Queen City Nerve - May 19, 2021

VOLUME 3, ISSUE 13; MAY 19 - JUNE 1, 2021; WWW.QCNERVE.COM

Arts: The battle over ASC funding continues pg. 10

Food: The Xiao Bao throwdown pg. 18

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ame

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r un

dy

COUNT YOUR

PUBLISHER

JUSTIN LAFRANCOIS jl afra n co i s @ q cn er ve.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF RYAN PITKIN rpi tk i n @ q cn e r ve. c om

ART DIRECTOR

JAYME JOHNSON jjo h n s o n @ q cn e r ve.com

STAFF WRITER

PAT MORAN pm o ra n @ q cn er ve . com

DIGITAL EDITOR

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

A T I R GA AY R A M D N O M

5

NEWS& OPINION

REVOLUTION BY PAMELA GRUNDY A fight for freedom didn’t include those who risked it all to build our city

8 RETHINKING THE MECK DEC BY PAMELA GRUNDY It’s time to reconsider what’s worth celebrating about May 20

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4 EDITOR’S NOTE BY RYAN PITKIN 6 BLACK HISTORY OF CHARLOTTE: SLAVERY &

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10 FOLLOW THE MONEY BY RYAN PITKIN Arts funding debate heats up as budget vote nears 12 NEVER TOO YOUNG BY LEA BEKELE Local actress launches production company, steps into new role 14 LIFEWAVE A dose of reality

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16 JAM SESSIONS BY PAT MORAN Menastree resumes a running staple at Evening Muse

18 A XIAO BAO THROWDOWN BY TIMOTHY DEPEUGH The curious case of the warm cabbage salad

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20 AERIN IT OUT BY AERIN SPRUILL 20 HOROSCOPE 21 PUZZLES 22 SAVAGE LOVE

THANKS TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS: PAT MORAN, Arts: The battle over ASC funding continues pg. 10

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EDITOR’S NOTE

A FORGOTTEN HISTORY

Whom are we forgetting when we celebrate Meck Dec Day?

BY RYAN PITKIN

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This issue marks the return of local historian Pamela Grundy’s Black History of Charlotte series, which we began publishing as a five-part series last summer, and which we’re picking back up with a prequel of sorts this week.

Since the original series began at the end of the Civil War, the new two-part series will cover the era of slavery, the Revolutionary War and, of course, the mythical Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, aka the Meck Dec, Pamela will get you all caught up with the controversial history of the document in her two-page spread starting on page 8.

That being said, I couldn’t be more excited for the return of Black History of Charlotte. Since running the original series last year, we’ve heard from area educators ranging from middle school to college who have used it as a teaching tool in their classes.

Our goal in the coming year is to push for more

adoption of the series in local schools.

Having come up as a student in CharlotteMecklenburg Schools, and one who paid attention in history class if nowhere else, I know I never learned 90% of the things Pamela’s taught me in this process (and that’s being generous).

It also comes at such a critical time for history education, as conservative lawmakers in North Carolina and around the country are pushing back against any teachings that might make them uncomfortable and/or challenge their insistence that America’s forefathers were moralists who believed in freedom and liberty for all.

On May 12, Republicans in the North Carolina House of Representatives passed House Bill 324, a bill that would ban teachers from teaching lessons that acknowledge America’s history and legacies related to racism and sexism.

With this in mind, I reached out to some other local folks whose work involves spreading the word about the Meck Dec to get their thoughts on why folks are so ready to celebrate this document (that may or may not exist) as a symbol of liberty while turning their cheek to the fact that its authors and signers were slaveholders.

I began with Scott Syfert, cofounder of the May 20th Society, which has worked to bring the Meck Dec back into the city’s public consciousness after interest all but ceased completely at the end of the 20th century.

Syfert pointed me to some passages from his book, The First American Declaration of Independence? The Disputed History of the Mecklenburg Declaration of May 20, 1775. The book’s eighth chapter is dedicated fully to Charlotte’s formerly enslaved population, with an intro

that reads, “For every Jack [James] or [Joseph] Graham, there are hundreds, even thousands, whose names we do not know and whose life stories are entirely lost. These are the enslaved African Americans who labored, built and shaped the economy and culture of Mecklenburg County, as surely as did the Scots- Irish.”

In other passages from the book, Syfert references the dip in Meck Dec interest as “political correctness but with some justification,” and goes on to say that the 1982 decision by the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners to drop Meck Dec Day as a recognized holiday was spurred by a desire to add a Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a telling scapegoat if nothing else.

I also reached out to Adria Focht, president and CEO of the Charlotte Museum of History, located on the homesite of Hezekiah Alexander, alleged signer of the Mecklenburg Declaration.

Before Focht’s time at CMoH, I had been turned off from the museum due to an experience I had while touring the Alexander homesite with a young Black boy that I mentor. During the tour, I was dismayed to realize the guide meant to completely ignore the role slavery played in keeping the homestead operable and the Alexander family profitable.

Only once I brought it up near the end of the tour — in response to a fellow patron’s question whether it was someone’s “job” to man the kitchen from dawn to dusk — did the guide reluctantly admit that, yes, there were an unknown amount of enslaved people living on the property at the time, including those forced to man the kitchen all day.

Focht came on with the museum in 2017 and has

since made remarkable strides in highlighting the histories of not only enslaved people and other Black Charlotteans, but local indigenous folks as well.

Focht says homesite tours currently begin at the museum’s American Freedom Bell, a monument cast with a hornet and the words “NEVER FORGET THAT YOU ARE FREE.” “We take this opportunity to challenge visitors to consider the context of the American Revolution, and to think about the evolution of the meaning of the word ‘freedom’ since 1775,” Focht wrote in an email, recognizing that at least 17 enslaved people lived on the Alexander homesite.

“We want Charlotteans to continue to identify as the ‘hornets’ nest of rebellion’ as it was purported to be called by the British during the American Revolution — to uphold a position of resistance and persistence that fostered movements like the Abolitionist Movement, Civil Rights Movement, and Black Lives Matter,” she continued.

“We hope that by celebrating the ideals of liberty, justice, equality, and freedom, while encouraging an honest evaluation of our nation’s ongoing struggle in achieving those ideals, we will inspire Charlotteans to be an active part of the continuum of local people who have fought for generations to expand the definitions of our founding principles to truly be inclusive of all people.”

And that’s the difference between providing context to your historical teachings and turning the other cheek to the uncomfortable parts.

Now is not a time when we can afford to ignore the oppression that got us to where we are.

RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM

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NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

THE BLACK HISTORY OF CHARLOTTE: SLAVERY AND REVOLUTION

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Slavery from the beginning

began by felling trees and digging rocks. They slept in their covered wagons while they cleared fields and built log homes. They raised sheep, cattle, hogs, geese, corn, and flax. They spun linen and wool for clothes, killed animals for meat, ground corn for bread, and distilled it into whiskey.

Some families were content with selfsufficiency. Others, however, aspired to greater wealth — an ambition that required enslaved labor. Cash crops such as cotton or tobacco required more work than a family could provide. Since hired labor was scarce, local historian D.A. Tompkins later A fight for freedom didn’t wrote, “each farmer had to do his own work until he could by diligence and economy save enough to buy include those who risked it a slave.” all to build our city Those who amassed the means to expand their operations journeyed to

BY PAMELA GRUNDY the bustling slave markets in Charleston. Many of the people On October 21, 1852, the first brought back in chains had come passenger train of the Charlotte straight from Africa, bearing the & South Carolina Railroad weight of violent separation from embarked upon the hundredtheir homes and of the horrific mile stretch of 5-foot-gauge Middle Passage. Survival was an iron rails that led from Columbia, extraordinary achievement. Life South Carolina, to the heart of in their harsh new world would Charlotte. It steamed to a stop at require similar fortitude.

Charlotte’s newly built depot, on Over the years, these new Second Street between College North Carolinians came to and Brevard. Onlookers erupted know their surroundings well. in celebration.

Hunting and fishing were ways City officials had issued “a of life for most of the colony’s general invitation to the citizens inhabitants, both enslaved and of North and South Carolina, free. Scattered populations also Virginia, Tennessee, and the ‘rest meant that enslaved residents of mankind’ personally to appear had to travel to see each other in the town of Charlotte.” They and to form families. promised an event of Biblical Alan Parker of Chowan proportions — “the largest County recalled a common Barbecue that has been given pattern — his father, Jeff Ellick, since the flood.”

