opening in the fall of 2008. Local officials were unsure how to make the financing work and some residents preferred that the city invest in pressing needs like affordable housing. But former mayor Bill Bell and others persevered, Williams says, by taking a risk on their vision for what Durham could become. Now, DPAC is one of Durham’s biggest economic drivers, attracting international acclaim and hundreds of thousands to Durham annually.

Mayor Williams is optimistic that residents will eventually accept his vision for a multi-purpose innovation center that invigorates downtown in the way DPAC has for 15 years. He says he knows the project will outlast his time in local government, but that he hopes to leave a legacy that shows he “had vision and had courage to carry out the vision despite critique or commentary.” W

Red Flags

The North Carolina Attorney General’s Office is warning Saint Augustine’s University that a proposed land lease deal under-values the school’s property and could threaten its nonprofit status.

BY CHLOE COURTNEY BOHL chloe@indyweek.com

The NC Department of Justice has “serious concerns” about a land lease contract that Saint Augustine’s University is prepared to sign with the real estate development firm 50 Plus 1 Sports, according to a letter the DOJ sent to the university last week.

“We are concerned about SAU’s ability to continue to operate and fulfill its mission if this proposed lease agreement is finalized without substantive improvements,” wrote Kunal Choksi, senior deputy attorney general and director of the DOJ’s consumer protection division, in a letter addressed to the university’s attorney, Theodore C. Edwards II, of The Banks Law Firm, last week.

Since SAU is a nonprofit and the contract encompasses all or a majority of its property, the state DOJ is legally obligated to review and approve it before any money can change hands between 50 Plus 1 and SAU. Although the review is not yet complete, Choksi’s letter suggests that the agency is unlikely to approve the contract in its cur-

rent form.

SAU, which sits on about 105 acres of land near downtown Raleigh, has said it is prepared to lease its entire property to 50 Plus 1 for a 99-year term in exchange for a $70 million lease payment. 50 Plus 1, in turn, has said it plans to build a mixed-use development on part of the property and lease the rest back to the university.

According to Choksi’s letter, the initial lease payment specified in the contract is “between $20 million and $70 million dollars,” a sum which, in the DOJ’s assessment, is “too low to justify” the lease of SAU’s entire property, which is appraised at over $198 million.

“That large of a gap raises red flags about the defensibility of the deal,” Choksi wrote.

“Absent further information or justification…the deal should be renegotiated to, among other things, reflect the true value of the property being transferred.”

In the past, 50 Plus 1 has justified the $70 million lease

fee by offering the university a 35 percent share in the net revenue from the development it plans to build on the property. Monti Valrie, a managing partner at 50 Plus 1, told INDY in December he estimates SAU could make $1 billion from this deal through the revenue sharing agreement. But in the letter, Choksi said the university has not provided any evidence or justification for that estimate.

Also missing from the materials the DOJ requested from the university was evidence that it had completed due diligence on 50 Plus 1 and its financials, according to Choksi’s letter.

“SAU, … despite repeated requests, has not provided any such diligence to this office including any documentation of financing [50 Plus 1] has secured to meet its payment obligations, details about similar deals [50 Plus 1] has developed, including deals with other universities, or the company’s audited financial statements,” Choksi wrote.

The DOJ also has questions about whether this deal aligns with SAU’s charitable mission as a nonprofit university. According to the letter, following through on the land lease with 50 Plus 1 could put the school at risk of losing its nonprofit status.

“There is precedent for the IRS revoking, and courts upholding the revocation, of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit’s tax-exempt status on grounds and circumstances analogous to the proposed transaction,” Choksi wrote.

The DOJ also has unanswered questions about how much of the university’s property 50 Plus 1 plans to develop.

“We have requested information on how this transaction will preserve and revive SAU’s educational mission and finances,” Choksi wrote, “including site plans showing which property [50 Plus 1] intends to develop and which it will preserve for educational purposes.”

Prior to receiving this letter, SAU had been aggressively lobbying the DOJ to green-light its partnership with 50 Plus 1 so that it could collect the initial lease fee ahead of a mid-February hearing with its accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). After a year of declining enrollment, layoffs, and accumulating debt, SAU is under immense pressure to show SACSCOC it can recover financially, lest it lose accreditation.

SAU previously indicated in a press release that SACSCOC set an early-February deadline for the school to submit new evidence to be considered at the accreditation hearing. In his letter, Choksi acknowledged the imminent deadline and offered to work with the school to get an extension from its accreditor.

“We have a duty to ensure that nonprofit assets within North Carolina are protected, and that extends to helping our HBCUs thrive and give their students the education that will help them succeed,” Choksi wrote. “We, like you, want to ensure that SAU can continue to operate in the short term and succeed in the long term.” W

ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE

Annual Point-in-Time Counts

Offer a Snapshot of Triangle-Area Homelessness

INDY staffers joined volunteers surveying unhoused people in Wake and Durham.

BY CHLOE COURTNEY BOHL AND JUSTIN LAIDLAW chloe@indyweek.com,

jlaidlaw@indyweek.com

Every January, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development asks communities that receive federal funding for homelessness services to conduct a Point-in-Time count—a survey of people experiencing sheltered or unsheltered homelessness in that community on a single night.

The counts offer rough estimates of the scale of homelessness in a given community from year to year. HUD uses the data to distribute funding to local service providers. The providers themselves use the data to measure their effectiveness and tailor their work to the community’s needs.

Last year, volunteers counted 992 people experiencing homelessness in Wake County. That number has been relatively stable since 2020, aside from a spike to 1,534 in 2022. In Durham, volunteers counted 415 people in 2024, an increase of 10 percent from 2023, but roughly 10 percent below the 2022 count of 459 people. This year’s figures won’t be available for a few months.

As INDY staff writers, we followed along with trained volunteers in Wake and Durham counties as they completed their PIT counts. What we saw underscored the ubiquity of homelessness in our communities, and the human toll of our housing shortage.

Wake County

Since Wake County is so large, its PIT count takes three days. From January 23 through 25, volunteers interviewed people experiencing homelessness about where they’d spent the night on Wednesday, January 22. Temperatures dropped down to 19 degrees that night, and the county opened its emergency white flag shelters. Still, volunteers told INDY they’d spoken to people who had slept outside.