Nearly 20,000 people heeded A 19TH-CENTURY RAILROAD YARD IN CITY POINT, VIRGINIA DURING THE CIVIL WAR. PHOTO COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS lived on a farm 10 miles away from the rest of the family. He the call, coming to eat, dance, hear speeches, view fireworks and take in what the the heavy rails and hammered spikes into place. covered the rolling hills, crossed by paths forged by “generally came home Saturday nights and now and local paper called “the most brilliant and glorious They worked from sunrise to sunset and often the resident Catawba Indians. The Catawba resisted then would come to us in the night during the week, day that the history of Charlotte has furnished for beyond. They endured heat, cold, illness and injury. the influx of Europeans until 1759, when a smallpox as a slave did not mind a walk of ten miles after his Many of them died. seventy-odd years.” epidemic drastically reduced their numbers. day’s work if he could have a chance to see his loved People survived these hardships by building inner Festivity was in order. The goods and people Survivors were forced to sign a treaty that restricted ones.” Enslaved Mecklenburg County residents likely transported over the rails would eventually turn fortitude and forming tight bonds with one another. “I them to a small area around present-day Rock did the same.

They also gathered for festivities such as Charlotte from a hamlet — what George Washington sit here and think of those I loved . . . their hard struggle Hill, S.C., clearing Mecklenburg County for further communal corn shuckings, enlivened by music, had once termed a “trifling place” — into a major in life, their unfaltering love and devotion toward settlement. myself and [my] Children,” wrote Harriet Jacobs, who center of trade, finance and manufacturing.

The Piedmont’s hilly terrain and rocky, rushing dancing and flirtation, and for religious ceremonies Absent from the celebration, however, was any had endured enslavement in Edenton, N.C. “I love to sit rivers made it far less suited to plantation agriculture that transcended the version of the gospel preached acknowledgment of the people whose labor had here and think of them. They have made the few sunny than North Carolina’s coastal plain, and most farms by slaveholding whites. Carey Freeman, who grew brought prosperity to town. Most local histories spots in that dark life sacred to me.” started as small family operations. New arrivals up in Mecklenburg County, told her daughter, Eliza describe Charlotte as shaped by hardworking ScotsIrish Presbyterians, whose thrift and independence helped fuel the American Revolution and laid the foundation for an industrial boom. Numbers tell a different story. By 1850, almost half of the town’s residents — 47% — could trace their ancestry to Africa. The vast majority were enslaved. With unceasing, largely unpaid labor, these men and women did much of the area’s essential work.

Living in slavery required strength, skill, intelligence and often courage. Enslaved railroad workers, for example, chopped trees and cleared brush. They placed dynamite, lit fuses and ran, literally, for their lives. They built trestles over rivers.

They dug the wide, even trenches that railroad tracks required, filled them with gravel, positioned

Slavery was entwined with Charlotte’s history from the start. In the 1600s, almost as soon as the first European colonists took control of North American land, slavery became an integral component of colonial economy and society. The first enslaved Africans reached Virginia in 1619.

Over the next century and a half they built the tobacco fortunes of Virginia and eastern North Carolina and fueled the rice and indigo economy around the port of Charleston.

In the 1750s, when ambitious colonists began to follow the Great Wagon Road to the newly opened North Carolina Piedmont, those prosperous enough to afford slaves brought them along.

At that time towering oaks, maple and poplar

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NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

assert that a week or so earlier, on May 20, they had drawn up an even more audacious Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence — the first full declaration of independence in the North American colonies.

The “Meck Dec” and its invocation of “a free and independent people” would become a cornerstone of white Charlotte identity, and May 20 an occasion for celebration.

Across the colonies, Black residents also warmed to words of freedom and independence. “Liberty is

Revolution came to Charlotte, local whites harassed the British troops, prompting General Lord Charles Cornwallis to call the town “a hornet’s nest.” Enslaved residents had other priorities. As D.A. Tompkins put it: “A great number took advantage of the exciting times and endeavored to escape.”

Some of those who left joined the British forces, who offered freedom to men who fought with them.

Across the course of the war, as many as 20,000 men of African descent fought with the British army.

at large during public meetings in the town of Charlotte except such as carried passes from their masters.” In 1809 “six patrols were appointed for the Washington, about a minister who “used to preach Charlotte militia district, and these patrols were of to the colored people that if they would be good . . much service in preventing troubles among slaves . and not steal their master’s eggs and chickens and and in apprehending the runaways.” things, that they might go to the kitchen of heaven Such militias became an ever-present threat when they died.” not only to potential rebels and escapees, but to Freeman and her companions did their own the many people who ventured out to hunt or fish, praying at night, often using a large, strategically to visit family members or to attend clandestine positioned iron wash pot to muffle their voices: religious services. “[They] had to turn the pots down to keep their “They would go two, or voices from sounding,” three together mounted on Washington explained, “and horse-back, and generally they couldn’t sing at all.” accompanied by one or more But while enslaved North dogs.” Alan Parker recalled of Carolinians found ways to the Chowan County militias. snatch a few moments for “They were also armed with themselves, they remained guns, and carried great whips, largely at the mercy of their made of raw-hide or leather.” enslavers, with virtually no If a militia sighted someone legal rights. Their marriages had without the required pass, the no legal standing, and North traveler began a mad dash for Carolina laws placed almost home. no limits on punishments they “Being on foot he could might receive. Whippings were take to the woods, which he common, administered by was sure to do if hard pressed,” enslavers, by overseers, and by Parker explained. “Once in the North Carolina courts, which woods he might be obliged to specified that an enslaved hide unless [they] had dogs person convicted for actions with them, but even in that that ranged from setting fires case he might manage to give to playing cards to teaching them the slip, for if he came to a someone else to read should stream of water he would wade receive “a whipping on his or or swim across it, or he might her bare back, not exceeding walk in it for a little way . . . In thirty-nine lashes.”

COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS this way he often managed to PLANTATION POLICE OR HOME-GUARD EXAMINING NEGRO PASSES ON A LEVEE ROAD. This precarious legal state evade his pursuers.” had particular consequences for a Jewel which was handed down to man from the If someone was caught, “he would be tied to the women. “The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of cabinet of heaven,” free Black soldier Lemuel Haynes nearest tree, what few clothes he had on would be Slaveholding Republic licentiousness and fear,” Harriet Jacobs wrote. “When wrote in 1776, adding that “Liberty is Equally as After the Revolution, Southern whites refused to taken off, and he would be given thirty-nine lashes she is fourteen or fifteen, her owner, or his sons, or precious to a Black man, as it is to a white one, and consider abolishing slavery. While Northern states on his bare back.” the overseer, or perhaps all of them, begin to bribe Bondage Equally as intolerable to the one as it is to Fear of rebellion, however, did little to dampen began to end the practice, neither the Constitution her with presents. If these fail to accomplish their the other.” interest in an institution that built wealth. By nor the Bill of Rights offered hope for emancipation purpose, she is whipped or starved into submission But in the end, the lofty rhetoric of the American in the South. Instead, restrictions tightened.

1800, census takers counted 10,439 residents in to their will.”

Revolution offered little to enslaved Americans. For Slaveowners had always feared rebellion — Mecklenburg County. Of those, 1,988 — 19% — more than a century and a half, North American North Carolina’s slave code of 1741 was enacted were enslaved African Americans. As the century Revolution for whom? colonists had reconciled the divide between their in response to the bloody but unsuccessful Stono advanced, their numbers and significance would By the 1770s, as American colonists began to celebration of liberty and their dependence on Rebellion outside of Charleston in 1739. The Haitian grow. chafe at British political and economic restrictions, enslaved labor by defining Africans as an “inferior” Revolution of 1791, in which an enslaved population Mecklenburg’s white residents leapt to the forefront. race, unworthy of the rights and privileges white overthrew French colonists and established a Black Stay tuned for Part 2 of The Black History of On May 31, 1775, they voiced their dissatisfaction men sought for themselves.

Charlotte: Slavery and Revolution. republic, heightened those concerns. with British rule in a set of declarations called the African Americans who aspired to freedom had In 1793, the Mecklenburg County court ordered INFO@QCNERVE.COM Mecklenburg Resolves. Participants would later to take matters into their own hands. When the officers to arrest all enslaved persons “ranging

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

RETHINKING THE MECK DEC

It’s time to reconsider what’s worth celebrating about May 20

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BY PAMELA GRUNDY

On the morning of May 20, 1963, a group of Johnson C. Smith University students set out on the two-mile trek from the Smith campus to the Mecklenburg County courthouse. Clad in suits and Sunday dresses, and carrying an American flag, they sang and clapped as they made their way downtown.

Civil rights energy was growing nationwide.

Just three weeks earlier, police in Birmingham, Alabama, had attacked Black children with fire hoses and police dogs, creating searing images that were broadcast around the country. Martin Luther King Jr. had written his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, in which he asserted: “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

When the Smith group reached the courthouse steps, leader Reginald Hawkins echoed King’s words. “We want freedom and we want it now,” he proclaimed. “There is no freedom as long as all of us are not free.”

In Charlotte, on May 20, talk of freedom rang with special depth. May 20 was not just any day.

It was Meck Dec Day. A long-standing story held that on May 20, 1775, a group of Mecklenburg County leaders signed a document that became known as the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, becoming the first Americans to officially reject British rule and declare themselves a “free and independent people.”

The Meck Dec has sparked controversy through the years. While Mecklenburg leaders clearly produced a statement called the Mecklenburg Resolves, carried by militia captain James Jack to the Second Continental Congress in the summer of 1775, documentation for the more revolutionary Meck Dec is far less definitive.

But whether myth or reality, the Declaration has been a significant historical force in Charlotte and in North Carolina for nearly two centuries, forming a core component of city and state identity. The

date has adorned the state flag since 1861, and is emblazoned on state license plates that proclaim “First in Freedom.”

Promoters of the Meck Dec have generally focused on the signers’ independent spirit, distrust of authority and “firm belief that all men were equal.”

Chronicler J.B. Alexander set this tone in 1902, writing that Mecklenburg County “was populated with a race of people” who “had been taught that liberty and independence were necessary to achieve the highest aims in life.”

What Alexander failed to mention, and what most accounts of the Meck Dec either leave out or

“lesser” race of people than the white Europeans who enslaved them. That belief is as much a part of Charlotte’s history as the ideas expressed in the Declaration. It is time for our community to grapple with that contradiction.

A tarnished history

The Meck Dec first received widespread notice in 1819, when Joseph McKnitt Alexander wrote about it for the Raleigh Register. Alexander’s father, John McKnitt Alexander, had told him stories of composing the Declaration and sending it to Philadelphia. While the original manuscript had

LOCAL ARTIST NADIA CHAUHAN REIMAGINED THE CAPT. JACK IMAGERY (NEXT PAGE) IN CONTEMPORARY TERMS. VISIT QCNERVE.COM FOR NADIA’S ARTIST STATEMENT.

gloss over, is that many of the signers were actively engaged in denying liberty and independence to other human beings — the men and women of African descent whom they had personally enslaved.

Men such as John Davidson, Thomas Polk and Hezekiah Alexander built fortunes by exploiting enslaved labor. They justified this practice with the claim that Africans and their descendants were a

burned in a house fire, Alexander explained, his father’s papers contained a re-creation.

Despite questions about the document’s authenticity, Charlotteans soon began to celebrate it as a daring blow for liberty. The ceremonies became increasingly elaborate. An 1857 event began with the sound of “hoarse-throated cannon,” and involved the raising of a 130-foot “liberty-pole,”

a lengthy ceremony on a platform “beautifully festooned” with flowers, cedar and holly, and a dinner for several hundred people that started with green turtle soup and ended with toasts to “the earliest and boldest aspiration for freedom in our country’s history.”

In 1861, when North Carolinians were considering whether to join other Southern states in seceding from the Union, delegates to the state convention chose May 20 as the day to decide.

“As soon as the vote was announced,” reported the editors of the Greensboro Patriot, “one hundred guns were fired on Capitol Square, and the bells of the city were rung, amid the shouts of an excited multitude. Thus . . . was the anniversary of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence gloriously celebrated by the delegates of the people.”

Convention delegates made the Meck Dec a key component of the new state flag, passing an ordinance that stated the flag should “consist of a red field with a white star in the centre, and with the inscription, above the star, in semi-circular form, of ‘May 20th, 1775,’ and below the star, in semi-circular form, ‘May 20th, 1861.’”

After the war, the 1861 date was replaced by the date of another Revolutionary Era document, the Halifax Resolves. But the Meck Dec date stayed, in part because newly emancipated African Americans found their own use for it.

This became clear in 1867, when Black Charlotte residents chose May 20 as the day to officially enter politics.

That morning, Black members of the Union League of America formed a procession “at least half a mile in length” that ended at a stage on Tryon Street. Black and white orators “admonished the whites to lay their prejudices in the grave of slavery,” and urged Blacks to “seek education, lands and money.”

The group directly invoked the Meck Dec, describing May 20 as “hallowed by its associations, and connected to liberty and the political equality of man with his fellow,” and asserting that they stood strong for “the advancement of the races” and for “peace and prosperity for the land of our homes . . under the ample folds of the glorious old full starred American flag!”

Questions of who deserved liberty and equality, however, remained far from settled. The postwar era saw prolonged, often race-based political combat.

Control of state government shifted back and forth until 1898, when a vicious white supremacy

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE campaign seized statewide power, violently overthrew the elected government of Wilmington in 1898 and subsequently expelled African Americans from North Carolina politics.

Supporters of white supremacy had their own interpretation of the Meck Dec. “The first ‘White Supremacy Club’ formed in recent years in North Carolina, was formed in Charlotte, N.C., in September, 1896,” Charlotte resident W.T. Moody proudly asserted in April of 1898, adding, “As Mecklenburg County first declared her independence against ‘British Tyranny,’ May 20th, 1775 . . . so Mecklenburg County first declared her independence against ‘negro rule.’”

In the first decades of the twentieth century, with Jim Crow segregation firmly established, Meck Dec celebrations focused on showcasing Charlotte’s economic growth.

President William Howard Taft attended the 1909 festivities, where he and an estimated 20,000 spectators braved a driving rainstorm to view military regiments, marching bands and fraternal organizations, as well as floats that displayed items such as rubber tires, bathtubs, bedroom furniture, pianos, “fancy” chickens, harvesting equipment and a locomotive.

President Woodrow Wilson was treated to an even more lavish display in 1916, a three-mile-

A SOUVENIR TICKET FROM WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT’S MECK DEC DAY VISI T TO CHARLOTTE IN 1909.

long parade that included a fleet of 51 Model T automobiles produced at Charlotte’s Ford Motor Company factory just the day before.

If any Black residents were featured at the events, the newspapers did not mention them, although Taft made a trip to Johnson C. Smith, where he exhorted students and staff to “make themselves necessary to the prosperity of the South,” and opined that it was “in the realm of agriculture the

negro finds his natural field.”

By mid-century, however, race had become harder to ignore. When President Dwight Eisenhower arrived in Charlotte for the 1954 celebration, the lead headline read not “President Speaks Here Today,” but rather “COURT BANS SEGREGATION” — referring to the Supreme Court’s just-announced Brown decision. Intensifying civil rights activity created new opportunities for African Americans to link their actions to the Meck Dec, as Reginald Hawkins did in 1963.

Interest in the Declaration waned in the latter part of the twentieth century. President Gerald

Ford came to the 200th anniversary celebration in 1975, but the city of Charlotte ceased officially observing the holiday soon afterward, and the county stopped giving its employees the day off in 1982.

“Meck Dec Becomes Just Another Day” the Charlotte Observer noted that year. Only 35 people attended the 1984 event.

Efforts to promote the Declaration have revived in recent years, as 2003 saw the formation of the May 20th Society, a group of Charlotteans who have promoted the Declaration and its signers through lectures, dinners, school lesson plans, and other activities.

In 2010, a statue of Captain Jack titled the “Spirit of Mecklenburg” was placed on the Little Sugar Creek Greenway.

The Charlotte City Council now regularly declares the days around May 20 as “Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence Week.” In 2015, the state of North Carolina began to offer residents the option of a “First in Freedom” license plate bearing the dates of the Meck Dec and of the Halifax Resolves.

As in the past, however, these activities only rarely encourage consideration of the Meck Dec’s full history, and generally sidestep the contradictions between its soaring call for freedom and North Carolina’s long history of slavery, disfranchisement and Jim Crow segregation.

We can do better. Let’s start.

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ARTS FEATURE

FOLLOW THE MONEY

The arts funding debate heats up as budget vote nears

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BY RYAN PITKIN

There’s no shortage of things to get engaged with when it comes to current Charlotte-area politics. There’s the overwhelming mission to put together a 20-year future comprehensive plan for the city, there’s fighting between the county commissioners and local school board that’s getting uglier all the time, there’s the reimagining of our police force, gun violence in communities, and any number of other issues on the table.