On the morning of January 25, INDY followed a group of volunteers canvassing parts of Garner and Raleigh. Their first stop was Garner United Methodist Church, which opens its doors to people experiencing homelessness on Saturday mornings for a meal and a shower. At 8 a.m., the church’s multipurpose room was filled with about 40 people.

“Good morning everybody, how’s everyone doing today?” Brittany Jackson, a peer support specialist at Veterans Services of the Carolinas and the leader of the volunteer group, greeted the room with a wave.

“We’re volunteers who are out trying to get information and services into the area. Anybody who might have been unsheltered on Wednesday night, if it’s OK, we’d like to talk to a couple people. If not, that’s fine.”

The volunteers fanned out to introduce themselves and begin their surveys. Jackson explained to INDY that some of the people volunteers encountered wouldn’t want to participate, out of privacy concerns or distrust.

“A lot of these people are traumatized, and it’s understandable,” Jackson says. “I think we’ve all been through some level of trauma that has caused us to lose trust in the system.”

Jackson spends her workdays doing outreach to unhoused people around Wake County. She tries to visit the same people multiple times in a week to check in, offer supplies like tents and sleeping bags, and spread the word about shelter services and mental health resources.

“We go into the woods, we go into abandoned houses, under train tracks, whatever we gotta do to get out to the people,” Jackson says. “But you have to be consistent with it. That’s how you build trust.”

The volunteers’ next stop was an encampment a few miles down the road, in a wooded area across the street from a sparkling-new neighborhood on Raleigh’s southern edge. The encampment looked like it had been abandoned or cleared out. There were no people and no tents. But signs of life were strewn across the forest floor: plastic packaging, water bottles, glass bottles, shoes, clothes, tampon applicators, children’s toys, and several strollers. Someone had erected a wall of wooden pallets on one edge of the clearing to block the noise and lights from a nearby interchange.

The volunteers tried another location they knew about

Brittany Jackson, a volunteer of the 2025 Point-In-Time count, looks around a homeless encampment in Garner.

PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

down the road. A week ago there had been an encampment there, but on Saturday, a bulldozer was clearing the land for construction.

Wake County’s overall growth trajectory “doesn’t tell the whole story,” says Katie Cardenas, a volunteer from Garner who serves on the town’s affordable housing task force. “That doesn’t tell how many people are being pushed into other counties.”

PIT counts provide much-needed data, but they’re also unscientific and widely understood to undercount the actual rate of homelessness. Jackson offered an example of an encampment she’d visited the day before where she only counted three people, but they told her there were several more living with them who didn’t want to participate in the count.

“We only laid eyes on three people, but we know for a fact there were 14,” Jackson said.

Durham County

In Durham, the PIT count is held one night a year, this year on January 27. Around 150 residents—elected officials, real estate developers, Duke University and North Carolina Central University faculty and students, and other volunteers— joined forces to conduct the annual count. The volunteer effort is led by Housing for New Hope, a Durham supportive housing nonprofit. Russell Pierce, the group’s CEO, said that this year, the organization had more volunteers than it could handle. Pierce noted that organizations like Housing for New Hope, Haven House, and other groups providing homelessness services across the Triangle need support and resources year-round, too, not just during Point-in-Time counts.

Our INDY team in Durham joined a group canvassing a small area of East Central Durham near the intersection of Alston Avenue and Holloway Street. We stopped at a BP gas station at the heart of the intersection, a major hub frequented by unhoused folks in the neighborhood, according to neighbors we spoke with. People stood outside the gas station talking with each other or yelling to get the attention of friends they saw walking by the parking lot. A car sat with its engine running in one of the parking spaces; the driver was in and out of sleep curled up in the driver’s seat.

Durham’s homeless population, just like the community overall, is not a monolith. Folks just on the one block of Alston and Holloway ranged from old, young, white, Black, male, and female.

Our group was accompanied by Cassaundra Martinez, a crisis response clinician with the city’s Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Teams (HEART). Martinez has been with HEART for about two years, and knew our group’s assigned coverage area well. As we engaged with neighbors, many of them recognized Martinez, or at the very least, were familiar with the HEART insignia on her fluorescent work vest. She says her team often makes the rounds to check on folks and provide support, when possible.

“It’s important that we know our neighbors’ faces and understand their needs,” Martinez said.

Sloan Edemann, one of the group’s volunteers, said she spent a lot of time researching housing and homelessness in recent years as she earned her master’s degree in public policy from UNC-Chapel Hill. Edemann echoed Martinez, saying that the PIT count was an opportunity to actually hear directly from those facing homelessness so that local service providers can create programs and resources that have an even greater impact.

Edemann and a colleague participated in both the Wake and Durham County PIT counts this month. Last year, Edemann volunteered through Oak City Cares to join the PIT Count in Wake County. Now that she’s done the count two years in a row, Edemann says that even in her day-to-day life in Raleigh, she feels more equipped than her peers to support unhoused neighbors when she encounters them outside her apartment or elsewhere in the community.

“I feel like a lot of my friends don’t know how to react in those kinds of situations where you’re face-to-face with someone that’s experiencing a lot of trauma,” Edemann says. “I think things like PIT count equip you when you’re able to spend time with the folks and hear their stories.”

Just before the Durham count began, Mayor Leonardo Williams and Pierce, of Housing for New Hope, addressed the crowd of volunteers. Both raised concerns about how changes in federal leadership could negatively impact housing work on the ground in Durham. Earlier this week, Families Moving Forward, which provides temporary housing and case management in Durham, called upon its supporters to help bolster the organization’s funding due to the threat of a federal funding freeze. Williams said that the pressure from Washington shouldn’t force our communities to choose between which issues to invest in addressing.

“I hope that, as we’re moving forward, we’re taking this information and we’re being really strategic,” Williams said. W

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CavanKerry Press; Feb. 4

Taking Care

Talking with Durham poet Bridget Bell about her debut collection on postpartum depression, All That We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy.

BY SARAH EDWARDS arts@indyweek.com

If social media and the advertising industry are to be believed, new motherhood is a site of self-actualization—one brimming with nourishing moments; sunnily swaying the baby in a neutral-colored Scandavian wrap, a few sleepless nights, perhaps, and some slapstick events involving dirty diapers.

Thank god for literature complicating that narrative. In a new collection of poems about maternal mental health, All That We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy, Durham poet Bridget Bell does just that. Bell, who teaches composition and literature at Durham Technical Community College, defines postpartum depression in one poem as “a window painted shut / a cornered mouse frantic along the floorboards / wheels on black ice — / spinning, spinning, spinning.”