But during a May 10 public hearing on the proposed city budget for Fiscal Year 2022, one in which residents could speak on the aforementioned issues or myriad others, nearly every one of the 20 speakers who addressed city council did so to address one issue: arts funding.

That’s both a promising sign for the arts sector and a troubling one, as most of the speakers were there to speak against the city’s newly proposed plan to dismantle and revamp the way it’s funded the arts for decades.

On April 13, Charlotte City Manager Marcus Jones laid out the framework of a new approach to arts funding for the city, moving away from the model that funneled all such spending through the Arts & Science Council (ASC).

In a release that day, Jones announced that his staff’s plans will go beyond recommendations from the city’s Arts and Culture Ad Hoc Committee (ACAHC), which originally called for increasing arts funding from an annual $3.2 million to $4 million.

Jones’ plan calls for an increase to $6 million annually, which would ideally be matched by $6 million in private fundraising, totaling $36 million in arts funding over three years.

The funds would be placed with Foundation for the Carolinas, while also establishing an Arts & Culture Commissioner who would report to the city manager and receive guidance from a board of advisors appointed by public and private sector stakeholders. The plan would begin with the implementation of the new fiscal year budget, which will go into effect on July 1.

ASC would not be left out of the conversation completely, as they would be considered a grantee in the future.

Jones recommended $800,000 in funding to ASC during the upcoming “transitional year,” though the plan does not clarify what funding for the organization would look like in the two years following that.

Despite the proposed increases in financial support for the arts, hundreds of local creatives have come together in a coalition called ART Future to stand against the proposed plan and push the city to increase funding for ASC, bring more independent

president Krista Terrell told Queen City Nerve she felt the entire process had been expedited without explanation.

Terrell said ASC had been in conversations with the city about finding ways to increase funding for the sector, conversations like those surrounded a proposed sales tax increase that lost a referendum vote at the county level in 2019, but insisted that the new plan was sprung on the organization without warning.

“We have the experience and expertise to do this work,” Terrell said. “It’s been really interesting how this has accelerated very quickly, and really

ARTS & SCIENCE COUNCIL PRESIDENT KRISTA TERRELL PHOTO COURTESY OF ASC

artists and grassroots arts organizations to the table to play a role in allocating funding, and ensure that funding will be allocated in an equitable manner that doesn’t prioritize large institutions or tourism impacts, among other demands.

Dupp&Swatt co-founder and ART Future supporter davita galloway spoke at the May 10 meeting about her desire to see a wider range of creatives participating in formulating the city plan.

“Have you ever been in a meeting and all of the attendees are discussing what’s best for a targeted audience and/or specific group to which they don’t belong, nor do they have proximity?” galloway asked council members. “Yeah, that’s what this feels like.”

Her concerns echoed those of many of the speakers that night, as well as those of ASC leadership. Speaking after the meeting, ASC

not a clear understanding of why. For me, there has never been communication by the city or city council members to ASC saying we have an issue with the way you’re doing your business or how you do X,Y, Z.”

The city takes a new path

It was in February that the city began publicly discussing the potential for creating its own commission to handle arts funding, at the recommendation of the newly formed ad hoc arts committee.

“This is really a long-overdue assessment by the city of how we achieve our goals, as opposed to just awarding the same amount of money each year to a partner organization,” said city council and committee member Ed Driggs at a Feb. 24 ACAHC meeting.

It was at this meeting that the committee unanimously approved recommending a new plan to create an arts advisory board and hire an arts and culture commissioner.

The decision came as ASC has struggled through a decline in workplace giving during recent years.

It also came on the heels of an inaugural Cultural Equity Report from ASC, released in February 2020. The report admitted to missteps in equitable funding by the organization in the past while laying out the framework for how it planned to prioritize equity in the future.

Part of the plan included the launch of an equity supplement to further support organizations whose primary intentions, practices and mission are by, for and about African, Latinx, Asian, Arab and Native American artists, cultures and communities (ALAANA).

In the first round of FY 2021 investments from ASC, announced in July 2020, the equity supplement resulted in a 60% increase in funding for organizations with an annual budget of $300,000 or less, a 30% increase in funding for organizations with an annual budget of $300,000 to $1 million; a 33% decrease in funding for organizations with an annual budget of $1 million or more; and a 33% increase in funding for ALAANA organizations over what would have been awarded prior to the equity supplement.

Comparing ASC funding for the Mint Museum and the Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture between Fiscal Years 2020 and 2021, before and after the equity supplement was applied, gives a glimpse at how drastic these changes can be.

In 2020, the Mint Museum received $926,352 in operating support and the Gantt received $179,880.

In Fiscal Year 2021, when ASC implemented its equity supplement formula, the Mint went down to $509,494, and the Gantt went up to $201,813.51.

Terrell, who was named president of ASC on April 27 but has been with the organization for more than 20 years, says some council members have used ASC’s Cultural Equity Report against them, publicly implying that the organization is doing too little, too late to fix a problem that they created.

Terrell says ASC began its work around prioritizing equitable funding seven years ago, only making it public with the release of its Cultural Equity Statement in 2019 and the report in February 2020.

“I’m really excited about increased funding for the sector, because we have been advocating for that for years and years, so I’m excited about increased funding, my concerns are about the

ARTS FEATURE equitable distribution of those dollars, because equity is about everyone having the resources that they need to move along together. Not one jumping back up to $900,000.

“I want everyone to get their money,” she continued. “The [arts] sector, we were the first to close, we’ll probably be the last to open because of the nature of our businesses, being together and gathering and sharing experiences together, so the sector from creative individuals to organizations of all sizes have been deeply impacted financially because of the pandemic. So we need that funding for recovery, but again, we need it in an equitable way, so that some are not benefitting more than others.”

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Two sides, similar goals

For Braxton Winston, an ACAHC member who has worked in the local arts sector for 17 years — most recently as community connections manager at Levine Museum of the New South — the May 10 council meeting was a great sign, even if most of the speakers were against the plan he worked on.

“I think it’s a beautiful thing, it’s democracy,” he told Queen City Nerve after the meeting. “I’m encouraged that people are participating and organizing, that’s a good thing. I’ve been hearing from the Charlotte arts community for the past 17 years, I’ve worked in it in many different paths, so some of the concerns that I heard from the group I completely understand because I’m there … I think the work that is going to come out of this, the table will be set to really deal with the concerns that we’re hearing out of our community at large.”

Where the chasm between Winston and some community members comes into play is in the discussion around just why the city wants control over arts funding.

The city owns a number of museums and arts venues around town, including two Mint Museums, the Bechtler Museum of Fine Art, The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Blumenthal Performing Arts Center and Discovery Place.

Terrell and others claim the city wants to control funding in light of ASC’s new prioritization of indie artists and grassroots organizations so as to ensure the large institutions under the city’s ownership are placed first in receiving funding.

“This is about tourism and this is about Uptown,” Terrell said. “We understand that people have to

come Uptown for the mountaintop experiences like Hamilton or The Color Purple, Broadway [productions] and things like that. But people also have articulated clearly for many years that they want experiences close to where they live, and that is the work that we are focusing on.”

Winston refutes this claim, saying he is unsure where the idea came from, and that the ACAHC expressly stated its goals to spread funding around to underserved areas, specifically in the city’s Corridors of Opportunity.

“That focus on the Uptown area is completely something that is coming out of the ASC; it’s not something that is the focus of city council. It’s really kind of opposite of the actual guidance that council gave the manager and outside of the actual facts of the proposal that the manager has given back,” Winston said.

He emphasized that the unanimous agreement between he and the other members of the bipartisan committee — which also included Republicans Tariq Bokhari and Ed Driggs, as well as Democrats Julie Eiselt and Malcolm Graham — highlights how the needs are spread around all districts.

“We’re hearing the same things from the folks over in Wesley Heights that we’re hearing out of Ballantyne: ‘Why do we always have to come Uptown?’” Winston said.

“And a big part of the reason is the way that arts money has been spent over the past generations that the current model that we’re in has created. So we’re looking at possibly getting consensus around council around this new direction that provides real opportunities for a diversity of spends in all 300 square miles of Charlotte.”

In the meantime, Mayor Vi Lyles ended the May 10 meeting by ensuring that all council members would be spending time meeting with smaller arts organizations to consider their concerns, including the demands of ART Future, in the lead-up to their final budget vote scheduled for June 14.

“I’m just excited that people are participating in the democratic process, this is what it looks like,” Winston said.

“It’s the job of the citizens to continue to agitate and to continue to push their elected leaders to govern in the form or fashion that they see fit …

That people’s passion, that people’s organizing is front and center, this is something that we should completely celebrate. Most important is, find those places of common ground, because they certainly exist, and that’s the exciting part.”

RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM

Let’s Keep it up. we’re not done yet.

Thank you for doing the work to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Until enough of us are protected by the vaccine, we need to keep protecting each other. covid19.ncdhhs.gov

ARTS FEATURE

NEVER TOO YOUNG

Local actress launches production company, steps into new role

BY LEA BEKELE

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As 2020 came to a close, Charlottebased actress Maritalyn Frazier was having a conversation with her manager Donna Rentz about whether or not she should start her own company.

Frazier was sure she wanted to produce a film after spending more than a decade in front of the camera, but wasn’t sure how or when she could do it.

After sharing her idea for a film based on a true story that recently occurred in her hometown of Florence, South Carolina, her manager had only one question: Would her first film be her last?

“And I said, you know what, that probably won’t be my only movie,” Frazier recalls, looking back on the fateful day that led to the birth of her new production company.

After nearly a decade in front of the camera, including small roles in Black Panther, Greenleaf, Baby Driver, and Orange Is the New Black, Frazier recently announced the official launch of Never Too Young Productions.

The company’s first film will also be Frazier’s debut as producer. It’s titled Dead End: The Ambush of the Florence 7.

The film was inspired by a tragic incident that occurred in Florence in October 2018, when a Vietnam veteran ambushed and shot seven police officers, killing two.

A promising path leads to a ‘Dead End’

Born Maritalyn Koulebetouba in Florence, Frazier grew up acting in community plays and making television appearances, including one on the long-running children’s show Sesame Street. She even landed a TV commercial for the Slinky, one of the most popular toys of the 20th century.

She spent the following years participating in productions in high school and throughout

college. Eventually, Frazier graduated from Wingate University with a degree in communications, and has spent much of her career continuing on that acting path, until the recent launch of Never Too Young.

lost their lives on Oct. 3, 2018: 52-year-old Florence Seth Hopkins was later charged with five counts Police Sergeant Terrance Carraway, a 30-year- of criminal sexual conduct with a minor under 11 veteran of the FPD at the time of his passing; and years old (first-degree), and two counts of criminal 36-year-old FPD officer and investigator Farrah sexual conduct with a minor under 16 years old.

Turner.

As a former sharp-shooter utilizing the element of surprise, Hopkins had an advantage over the officers that came to his home that day.

An hours-long standoff ensued, ending with Fred’s surrender. One of the victims was not able to receive immediate medical help due to the danger involved with the situation, which may have led to their death.

The incident raised a lot of speculation in the community, especially regarding Hopkins’ intentions. Some Florence locals wondered how Hopkins, a disbarred attorney and husband to a practicing attorney, seemed to know the police were on the way to his home.

Others, including Frazier, believe the act was racially motivated.

“It was still a racial thing,” she explained.

“The cops that came were African-American.

He was upset that Black officers were coming to his house.”

The film will serve as a tribute to the victims’ service and their department, depicting how their untimely deaths affected their immediate families and colleagues on the force, including the surviving officers, Frazier explained.

Dead End is set shortly after the shooting, beginning with the victims’ memorials and leading up to the swearing in of Florence’s new mayor, Teresa Myers Ervin. It will then continue through the trial of Fred Hopkins, which is set to happen in 2021.

The film will serve partially as a biopic about Mayor Ervin and her career following the tragedy of the Florence 7.

“The movie will still be about the Florence 7, but it’s going to be more about the mayor of Florence,” Frazier explained. “The community came together and we voted in our first Black mayor ever in the city.”

Frazier had originally wanted to tell the MARITALYN FRAZIER AT A CHADWICK BOSEMAN MEMORIAL CELEBRATION story from the viewpoint of the victims and PHOTO COURTESY OF MARITALYN FRAZIER leave it at that, but certain circumstances — including the swearing-in of Ervin and On the day of the incident, police showed up at Hopkins’ request for a speedy trial — changed the Dead End: The Ambush of the Florence 7 offers a flipped narrative as compared to the typical police the Hopkins residence to speak to Fred’s son, Seth process for her and her team. shootings that dominate the news cycle: A white Hopkins, regarding child molestation allegations.

She’ll aim to offer a positive perspective on the Vietnam veteran shoots seven police officers, killing Fred Hopkins fired on officers before they had a event by paying homage to those who lost their two Black officers, and lives to tell the tale. chance to knock, then barricaded himself in his lives while shedding light on the historic event of The film will memorialize the two victims who home. her hometown electing its first Black mayor.

ARTS FEATURE “Like with any film, being an independent filmmaker has its ups and downs,’’ Frazier told Queen City Nerve. “I’ve learned so much. We’re still in pre-production and I’ve been meeting for the past three or four weeks to sort out the direction we’re going to go with it.”

Due to COVID-related disruptions and a gag order related to the trial, filming for Dead End won’t begin until next year, with a release set for 2023.

Charlotte’s up and coming talents

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In partnership with Donna Rentz, Frazier’s manager and CEO of Sisters In Motion publicity agency, Frazier was able to launch, market and recruit clients for Never Too Young Productions, spotlighting stories like that of the Florence 7, which are often neglected by mainstream media companies.

Along with film production, Never Too Young Production’s work encompasses screenwriting, acting classes, casting and talent management.

In September of last year, Frazier announced the signing of her first client, Dontai Keith, a local author looking to turn his debut novel, Intent 2 Win, into a film. The two first met on the set of Shots Fired, a Fox

series that was filmed in Mooresville six years prior to their partnership. Keith called Frazier looking for help to manage his acting career and promote the film adaptation of his new book.

Ever since that phone call, Frazier has supported him through casting, marketing and fundraising efforts regarding Intent 2 Win. “It’s been challenging, but Dontai is very charismatic and I just love working with him and going through this process,” Frazier shared. “It’s been hard to do a lot of stuff like fundraising. We have a kickball tournament coming up next Wednesday for his movie and I have a gala coming up in September.

Some of the stuff that we really wanted to do, we had to push back because of COVID.” Frazier splits her time between helping Keith raise funds and publicity opportunities for Intent 2 Win and producing her first movie.

This leaves her with barely enough time to find and help out new clients, yet she knows she’s in the position she wants to be in now. She patiently awaits the day more people know her as a filmmaker and a producer rather than automatically associating her with acting.

“You are never too young to follow your dreams,” Frazier said.

LBEKELE@QCNERVE.COM

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We’re kind of opening, kind of not, so not all of these are virtual events as we were highlighting at the beginning of the lockdown, but plenty are. COVID is still going strong, so party at your own risk.

MICHELANGELO’S SISTINE CHAPEL

The immersive Van Gogh exhibit coming to Charlotte this summer has drawn focus from this mesmerizing Michelangelo show. Instead of going to Rome to see the ceiling’s frescoes 44 feet away from the Sistine Chapel floor below, patrons can see them up close.

The paintings cemented Michelangelo’s reputation, but the sculptor never wanted the job in the first place, and insisted he was wrong for the task. In the 1560s, Pope Pius IV had the genitals of the artist’s nude figures painted over, but modern restorers stripped away the fig leaves.

More: $13-$19.40; ongoing through July 31; Savona Mill, 401 S. Gardner Ave.; chapelsistinecharlotte.com/

THE OFFICE MURDER MYSTERY PARODY

This interactive and immersive parody performance starts at Spirit Square before taking audience members on a walking tour through Uptown with characters from NBC’s The Office. Through conversations and scenes, actors will reveal clues about the Scranton Strangler. No two performances are the same as the actors improvise with every interaction. We’ve solved one mystery already: Based on promo material, it’s safe to assume audiences join the American crew led

by Steve Carell’s Michael Scott, not the British team guided by Ricky Gervais’ David Bren.

More: $39.50 and up; May 20, 6 p.m.; runs through June 6; Spirit Square, 345 N. College St.; blumenthalarts.org

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FLOCK OF DIMES: TWO HEADS

Taking their name from a majestic 460-year-old tree that was finally felled by lightning in 2002, Baltimorebased Wye Oak make music that is sturdy and resilient, yet surprisingly vulnerable. That vulnerability moves to the forefront in co-founder and guitarist-vocalist Jenn Wasner’s synth-pop solo project Flock of Dimes.