The impossible ask in Bell’s title feels truer than ever, especially of women suffering from postpartum depression—a condition that affects, as the introduction notes, 15 to 20 percent of mothers. Across thirty-three poems, the forces of postpartum “spinning” show up in sleep deprivation, psychosis, loneliness, and intrusive thoughts. Some poems are a fairly brutal read; all are raw, lyrical, and inventive.

People who are parents may find it a relief to see these experiences articulated honestly; people who are not parents will find it riveting and educational. Ahead of the book’s release—with a Ponysaurus launch celebration on February 8, and a Mettlesome Theater reading on March 22—Bell sat down with the INDY to talk about the collection.

INDY: How long have you been working on these poems? Did they start during your first pregnancy?

BRIDGET BELL: I first started writing about the topic a month after I had my daughter—I have two children. I can remember the first poem that I wrote, and it’s not actually in the collection, and the poems kind of started as a way of processing what I was going through after I had her because I struggled with postpartum depression. Initially, I wasn’t imagining it as a book, because I couldn’t imagine anything in the future—everything was so debilitating. But the further away I got from being sick, and the further I got along on my healing process, I started to think about how powerful it could be to have a collection that would potentially help other women. So I really wrote it over the course of six years. Some of the poems were very acute and in response to things I experienced, and then some are in response to other stories I’ve heard or research I’ve done.

Was it hard to sit in the material that long, or cathartic to have a mechanism to think through things? Or both?

It was cathartic. It was definitely hard, too, but I have an amazing community of writers who helped me workshop the poems and so I always felt very safe in the content. I feel very passionate about talking about maternal mental health, so even if the content

was difficult for me, I felt driven by the idea that talking about it and having the poems out in the world could help combat some of the stigma.

Can you talk a bit about the collection title—which is great!

Thank you! I had a couple of different working titles as I was putting together the manuscript, and none of them ever felt quite right. For a long time, the manuscript was called Normal because I wanted to emphasize how common perinatal mood disorders are, but that didn’t capture everything that I wanted.

When I thought of All That We Ask of You Is To Always Be Happy—it sounds cheesy, but it was kind of one of those “click into place” moments. As someone who uses dark humor to cope with things, the snarkiness of the title felt like it hit on the different notes that I wanted the collection to hit on. It’s in direct conversation with this message that moms get—and not just new moms, but parents in general—to, you know, ‘cherish every moment and, oh, this time goes by so fast.’ But it’s really super, super hard, and the moments that are cherishable are few and far between. There’s a lot of struggle and boredom and resentment. I don’t think the title is unique to motherhood, either. I think it’s applicable to a lot of

expectations that we put on women. I really liked that plural first person, that there’s this ominous we. It’s not even necessarily like one person is giving a direct message; it’s just this amorphous pressure that you feel from every angle. That first-person plural felt important.

Did you have poetry or literature to look to for writing about maternal mental health—what’s out there?

My daughter is 10, so it’s been a decade since this started. I think a lot has changed and there’s probably more literature out there. But I can remember how hungry I was for poems about maternal mental health specifically. And I can remember Googling, “maternal, postpartum depression, poetry” and I couldn’t find a whole lot.

I read a lot of other women’s writing while I was working on this, but they weren’t necessarily postpartum depression poems— they were more poems about similar things that the collection explores: having people dismiss you, or the shame of not fulfilling societal expectations. I think there are a lot of stories about postpartum depression, like memoirs. Postpartum Support International is a great resource, and they have a blog and a section called “Stories of Hope” that I would read a lot.

“The biggest thing I want people to know is that these are super treatable medical conditions,” Durham poet Bridget Bell says. PHOTO BY COURTNEY POTTER

I do feel like there’s a gap in poetry specifically, and maybe that’s people’s hesitancy because there’s this, there’s this pushback in the poetry world to not be overly sentimental—I always got that message in grad school. So I don’t know if people are reluctant to write about it because they don’t want to seem overly sentimental—but I don’t think the subject is sentimental. I think it’s wrought with anger and angst and complex emotions.

The book has a forward by a doctor and there’s a lot of medical language.

CavanKerry is the publisher—they have a series that they publish that’s called Laurel Books, and it’s a series dedicated specifically to books about living with any illness, whether that’s physical or mental. All of their Laurel Books have a medical forward to couch the collection in the scientific realm. Through pure luck, I guess, I have a very good friend who is best friends with Dr. Riah Patterson, who is the director of UNC’s Perinatal Mood Disorders clinic. So I already knew Riah, and she was just the perfect person to have written the medical forward. She’s a mother, too. That felt really, really lucky.

I also really wanted to weave the academic language throughout, because people do sometimes dismiss perinatal mood disorders, as you know women, women overreacting or like, ‘it’s just the baby blues.’ It was important to me to get the scientific lan-

guage in there to emphasize that these are researched medical problems with a rich body of academic research behind them and that they aren’t just, you know, women being overly emotional, or women being sad because they’re tired.

For the people you’ve given this to, maybe women that have had pregnancies, or struggled with maternal mental health—what’s the reaction been?

I’ve cried in response to basically everything people have said to me. People have been so generous in their reception of the book, and said such kind things to me, like—‘you really are just giving voice to some of the darker things that I experienced and wasn’t able to say.’

What kinds of resources are out there for people experiencing perinatal mood disorders? What was helpful to you?

The biggest thing I want people to know is that these are super treatable medical conditions. And if you think that something is wrong, stick to your guns with that. You might get messaging—‘Oh, you’re just tired,’ or, ‘It’s normal to cry after your baby is born.’ But you know if something is wrong. If you can’t advocate for yourself because it’s too debilitating, telling someone that you trust that you need help and asking them to help you get that help, I think, is huge.

I went to a support group through UNC. It’s now defunct, but even if you can’t physically get to a support group, there are a lot of online support groups. And [going to that] for me was huge because I knew I was going to be in a space with other women who weren’t going to judge me. It was also super helpful to see other women who were a little bit farther along in their recovery process. I remember a woman saying that she woke up one day and remembered that when she felt bad it was the worst she’d ever felt, but she couldn’t actually remember how bad it felt to feel that bad, because she was healing. That really stuck with me.