Wasner accentuates atmospheric and dreamy compositions which delve into desire and it’s frequent flipside, grief. With “Two Heads,” Flock of Dimes present two distinct livestream performances with different setlists on consecutive Thursdays.

More: $15 each show, $25 both shows; May 20 & May 27, 9 p.m.; online; neighborhoodtheatre.com

CHARLOTTE SYMPHONY: EVENINGS AT THE PARK

The concert under the SouthPark bandshell spotlights African-American and Emmy Awardnominated composer Kathryn Bostic’s “Portrait of a Peaceful Warrior.” The piece, commissioned by the Chicago Sinfonietta, premiered in October 2020, and centers around the theme of finding common ground. Bostick, who has scored films, TV and Broadway shows, imbues her tone poem with surging rhythms and syncopation that harken to Aaron Copeland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.” In a way, Bostick’s “Portrait” is the spiritual descendant of “Fanfare.” Mozart’s “Serenade No. 11” and Karel Husa’s “Divertimento for Brass & Percussion” complete the program.

More: $25; May 21, 7 p.m.; Symphony Park, 4400 Sharon Road; charlottesymphony.org

PIP THE PANSY

After appearing on the Indie Fest Spring Series bill at Lenny Boy Brewing in April, Atlanta’s Pip the Pansy returns to Charlotte to an Uptown club that’s a better fit for her cool, intimate, and slightly detached dancefloor-friendly pop. Her voice is sultry and playful, and on tunes and accompanying videos like “Siren Song” and “White Line Fever,” she cuts a louche, pansexual figure going with the flow. Her music entwines pop, electronica and virtuosic flute to deliver polished tracks that scan like classical mythology filtered through a night on Ecstasy.

More: $10; May 22, 7 p.m.; QC Social Lounge, 300 North College St. #105; qcslounge.com

‘OF EARTH AND SKY’ POETRY WORKSHOPS

Originally presented in England and conceptualized by artist Luke Jerram, “Of Earth and Sky” is a largescale installation project featuring pieces from local poets that will debut at Charlotte SHOUT! this fall. Poets interested in participating in the project can attend one of two workshops hosted

by Emmy award-winning poet Boris “Bluz” Rogers and National Poetry Slam champions Jay Ward and Jordan Bailey. Poets can learn more about the “Of Earth and Sky” vision and receive writing prompts to help guide their work.

More: Free; May 22 & May 29, 12 p.m.; Middleton McMillan Gallery, Spirit Square, 345 N. College St.; blumenthalarts.org

BUFF FAYE’S “100% THAT B!@CH” DRAG BRUNCH

Buff Faye’s Drag Brunch has returned to Charlotte, and it is as fabulous as ever. Voted #1 Drag Brunch in Charlotte, Buff Faye and her divas are bringing entertainment back to Sunday. With a percentage of proceeds going to charity, it is not an event you want to miss. CDC guidelines will be strictly enforced at risk of forfeiting your admission.

More: $35; May 23, 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.: Dilworth Neighborhood Grille, 911 E. Morehead St.; allbuff.com

VIRTUAL MODERNISM + FILM: ‘GATEWAYS TO NEW YORK’

Director Martin Witz’s documentary Gateways to New York: Othmar H. Ammann and His Bridges tells the story of the Swiss structural engineer Othmar H. Ammann, who emigrated to New York in 1904 and redefined the art of bridge building in America. In addition to the iconic George Washington Bridge, a beacon of modernity, Ammann designed structures leading to the Bronx; Bayonne, New Jersey; and spanning the Verrazano-Narrows connecting Staten Island and Brooklyn. His work reflects the dynamics of the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, world war, and suburbanization.

More: Free; May 25, 7 p.m.; online; bechtler.org/

ST. PAUL AND THE BROKEN BONES

Maxx Music’s Cruise in Concert series in Rural Hill features gospel-soul revivalists St. Paul and the Broken Bones. With rollicking live shows centered on dynamic frontman Paul Janeway, The Broken Bones garnered an enthusiastic fanbase. Though their 2014 debut album Half a City is caught out of time in a good way, conjuring a sweat-soaked session at Muscle Shoals in the late 1960s, recent efforts like 2018’s Young Sick Camellia embrace post-disco guitars and hip-hop beats, separating the band from a crowded field of retro soul fetishists.

More: $105-$135; May 25, 7 p.m.; Rural Hill, 4431 Neck Road, Huntersville; maxxmusic.com

MOVIES ON THE LAWN: ‘THE PRINCESS BRIDE’

No other movie except perhaps Casablanca is graced with so many good quotes. You practically trip over the lines: “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” “Inconceivable!” “You keep using that word, I don’t think you know what it means.” “As you wish.” The tale of young Westley/ Dread Pirate Roberts’s quest to rescue Princess Buttercup from the clutches of the odious Prince Humperdinck is a hilarious, nostalgic and touching fairy tale for all ages.

More: Free; May 26, 5:30 p.m.; Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden, 6500 S. New Hope Road, Belmont; dsbg.org

SUNSHONE STILL

The Muse is back baby! While shows featuring singer-songwriters Jason Eady and Adam Hood on May 19 and Hayden Lee on May 22 sold out quicker than a Charlotte gas pump, you can still get seating to experience Columbia-based troubadour Chris Smith, also known as Sunshone Still. With three full-length albums and a self-titled EP released last April, Smith crafts quiet slow-burning Americana that adds a whiplash curve of experimental, orchestral and cinematic shadings to dusky, amberhued reveries.

More: $60; May 29, 7 p.m.; Evening Muse, 3227 N. Davidson St.; eveningmuse.com

ALL-IN 1DER

Bewithus invites everyone to a backyard music and arts event featuring artists of different mediums such as Sweat Transfer, Claire Santos, Joshua Anthony, and Arthur Brothers.

From music to meditation to collaborative art projects, grab a drink and unwind. Email askbewithus@gmail.com your phone number and full name to get the location.

More: Free; May 29, 3 p.m. – 11 p.m.; tinyurl.com/AllIn1DerCLT

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MUSIC FEATURE

JAM SESSIONS Menastree resumes a running staple at Evening Muse

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BY PAT MORAN

A ‘Lucky’ break

Music runs in his family’s blood, says 31-year-old Williams. His father Andrew Williams played guitar, earning himself the nickname “Jukebox” jamming at gigs at spots like the historic Excelsior Club in west Charlotte, which is currently being restored after a long closure.

Jesse’s great uncles were musicians too, serving as sidemen for gospel artists and James Brown. Jesse grew up listening to R&B, jazz, funk and gospel.

“Around the house, mom would be cleaning up and gospel and R&B is playing — Anita Baker, Stevie Wonder and Cece Winans,” Williams remembers. “It was always happening with dad too, because pops had me at his rehearsals.”

In high school, Williams started playing in

Resistance, in 2010. The eight-song studio collection captures the intensity of the quintet’s live shows, and still leaves Williams amazed at the level of maturity he and his bandmates had attained at such a young age.

“We were some badass kids,” he says with a laugh.

Then, life happened. Bassist Andy Morimoto went to college in Chicago to study political science.

Guitarist Jonny Fung moved to New York so his wife could attend college.

Meanwhile, Williams, Nash and Elizondo poured their energy into Electric Cartel. Nowadays, Williams feels the Cartel’s music is more powerful in some ways than Lucky Five’s.

“It includes colors of loss, growth, season change and maturity,” he says.

Williams’ cousin Adrian Crutchfield, who played saxophone for Prince’s New Power Generation Hornz, frequently sat in with Electric Cartel.

Talented multi-instrumentalist Marcus Jones came in on bass.

In retrospect, Williams feels his time in the band planted several seeds that bore fruit in Menastree, but as Nash embraced fatherhood, the Cartel’s flame guttered and went out.

Menastree founder and leading light Jesse Lamar Williams has jumped in and out of multiple genres, including rock, soul, R&B, jazz, and hip-hop, but in 2014 he was in a deep funk.

As drummer for Lucky Five, a Charlotte quintet that fused each member’s influences into an impassioned pop-rock package, he had rocketed into the spotlight, playing powerful high-profile gigs at Charlotte Speed Street, and South By Southwest in Austin.

When Lucky Five dissolved in 2012, Williams tried to keep the flame alive with a combo called Electric Cartel, along with former bandmates Marques Nash and Shago Elizondo. When that project unraveled, Williams picked up gigs as an in-demand drummer, but his inspiration flagged.