Also, if it works for you—don’t be afraid to take the medicine. Because I was and I think that many people are hesitant to take medicine. I was afraid to get on antidepressants because I was nursing and was afraid I was going to harm the baby. I would have gotten better eventually, but I feel like the medication saved me in the acute moment. I know everyone has different feelings about medication—but use all of the resources available to you. W

Incoming! Brazilian Dissidents, Mumbai Nurses, and AI Satellites

Oscar contender I’m Still Here, Kristen Stewart as an AI ocean buoy in Love Me, and more films coming to the Triangle.

BY GLENN MCDONALD arts@indyweek.com

My single favorite quote about the movies, from the annals of film criticism, comes from the late, great Roger Ebert. “For me,” Ebert said, “the movies are like a machine that generates empathy.”

He goes on: “If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams, and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.”

Times being what they are, here in the land of the free, it can be helpful to think about empathy and to deliberately seek out different perspectives. Overseas productions and foreign-language films remain a reliable strategy for this. As luck would have it, we have two must-see films of this sort rotating into local theaters this month.

I’m Still Here, from acclaimed Brazilian director Walter Salles, tells the terrible and true story of dissident politician Rubens Paiva, who was abducted by Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1971. The film is based on the 2015 memoir by Rubens’ son and focuses on the family left behind after the forced disappearance. The story is bracketed with scenes from 1996, when the now-democratic Brazilian state finally issued a report on Paiva’s fate.

I’m Still Here was a massive event when released in Brazil last year and was recently nominated for several Academy Awards. In fact, the film is up for Best International Feature and for Best Picture—a first for a Brazilian movie in Portuguese. Critics are lauding the film for its potent alchemy of the personal and the political in a time when authoritarianism is once again gaining momentum, worldwide.

Important consumer advocacy note: If you decide to wait for streaming with this one, make sure you don’t get the 2010 movie also titled I’m Still Here. That’s the fake documentary where Joaquin Phoenix pretends to start a hip-hop career, and it sucks with the power of one thousand industrial vacuums.

For a different overseas perspective, consider the romantic drama All We Imagine as Light, a much-heralded film out of India that’s getting picked up at several local arthouse theaters. The film follows the story of two nurses in Mumbai—one navigating a complex arranged marriage, the other enjoying a forbidden romance.

Director Payal Kapadia is being proclaimed an important new voice in cinema and her film won the Grand Prix prize at the Cannes Film Festival last year. That’s all good news—big festival awards suggest there’s a quality film experience to be had. But stories like this, rooted in ground-level realism, also provide a sense of what

contemporary life is like elsewhere on the planet. I’ll be frank: My knowledge of city life, romance, and the nursing racket in Mumbai is limited. And since I’m in the market to park my head anywhere but America, just now, this movie looks like a good time.

A third option for high-altitude perspective shifting this month, Love Me is an ambitious indie sci-fi film with an intriguing premise: Many years after humanity’s extinction, an AI ocean buoy (Kristen Stewart) and a passing satellite (Steven Yeun) ponder the nature of life and love on planet Earth. By way of surviving digital artifacts, they discover what it means to be human. Existential themes are involved. And animation. And social media, I think.

The film rather defies synopsis, actually. You’re better off checking out the trailer online. But conceptually, Love Me suggests an interesting riff on the empathy idea and it does that thing that sci-fi is good at— projecting an idea out to the event horizon, to see what happens.

QUICK PICKS

In honor of Black History Month, The Cary Theater is hosting a monthlong documentary series featuring films on Toni Morrison, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and more. Check the website for details.

On Feb. 14, Anthony Mackie takes over the shield-slinger role in Marvel Studios’ latest franchise installment, Captain America: Brave New World.

The extremely buzzy indie horror film Companion chronicles a weekend party that gets deeply weird when—well, spoiler rules forbid. Don’t watch the latest round of trailers if you want to go in cold.

U.K. filmmaker and working-class hero Mike Leigh returns with Hard Truths, the latest in his lifelong series of detailed family portraits steeped in humor and despair. Presence, from the ever-restless director Steven Soderbergh, is a haunted house thriller with a technical twist: The entire film is shot from the ghost’s perspective. W

Still from All We Imagine As Light. PHOTO COURTESY OF PETIT CHAOS

Still from I’m Still Here. PHOTO COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES

VOICES OF THE UNARMED: JUSTICE, LOVE, RESILIENCE

The Carolina Theatre, Durham | February 14, 8 p.m.

Hopeful Harmony

A Durham Symphony Orchestra program is grounded in grief, hope, and the work of Herman Whitfield III, a young Black composer who died in police custody.

BY TASSO HARTZOG music@indyweek.com

In 2003, Maestro William Henry Curry was in the process of assembling a program for the Indianapolis Symphony.

“A friend of a friend told me about a young African American musical genius who just finished an orchestral work,” remembers Curry, now the music director for the Durham Symphony Orchestra. Curry looked at the composition, Herman Whitfield III’s Scherzo No. 2 in E Minor, and immediately sensed that he was in the presence of an “intriguing and extremely original talent.” He selected the piece for his program. It received a standing ovation.

Curry became a mentor to Whitfield, who was only 20 at the time, and they remained in close contact for several years before eventually falling out of touch. In 2022, Curry received an email from Whitfield’s parents: the young composer had died in police custody, they informed him, while suffering from a mental health crisis. They had called for an ambulance but got law enforcement instead. Whitfield was unarmed.

Whitfield’s story, a tragically familiar archetype in contemporary American life, is one of many that animates Voices of the Unarmed: Justice, Love, Resilience, the Durham Symphony’s Valentine’s Day program. The free concert—which will take place on February 14, in the middle of Black History Month—is anchored by three works: Whitfield’s own Overture-Fanfare in D Major, which will have its world premiere; Joel Thompson’s “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed,” for orchestra and chorus; and Maestro Curry’s “Eulogy for a Dream.”

The latter two compositions set existing words to music, though to vastly different emotional ends. Thompson’s piece—at turns haunting, tender, and furious—draws from the last words spoken by seven unarmed Black men who were killed by police (with the exception of Trayvon Martin, who was shot by George Zimmerman, coordinator of his neighborhood watch). Curry’s composition, meanwhile, excerpts various writings and speeches by Dr. Mar-

tin Luther King, Jr., and is uniformly rousing.

An important component of the Voices of the Unarmed program will take place without any musical accompaniment. The Symphony has planned a series of community conversations as a way to explore the ideas raised by the concert—which range from political exigencies like police reform to such weighty and difficult-to-define concepts as love and justice—in greater depth.