“That was a very emotional time,” Williams remembers. “I was very From audio dope to disappointed [and] I took it personally.” musical ministry But from this low ebb, a wellspring of “Menastree was something that new energy emerged. Drawing from a pool I was afraid to do,” Williams says. “In of longtime friends and collaborators, as well more ways than just music, I had been as a wave of newer and younger musicians, let down a lot. Disappointment was Williams launched and masterminded becoming normalized.”

Menastree, a collective that encompasses After the Cartel collapsed, Williams the emotion of soul, the swing of R&B, the was doing wedding gigs. To make ends complexity of jazz and the firepower of rock. meet, he was traveling 12 hours a day PHOTO COURTESY OF JLM Starting in 2017, the band has hosted JESSE LAMAR WILLIAMS to do something he didn’t care about. the Menastree Jazz Jam, a monthly residency He also said no to a lot of projects because at The Evening Muse. bands, expanding his repertoire to rock and his he wasn’t in “the spiritual space to be creative.”

After a COVID-enforced absence, the party listening choices to bands like Sevenfold, Rage That’s when 10 Tonz, also known as Steven returned to its NoDa home on May 18.

Against the Machine, and System of a Down.

Jackson, stepped in. Jackson, who subsequently Longtime fans of Williams’ band of rocking “I was still living with my mother,” he says. “I became co-manager of Menastree, introduced funk-soul crusaders knew to expect a house party was going on tour with random rock bands, and Williams to a new circle of friends and peers. as much as a concert, and Williams made sure the eating ramen noodles topped with potato chips.”

“He dropped me off at this tree house where all entire band was there for the big return.

Williams also started working at Guitar Center at these dope people were driving and being creative,” As to how he has navigated his path through age 17, where a few members of Lucky Five heard Williams says. career and musical highs and lows, it might be best him warding off boredom by playing drums. When The collective of musicians, rappers and artists, to borrow a lyric from a similarly multifaceted, but the band’s original time-keeper John Peer left for which dubbed itself the HK Movement, included completely different-sounding band: “What a long college, Williams stepped in to fill the slot.

Jackson, J. Davon Harris, Young Aziz and producer strange trip it’s been.”

During Lucky Five’s six-year life span, which and MC Anthony Heron, who composes and began in 2006, the band released just one album, La performs as DJ Lil Tone.

“These guys allowed me to grow,” Williams says.

“They pushed me to go as hard as I could.”

Williams was also learning how to treat his music-making as a business, with an invigorated focus on content, merchandise, social-media presence and branding.

“I started watching these guys move like a mob,” Williams remembers.

“It was tactical and organized — and this was [for] music. It was like watching a drug movie, but it was audio dope.”

An idea for a new group, subconscious at first, began brewing for Williams. He started noticing particular musicians around town.

Through his expanding circle of peers, Williams met, played with and was inspired by songwriter, producer and soul-inflected jazz saxophonist Harvey Cummings. Cummings has played with Anthony Hamilton, Carlitta Durand and Angie Stone, and has scored the hit animated series The Boondocks.

“We would be in the Ritz-Carlton, all over the town,” Williams says. “Harvey taught me how to maneuver that inner-city crowd.”

Cummings is also an alumnus of Northwest School of the Arts. Williams began participating in master classes for the school’s students, many of whom were itching to get into the music scene outside of academia.

“I’m flabbergasted by these young people who are extremely talented, not much younger than me, and still hungry and vibrant.” Williams says. Two of those students, multi-instrumentalists Braxton Bateman and Malcolm Charles, were drawn into Williams’ orbit.

Williams also frequented The Double Door Inn in the days before the venerable music venue was demolished. He was hanging out when he was reintroduced to saxophonist and keyboard player Zach Wheeler. Wheeler and Williams had crossed paths before, both playing in middle-and highschool bands. Williams also reconnected with vocalist, bass player and songwriter Jeremy Mayher, who had filled in on Lucky Five shows when bassist Morimoto wasn’t available.

“During this time, I’m eyeballing some guys that I feel are being under-appreciated and overlooked,” Williams says. “And they’re on fire.”

He noted that Charles was sitting in with jazz musician and Davidson College adjunct professor of piano Lovell Bradford, while Wheeler was bouncing back and forth from Asheville to Charlotte playing jazz.

One night, Williams and Heron were sitting and talking in a car when Heron asked Williams when

MUSIC FEATURE he was finally going to start a band, and what that band was going to be called.

“He was like, ‘Every time you’re a part of something, you bring people together that in any other circumstance wouldn’t be in the same place.

It’s like church,’” Williams remembers. He realized that he was like a minister, fostering a community.

In addition to musical “ministering,” he was also mentoring fellow musicians. Thus, the name Menastree was born.

Initially, the core of the band coalesced around Williams, Mayher, Bateman, Charles, Wheeler, Heron and Jones. Williams feels the group came together organically, a result of his renewed motivation and inspiration.

“I was reaching out my soul to find something to hold onto, because I wanted to be part of something that was bigger than myself.”

Pg. 17 MAY 19 - JUN 1, 2021 - QCNERVE.COM

Nerds on fire

With Bubonic Funk finished, Kallander was looking for a new challenge. Williams brought him into the Menastree fold.

“This thing was new and growing,” Williams remembers.

The band auditioned additional guitarists and pianists, but few could fit in with Menastree’s experimental yet accessible direction. Not everyone could hang with the band, Williams says.

“They were like, ‘I don’t know what you guys are doing. I can’t follow it.’”

Williams leadership style emerged organically.

In a nutshell his approach is to lead by not taking the reins, he says.

At first Williams was going to manage his new band, but Jackson took on that mantle so Williams could guide the group.

Williams realized that the main reason he wanted to start a band was to help other artists and vocalists.

A lot of vocalists don’t know what it’s like to work with a band, Williams maintains.

Singers’ creative opportunities are often limited to working with a producer, which can narrow aesthetic choices.

THE MENASTREE CREW AT THE MUSE. “It’s [the singer] and a person they don’t He lets each player develop to find their groove know who thinks they know everything,” Williams and their muse. says, “There’s no conversation.”

Instead of Menastree fitting instrumental talent So, in addition to developing new material for themselves and other artists, Menastree also into a box, the collective found its direction by rehearsed cover songs to help hone their chops for following the music.

“I had these nerds and there was nothing I could backing singers.

“Then Nisha came along,” Williams says. Vocalist do to put out the fire,” he recalls.

The process had taken three years, from 2014 Waneisha “Nisha” Massey and Williams go back to middle school. She returned to Charlotte from to 2017, but Menastree was solid. The band was California just as Menastree was looking for a singer. rehearsing at Mayher’s house weekly, and they already had a place to play. The entire time Williams She sat in with the band and everything clicked.

Williams also reconnected with guitarist Stefan was forging a pathway toward Menastree, The Kallander. Years before, Lucky Five had played Evening Muse had been in his corner Venue owners Joe Kuhlmann and Don Koster bills with Kallander’s band Bubonic Funk. While attending the Berklee College of Music in Boston, had steadily supported and encouraged Williams Kallander had also played with funk legends George through the years, while gently nudging him to launch a new project.

Clinton and Bernie Worrell.

“They always gave me love,” Williams says. “Joe is like my big brother. Don is like my adopted pops.

Before I had Menastree, I had The Evening Muse.”

In 2017, Williams decided to pluck the fruit from all the seeds he’d planted, launching Jesse Lamar Williams and The Menastree Jazz Jam on the third Tuesday of each month at The Evening Muse.

“I decided to jump out of the tree and see if I can fly,” Williams says. “The worst thing that could happen is we got to climb the tree and try again.”

The jam soared for four years, and now after a year-long respite, Menastree’s new-age mashup of hip-hop, trap, jazz, house, R&B and rock returns to the Muse.

be the commercial kiss of death in Charlotte, but adds that many listeners don’t understand what the genre is about.

Jazz runs through Menastree’s bloodline, Williams says, through the jazz his father played and through Bateman’s grandfather who was playing and kickin’ it with jazz-fusion pianist Chick Corea.

Part of the genre’s perception problem stems from self-appointed curators of the genre, Williams offers.

Classicist band leaders such as Wynton Marsalis posit that jazz reached a watershed in the mid1950s when hard bop incorporated influences from R&B, gospel and blues. According to gatekeepers, anything after this pinnacle is a watered-down version of jazz.