A planned forum with the composers, and with Whitfield’s parents, who will attend the performance as special guests, will bring together local organizations like the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham, Restorative Justice Durham, and Durham Community Safety’s HEART Program, which provides the kind of non-police crisis response that might have saved the life of Herman Whitfield. Preceding the concert, Curry and Thompson— visiting from Texas, where he is currently the Houston Grand Opera’s composer-in-residence—will meet with students and teachers in Durham Public Schools. A panel discussion at the end of the night will give audience members the opportunity to engage with the composers.

“This program,” Curry says, “is meant to be about listening”—to the music, yes, and also to the stories that inhabit it.

When the orchestra premieres Whitfield’s Overture-Fanfare in D Major, for example, it will be impossible to forget the fact that less than two months ago, an Indianapolis jury found the officers involved in Whitfield’s death not guilty on all charges. Even though the coroner’s office ruled Whitfield’s death a homicide, defense law-

yers argued that health issues—the composer’s enlarged heart—not excessive police force, were at fault. Whitfield was heard on body camera footage saying “I can’t breathe” while officers held him in a prone restraint.

It is impossible, upon hearing Whitfield’s story, not to think of Eric Garner, whose death under similar circumstances in 2014—and the subsequent failure of a grand jury to indict the officer who placed Garner in a chokehold—led to nationwide protest.

In fact, it was Garner’s killing in 2014 that compelled Joel Thompson to compose “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed,” which will be performed after Whitfield’s Overture-Fanfare. Thompson says he wrote the piece as a kind of “journal entry”—a way to process and give musical form to “the sense of worthlessness that I felt in the wake of the lack of indictment in the Eric Garner case, the lack of justice in all of the cases.”

In composing the piece, Thompson reached back to Haydn’s “Seven Last Words of Christ” as a structural template. (He also borrowed an eighteenth-century French Burgundian motif—“The armed man should be feared”— to great effect.) Each of Thompson’s movements corresponds to one of Haydn’s, except that the last words of Jesus have been replaced by the last words of, among others, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Amadou Diallo. Where Haydn’s Christ says, “I’m thirsty,” for example, Thompson conjures the anguished last words of Oscar Grant: “You shot me!”

“I feel like every Black artist that addresses the scourge of police brutality or the proximity of death in Black life,”

ILLUSTRATION BY ANN SALMAN

Thompson says, “always has in the back of their mind that this can be me.”

“To be on the same program as a fellow Black composer who was murdered,” he continues, “is that voice in the back of your head made real.”

Thompson nevertheless hopes that his composition, for all of its unflinching representations of tragedy, will bring healing and understanding. “Every time this piece is performed,” he says, “I learn something about myself, about my society, about my community. I see people, even if it’s for a brief second—their hearts open.”

“And I really hope,” Thompson says, “that the Durham community can see the life that was robbed when they bear witness to Whitfield’s creation.”

Ben Haas, director of the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham, holds on to a similar kind of hope. He tells the INDY that “violence is a very distancing, traumatizing reality,” but that “in any community, even in one that’s being torn apart, there are people singing songs.”

Voices of the Unarmed concludes with Curry’s “Eulogy for a Dream,” which is right for the occasion. Like Dr. King’s speeches, from which its text is drawn, the piece manages immense gravity without sinking into despair. The music stirs and soars, as befits the Civil Rights icon.

The connection to Dr. King in “Eulogy for a Dream” is more than textual: the impetus for Curry’s composition actually came from Coretta Scott King, who suggested that he set her husband’s words to music when she and Curry met in 1985.

History looms large for Curry, who has been the Durham Symphony’s maestro since 2009; he counts Lincoln among his greatest heroes and is prone to quoting him in conversation.

“We must be critical thinkers—and critical rememberers—about the problems of democracy,” Curry says. “What can we learn from people that have been given these burdens that seem to be unendurable?”

Voices of the Unarmed reminds us that we disregard the past at our peril. Curry’s father was born a mere 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Curry remembers, at the age of ten, encountering two drinking fountains on a family trip to Virginia: one “white,” one “colored.” We can’t make sense of Herman Whitfield’s death without this history in mind.

“Eulogy for a Dream” ends with a line from Dr. King’s most famous speech. It articulates precisely what Curry and Thompson hope that Voices of the Unarmed might achieve: “We will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” W

FO O D & D R I N K

AFTERS DESSERT BAR

905 West Main Street | Instagram: @aftersdessertbar

A Sweet Stop

Afters Dessert Bar, now open in Brightleaf Square, offers a playful invitation to passersby: slow down, take a break, and treat yourself.

BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com

In the kitchen of Afters Dessert Bar, there’s a whiteboard with a neatly bulleted to-do list. The first item reads “Ass Red Velvet.”

The abbreviation’s meaning becomes clear as Stephen Kennedy, who owns Afters with his wife Lindsey, begins to punch circles from a large rectangle of cake and build them up, layer by layer, inside transparent acetate rings. “Ass,” it turns out, means “assemble.” It’s the kind of playful shorthand that makes sense in a kitchen where a stone mortar and pestle is painted with a dog’s face.

The Kennedys brought Afters to a cozy brick-walled space in Brightleaf Square in December. The location is a second act for the couple, who from May 2020 to May 2022 operated the dessert shop from a Durham Food Hall stall. That venture ended when, like several other vendors, they opted not to renew their lease, citing untenable rent and management issues.

The process of opening their Brightleaf space proved to be drawn-out. After leaving the food hall, the couple faced months of negotiations over the lease. Construction delays and a back injury that sidelined Stephen pushed their planned opening further. Now, two months after opening their doors, they’re finally finding their rhythm.

Afters is still in its soft opening phase. The coffee station isn’t set up yet, and they’re keeping limited hours—10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. But even in this nascent stage, the space has a strong sense of itself, from the molded chocolates Stephen calls “the mascots” (rainbows, unicorns, robots, and dinosaurs, displayed under a cloche dome) to the vintage phar-

macy artifacts that nod to Lindsey’s profession as a psychiatric pharmacist.

I ask Stephen—who handles everything in the kitchen, while Lindsey manages the shop design and operational logistics—what he plans to do with the remnants of the red velvet sheet cake he’s working on, now a lacy network of holes. He tells me he’ll dehydrate the scraps into crunchy crumbs for garnish.

“Someday I would like to have something like Time Out’s ‘bucket of bones,’” he says, referencing the venerated Chapel Hill diner’s $1 bucket of fried chicken bones with bits of meat still clinging to them, “but with cake scraps.”

Stephen’s pastry career spans over two decades, with stints at some of the Triangle’s most esteemed restaurants, including Bin 54, Pizzeria Toro, and the now-closed Cypress on the Hill and Foursquare, among others. His fine dining background shows in the precision of his work, but there’s a playful irreverence to his creations that keeps them approachable. The menu at Afters is divided into “Befores” and “Afters”—a nod to the British term for desserts. The “Befores” include gluten-free scones in flavors like cacio e pepe and brown sugar ham, while the “Afters” range from chocolate chip cookies and chocolate boxes to single-serving coffee cakes, caramel brownies, and chocolate crémeux.

The chocolate chip cookies are a signature item. Small and square-shaped, they’re studded with what the Kennedys call “thunks”—house-made chocolate chips made by tempering Colombian chocolate and slicing it into pieces with a 5-wheel pastry cutter.

“You can’t really find high-quality chocolate chips,” he says.

For those ordering something from the dessert case to enjoy on-site—there are three armchairs and five bar stools—Stephen plates desserts with added touches: the chocolate crémeux arrives with dehydrated raspberry sugar, delicate milk dots set with agar, and shaved white chocolate; the caramel brownie gets a scattering of candied peanuts; the coffee cake comes with a quenelle of Ceylon whipped cream.

A durable dessert space

Lindsey, who still works full-time at UNC Hospitals, arrives midway through my visit.

“I don’t know if Steph told you, but I have a thing called ‘time blindness,’” she says. She’s dressed in a yellow shirt, a patterned scarf, and rectangular glasses with warm beige frames and a beaded strap.

The historic walls and floors of Brightleaf Square hold particular significance for Lindsey, who grew up in Henderson and spent summers priming tobacco on her grandparents’ farm. She remembers visiting the complex as a child in the 1980s, not long after it had been transformed from tobacco warehouses into mixed-use space.

Lindsey chose durable design elements that honor the building’s industrial roots, from Art Deco brackets that support the

bar to antique French factory lights that hang overhead. Even the cans of milk she sourced from a Japanese grocery store in Cary reflect a commitment to sturdiness— their metal so thick that you can’t flex the can by pressing with your finger.

“I’m always trying to look for things that give that sturdy vibe,” she says.

This theme extends to the broken Hobart mixer displayed prominently on the counter, a relic from their food hall days. Its paddle and dough hook attachments sit in the window, wrapped in artificial leaves and twinkling battery-powered lights. While the couple doesn’t say this outright, it’s hard not to see it as a symbol of resilience after their challenging start at the food hall.

While many Durham businesses lean heavily on bull imagery, Afters pays homage to the city’s less-used nickname—the City of Medicine. The dessert case is actually a medication fridge salvaged from a Walgreens closing sale.

From the same sale, the couple acquired cabinets with tall drawers that once held prescription bottles. While cleaning them out, Lindsey found two tablets—Xanax and Plavix—which she framed in ornate gold, like some owners might frame their first dollar bill.

For Lindsey, the pharmacy touches reflect both her present and past. Having grown up working in her father’s pharmacy, she and Stephen hope Afters can provide

Afters Dessert Bar co-owner Stephen Kennedy prepares red velvet cakes. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

their two children with the same experience that shaped her—learning the value of community connection and hard work in a family business.

Between pointing out design elements and explaining her vision for the space, Lindsey keeps glancing at the dessert case. Her admiration for Stephen’s desserts hasn’t waned in their 15 years of marriage.

“I’ll watch him bake and think, ‘Okay, well, this makes sense,’” she says. “But then I’ll taste it and wonder, ‘When did you perform the spell on this?’”

She’s adamant about keeping the coffee program simple: no espresso drinks, just quality drip coffee.

“We can’t turn this into a coffee place,” she says. “Then the desserts become an afterthought.”

“Is she talking about fika yet?” Stephen interjects, from the kitchen. Earlier, he’d told me she would bring it up—and now, at his prompting, she explains the concept: a Swedish tradition of taking a break with coffee and a sweet treat.

“Swedish desserts aren’t saccharine,” Lindsey says. “They’re balanced, not overwhelming. That’s what we’re going for.”

But in a culture where afternoon treat breaks aren’t ingrained, the challenge is making the concept stick. While I’m at

Afters, midday on a Thursday, a student wanders in, explaining that her laptop “blue screened out” while she was working elsewhere in the building. The forced break had brought her to Afters for a sweet treat—an inadvertent American version of fika, where dessert comes not from cultural tradition but from technological failure.

Afters’ business model is divided into thirds: walk-in service, custom orders, and wholesale to restaurants. Stephen is currently supplying desserts to The Durham Hotel, and the couple plans to expand their wholesale operations. In a space that seats only eight, space for walk-in traffic is limited. The trade-off for visibility and seating at the food hall is a more intimate, curated experience here.

As with any small business in 2025, they’re still working out the kinks.

“Inventory continues to be problematic,” Lindsey says. Just that morning, Stephen had called his regular distributor about eggs. Upon hearing the new prices, he opted for a Costco run.

Lindsey isn’t too phased, though: “My whole life I have dealt with fluctuating medication prices and thinking about inventory on the shelves and moving that inventory out,” she says. “It’s really not any different if it’s eggs or chocolate.”

Lindsey and Stephen’s partnership is a study in complementary skills.

“I think maybe the core of our love for each other [is that] we both have to be wellversed in measurements and conversions,”

Lindsey says.

She calls Stephen over and starts quizzing him. “How much does a large egg weigh?” she asks. “54 grams,” he replies. “How about the yolk of a large egg?” “20 grams.”

Lindsey beams.

“I sometimes like to call myself the joy bringer, and Steph the joy maker,” she says, then grows uncharacteristically sheepish. “Maybe you should leave that out of the article. I feel like we sound a little pretentious. Like, ‘we’re such good people.’”

But the description fits. Stephen’s desserts are meticulously crafted, and Lindsey’s quirky touches make the space feel warm and intentional. In a rapidly changing Durham, where national chains and quick-service concepts make it easy to put a fine point to a brand—an ice-cream shop, a late-night cookie shop—Afters stands apart. A dessert shop that honors Durham’s medical legacy while seeking to emulate a Swedish afternoon tradition? It’s hard to categorize, but certainly nothing here is an afterthought. W

The chocolate crémeux with a devil’s food cake base and topped with raspberry sugar and shaved white chocolate at After Desserts Bar. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

INDY SELECTS

Upcoming things to do, hear, and see, handpicked by the INDY team

TO ATTEND

Futures for American Democracy:

An Evening with Jamelle Bouie

February 6, 8 p.m. | Bryan Center Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham

In a moment of profound national crisis, could a topic be more relevant? ( Is there a future for American democracy?) In this Duke University event, popular New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie will speak on the “historic nature, impact, and implications of the election and its outcome.” In a typical column, Bouie— who is based in Charlottesville and also co-hosts the podcast Unclear and Present Danger—fleshes out current events with historical context; a kind of analysis that feels especially urgent right now. For a preview of how Bouie feels about the election, here are some recent column titles: “Trump Doesn’t Get to Decide What the Constitution Means” (Jan. 25), “Don’t Fall For Trump’s DEI Dodge,” (Feb. 1). This event is free and open to the public. —Sarah Edwards

TO HEAR

Sluice with Chessa Rich

February 7, 8 p.m. | The Pinhook, Durham

In a 2024 INDY profile of Durham musician Justin Morris, who plays music as Sluice, Tasso Hartzog wrote that Morris’s songs, “rich with memory and close

observation, are rooted in North Carolina’s landscape.” Wry, laidback, and ponderous, with nature-laden lyrics that wouldn’t feel out of place in Farmers’ Almanac, Morris’s music has been compared to Bill Callahan, a nod that doesn’t feel too far off.

At this Pinhook show, Morris is joined by another Durham musician, Chessa Rich. Her 2023 album Deeper Sleeper, an INDY favorite, is themed around sleeping, creativity, and the dream world—though its lush, pop-inflected music is guaranteed to keep you enthralled and awake. —SE

The Great Cover Up

February 7&8, 7 p.m. | Kings, Raleigh

The Great Cover Up is, by design, difficult to blurb: The event, one of Raleigh’s wonderful annual traditions, features local musicians covering the greats—but all cover acts (fifteen in total this year) are kept a secret until the big concert reveal. Past “band” appearances have included Weezer, David Bowie, and Joy Division, so rest assured that you’re bound to encounter a favorite in the mix. The buy-in of local musicians, who go all-out with costumes and acting, is big, making this a very fun event. Bonus: You have several opportunities to go (February 7-8 and February 20-22) and all proceeds go to local organizations and beyond that are “working to help people who are struggling.” —SE

Country Soul Songbook Presents the Big Sing

Civil Rights Songbook

February 8, 7 p.m. | The Cary Theater, Cary Country Song Soulbook, a local organization led by

musicians Kamara Thomas, Charli Lowry, and Kym Register, works to amplify the voices of underrepresented voices in country music—a signal boost that’s essential in a genre that’s been forcibly whitewashed. (This weekend at the Grammy’s, Beyoncé did win Album of the Year for Cowboy Carter, her official foray into country music—maybe the genre tides are slowly turning?). The organization also works to revive and celebrate underrepresented music from the historical canon more broadly, as with this “evening of learning and singing songs” from the Civil Rights Movement. Songs from times of struggle remind us that the fight for justice has been done before and is possible again; at this event, Thomas invites community members to join their voices together. Also, don’t worry: There will be a short vocal warm-up and lesson beforehand. —SE

TO SEE Paint Me This House of Love

January 30-February 16, various times | Murphey School Auditorium, Raleigh

Raleigh’s Burning Coal Theater is premiering not one, but two plays this season: The first, comedy Paint Me This House of Love, will see a U.S. stage for the first time when Jules (Ali Goins) shows up at the door of his daughter Cecelia (Monica Hoh), who has been estranged from him for over two decades. As they embark on a home renovation project, wounds from the past inevitably surface in clever dialogue by playwright Chelsea Woolley that crisscrosses years of hurt and misunderstanding. Valentine’s Day is usually all about romantic relationships, but the process of repairing familial relationships is every bit as raw and important. Keep an eye out for Burning Coal’s regional premiere of Being Chaka, which follows Paint Me This House of Love with a March 13 opening date—and if you buy a bundle with tickets to both plays, Burning Coal is offering a steep discount. —SE

PHOTO COURTESY OF DUKE

PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

CULTURE CALENDAR

WED 2/5

MUSIC

Honky Tonk Hump Days w/ Charles Latham & the Borrowed Band 8 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Mad Agnes 7 p.m. My Muses Card Shop, Carrboro.

STAGE

Death of a Salesman Jan. 29-Feb. 5, various times. PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill.

Jim Gaffigan Feb. 5-7, 7 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

PAGE

Respect and Loathing in American Democracy

4:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

UNC-Chapel Hill

Philosophy Department: Thinking with Philosophy 2:15 p.m. Chapel Hill Public Library, Chapel Hill.

THURS 2/6 FRI 2/7 SAT 2/8

MUSIC

Lutalo 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

STAGE

Carolina Ballet Presents: Boléro Feb. 6-23, various times. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

An Evening with NYT Columnist Jamelle Bouie 6 p.m. Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham.

SCREEN

Full Frame Winter Road Show: HOLLYWOODGATE

7:30 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary

MUSIC

Angela Bingham with the Jim Ketch Quintet 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

G. Love & Special Sauce 8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

Greatest Love Songs: The Music of Motown 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Lauren Sanderson 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Town Mountain 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Uncut Jams 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Versus Machine 7:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

STAGE

Akeelah and the Bee Feb. 7-23, various times. Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh.

Damon Sumner & Nathan Owens 8 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

Helen’s History Hop 7 p.m. Hayti Heritage Center, Durham.

Kathleen Madigan: The Day Drinking Tour 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

An Oak Tree: Tim Crouch 7:30 p.m. Rubenstein Arts Center, Durham.

The Racket 8 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

Hush Hush 9 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

MUSIC

Classical Guitar Recital by Celil Refik Kaya 7 p.m. The Church of the Good Shepherd, Durham.

Country Soul Songbook presents: The Big Sing: The Civil Rights Songbook 7 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

The Henhouse Prowlers 7:30 p.m. Community Church of Chapel Hill Unitarian Universalist, Chapel Hill.

Lenore Raphael Trio: A Tribute to Oscar Peterson and Joe Pass 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

TR In Concert: Melvin Gray Jr – Dreaming Big 7:30 p.m. Theatre Raleigh, Raleigh.

RUMOURS ATL: A Fleetwood Mac Tribute 8:30 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

The Wldlfe 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

STAGE

Sugar & Spice (& Cold As Ice) 7:30 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

Tim Crouch presents An Oak Tree at von Der Heyden Studio Theater on February 7 and 8.

PHOTO COURTESY OF DUKE ARTS

CULTURE CALENDAR

SUN 2/9 TUES 2/11

MUSIC

The Verona Quartet & Steven Banks 3 p.m. Durham Arts Council, Durham.

STAGE Mettlesome 5 p.m. Yonder, Hillsborough.

MUSIC

Joy Oladokun 7 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

STAGE

Rudy Francisco 7 p.m. Hayti Heritage Center, Durham.

PAGE

Michele Tracy Berger presents DOLL SEED, with Marjorie Hudson 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

WED 2/12

MUSIC

Tim Heidecker 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

PAGE

Unpacking Justice: The LA Aqueduct and Chinatown 4:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

THURS 2/13

MUSIC

Candlelight: Neo-Soul Favorites 8:45 p.m. Aria, Durham.

Cynthia Weiner: A Gorgeous Excitement 6:30 p.m. Letters Bookshop, Durham.

Max Frost 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

STAGE

Cult Your Nights Presents: For the Love of You 8 p.m. Garland Hall, Durham.

Honest Pint Theatre Co. presents: A Chorus Line Feb. 13-23, various times. Theatre Raleigh Arts Center, Raleigh.

Solstice: A Winter Circus Experience 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

FRI 2/14

MUSIC

Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 with the North Carolina Symphony 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Darden and Shawn Purcell Group 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Folkknot 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

MICHELLE 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

A Night of Neo Soul Jazz with Al Strong & Chip Shearin 7:30 p.m. Cary Arts Center, Cary.

Professor X 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Joy Oladokun performs at Lincoln Theatre on February 11.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LINCOLN THEATRE

CULTURE CALENDAR

Valentine’s Day Stoplight Party! 9:30 p.m. The Velvet Hippo, Durham.

STAGE

Actors Improv: ImproValentine 7:30 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

Voices of the Unarmed 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham. FRI 2/14

Hush Hush 9 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

Kevin Hart: Acting My Age Feb. 14-15, various times. DPAC, Durham.

The Lover and the Sword: Round II 6 p.m. Raleigh United Mutual Aid Hub, Raleigh.

Sugar & Spice (& Cold As Ice) 7:30 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

TR In Concert: Seth Rudetsky - Divas by the Decade 7:30 p.m. Theatre Raleigh, Raleigh.

MUSIC

Al Strong 11 a.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Ciompi At Duke: A Collaboration 7:30 p.m. Baldwin Auditorium, Durham.

The Conjure Presents: Spice 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Expedition East - Raleigh 7:30 p.m. Jones Chapel, Raleigh.

CG5 7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Legacy of Jazz presents Shana Tucker: “An Evening of Sade” 7 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

Lovell Bradford Quartet 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Steep Canyon Rangers 8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

STAGE

C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters 4 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Harold Night 8:30 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

House Party 7:30 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

Near Sex For Work 7 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

STAGE

Josh Johnson: The Flowers Tour 4 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

SCREEN

Silent Films of Buster Keaton w/Original Live Music by Not-So-SilentCinema 7 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

MUSIC

Danny Janklow & Elevation Band 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

SCREEN

Land, Trust, and Resilience: The Road to Staying Home 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

PAGE

AJ Romriell: Wolf Act 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

MICHELLE performs at Motorco Music Hall on February 14.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT’S CRADLE

CROSSWORD

Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Patti Varol

SU | DO | KU

© Puzzles by Pappocom

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

If you’re stumped, find the answer keys for these puzzles and archives of previous puzzles (and their solutions) at indyweek.com/puzzles-page

scan this QR code for a link. Best of luck, and have fun!

Many prom coifs

Hoofed it 2 “We’re in __-win situation”

Hardest part of a date?

“You can trust me with this!”

“Love & Mercy” actor Paul

Enables a crime 7 Diviner’s device

Take, as a loss

Pool hall staple

Took a loss

Spanish “others”

Podcast series on how to build a door frame?

16 Pain reliever since 1916

17 Had a hunch 19 Took charge 21 Retro gaming consoles 24 Cluny the Scourge in “Redwall,” e.g. 28 Drenched 30 Totally wild 31 Crunch on a cereal box

32 Dissenter, at first?

34 Carawayflavored spirit

36 Make unreadable, in a way

38 Seats, slangily

39 Crumb seekers 41 McCloskey’s blueberry picker

43 Freeway feature 47 Feeling more fluish

48 Starts of some long weekends 50 Hymn singer’s seat 52 Reba

Consumer verde the brew meticulously drive the mountains sense title fish Abdicates musician heaven Manhattan spirit lays eggs pajama casually

EMPLOYMENT

Commercial & Tender Manager

NKT Inc. seeks a Commercial & Tender Manager in Cary, NC to manage proposal team to prepare concurrent proposals before deadline. Reqs Bach degree in Elec Eng, Electronics Eng, or rel fld & 10 yrs rel exp. 15% domestic travel req. For full reqs & to apply, go to: https://www.nkt.com/career/ job-search/6161-en_gb-cary-us-27518

Construction Management Professional

Construction Management Professional

Intermediate at Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc, Cary, NC and various unanticipated project sites in US: Construction Management of large-scale life sciences facilities. Salary: $97,635 - $110,250/yr. Apply at: https://careers.jacobs.com/. Req 22310.

Senior DevOps Cloud Engineer

Senior DevOps Cloud Engineer sought by LexisNexis USA in Raleigh, NC to perform complex research/design to software development project. Provide input to project plans, scheduling & methodology w/ cross-functional software development. Minimum of Master’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or rltd + 2 yrs exp in job offered or rltd occupations required. Employee reports to LexisNexis USA office in Raleigh, NC but may telecommute from any location within US. Interested candidates should apply via following link: https://relx.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/relx/ job/Raleigh-NC/Senior-DevOps-Cloud-Engineer_ R89444.