Williams rejects this thesis. To him, popular groups like Steely Dan as well as hip-hop and rap are jazz.

“There would be no hip-hop without jazz,” he says. “It was instrumental music with no lyrics. So, they decided to rap it with poetry.

“Miles Davis and John Coltrane would turn over in their graves if they knew that people weren’t progressing,” Williams continues. “We appreciate the foundation but why are we living in the fucking past?”

Hard bop is what jazz was, he says.

“It is a foundation for me to take the baton and finish running the marathon.”

To that end, Williams hopes that both old fans and newcomers to Menastree will experience a pleasant culture shock at the upcoming gig.

“I want people feeling refreshed,” he PHOTO COURTESY OF JLM says. “I want people to be able to claim [the music]. I want them to take it personally For the gig, group included “everybody”Williams [and] to support it because it represents Charlotte.” says — Massey, also known as Queen Nisha, on Williams is adamant that groups like Menastree vocals; Kallander on guitar; Bateman on horns, keys, should represent the city rather than the ambitions vocoder, and samples; Wheeler on sax and keys; of any individual member. He says the music Charles on percussion and keys; Jones on bass and industry is littered with examples, for better or for keys; Mayher on vocals and Williams on drums and worse, of the individual abandoning community for samples. self — NSYNC and Justin Timberlake, The Jackson Five and Michael, Destiny’s Child and Beyonce.

While Menastree may serve as a stepping To jazz or not to jazz stone for the talented players in its ranks, Williams’ The band is more than ready to rekindle its relationship with the Muse, though the recurring hope is that audiences will recognize Charlotte in Menastree’s genre-bending polyglot sound. session won’t be held monthly as it was before.

“I got to put together something that is bigger There will also be one other prominent change, than myself,” Williams says. “Now, our goal is to Williams says “We will drop the ‘jazz,’ not from the music but represent this city because no one has had the balls to do it.” definitely from the name [of the event],” he says.

Williams acknowledges that the word “jazz” can

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FOOD & DRINK FEATURE

Xiao Bao’s signature dish is okonomiyaki, which my hurt feelings,” he wrote, “and tag anyone and the majority of the food world will tell you is a everyone you know in Charlotte to get their opinion.” savory cabbage pancake from Japan. It may have His 24,000 followers rallied to his defense: different toppings and slightly different seasonings “RUDE whoever insults this okonomiyaki shall be or sauces depending upon one’s taste (in Japanese, forever cursed,” “The Applebee’s of America has “okonomi” literally means “as you like it”), but, to food critics that have comparable taste,” “They don’t Hannibal Lecter, the greatest foodie of all know amazing food when it hits them straight in The curious case of the warm quote time, “First principles. Of each particular thing, what the mouth.” cabbage salad is it in itself?” – okonomiyaki is still a pancake.

When one of his followers deigned to agree with In my post, I suggested that Xiao Bao’s version me, he responded, “I could talk for an hour or more

BY JOHN DELANEY was a failure because they didn’t understand this – about restaurant economics and prices and defense there was a whole lot of cabbage, but no pancake – defense defense but I’ll pay attention to your hurt Josh Walker isn’t an asshole, he just plays one on and that before they move on to adapt or reinvent it feelings and say sorry you felt ruined.” social media. (like they did so perfectly with the fried mochi balls), This went on for weeks. “Warm cabbage salad” The chef-owner of Xiao Bao Biscuit, the insanely became a hashtag (#wcs) in popular Asian-ish eatery in Charleston whose his many posts and Instastories ravenous fans include singer Michelle Branch, that trolled my critique, one opened a smaller offshoot at Optimist Hall of which bizarrely featured his in March. Xiao Bao, like its Biscuit brother, toddler daughter. At one point, specializes in a type of Asian street food in a post meant to advertise Xiao that exists in an alternate reality where Bao Biscuit’s partnership with physical borders and centuries of culture are Goldbelly, the nationwide premium effortlessly pushed aside to make room for food shipping service, Josh even sometimes tasty things that Josh and his asked (publicly, no less) for my partners think you should eat instead. mom’s home address — ostensibly Or, as their menu puts it more neutrally: to have Goldbelly send her some “Xiao Bao is comfort food from throughout okonomiyaki.

Asia that you’ve probably never had before.”

The DMs I received were This read like a dare to me, and I saw it as basically in agreement: “Did he just my responsibility not only as a food critic, but make the equivalent of a yo mama as a food critic who spent 16 years of his life joke?” living across Asia, to check things out.

After weeks of this outlandish My first visit was confounding, if not behavior, Josh and I finally agreed entirely unpleasant. I wrote in an Instagram to have a Skype call. That’s when post that, “The secret to enjoying Xiao Bao I came to the realization stated … is to remain oblivious,” primarily because above: Josh Walker isn’t an asshole, words on the menu don’t always mean what he just plays one on social media. they’re meant to mean. In fact, their promise “To me, it was just funny,” he to have food from throughout Asia turned said. “I thought ‘warm cabbage out to be literal, but not quite in the way you salad’ was just a great description. would think. No one particular Asian cuisine Like, I didn’t think Trump was a informs the food here, and depending on the great president, but I think he had dish, you might see glimmers of Vietnam, a lot of great one-liners.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOSH WALKER China, and Japan all in one bite.

JOSH WALKER WITH HIS DAUGHTER. “You’re comparing me to When that cultural commingling is Trump?” I asked. successful, it’s transcendent. “Fried mochi they should understand first principles. Without the “I’m not gonna not give him his due when he balls” take their cue from a version of a Chinese pancake, what they’re actually serving is nothing says something amazing,” he replied in a stream-ofjiānduī, but the filling is a sweet, spicy, and more than a warm cabbage salad. consciousness style that dominated our conversation herbaceous caramelized pork mince that is straight And that’s when shit hit the fan. (and never really answering the question). out of Southeast Asia by way of Taiwan. I’ve had Josh is a self-taught chef and self-anointed them on four separate occasions now, and they’ve “creative” who has dabbled in the arts for much of been more delicious, their flavors more robust and Take it to the ‘Gram Almost as soon as I posted my critique, the main his life. He moved to New York City in the early 2000s pungent, each time. to pursue an artist’s dream that never quite came to When it’s less successful, it’s a disaster, and woe Xiao Bao Biscuit Instagram account, which is run fruition.

by Josh, pounced. “Let’s all please pay attention to to the food critic who points that out.

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A XIAO BAO THROWDOWN

He ended up doing odd jobs for established painters, sculptors, and musicians, and at one point even built a website for an artist, which was perhaps an early sign of his future social media savvy. But he quickly grew disillusioned with the freelance life and eventually found himself inside a kitchen.

“I love the kitchen culture,” he said. “I was the type of kid that would have definitely run to Canada rather than fight in Vietnam, right? Like, I didn’t appreciate hierarchy or authority very much at all my entire life. And suddenly, in the kitchen, it was like a sneaky way to get me exposed to all of that in a way I was OK with.”

His creativity, tempered by this newfound appreciation for structure and discipline, and his observation that food brings people pleasure, are what led him to realize he could be both an artist and a chef. Outside of his work in a restaurant near Madison Park, he and his friend would host Monday supper clubs, which would often feature Asian dishes.

“That was the first time outside of, like, working with quote-unquote Asian ingredients, with my friend actually showing me all of this Asian food I had, like, never really experienced.” It piqued his interests as a chef.

Walker got married in 2009, and after working at the restaurant for a year, he quit his job and went traveling through Asia with his wife. It was on a stopover in Japan where he discovered okonomiyaki.

Appreciation or appropriation?

I lived in Japan for 10 years and never saw okonomiyaki the way Josh makes it at his Xiao Bao locations. Which is not to say, of course, that it cannot or should not exist in that way, but can you imagine dosai without the dosai, just a pile of masala potatoes? Or Suzette sans crêpes? It goes back to first principles.

I even spoke to several friends in Japan to ask if I was missing something, if pancake-less okonomiyaki, in fact, was actually a thing. One of their replies roughly translated to, “What the actual f*ck are you talking about, Tim?” On the menu, Josh says his okonomiyaki is based on a version he had while working on a rice farm in Japan. I was cynical at first and just assumed this was a clever bit of marketing, but it turned out to be part of a work-experience-like program where foreign visitors to Japan could stay and work on a farm.

In Josh and his wife’s case, it was a small organic rice farm just outside of Osaka run by a single mother.

FOOD & DRINK FEATURE

After a long, thoughtful pause, Josh replied, “I think when you really love something and have an affinity for something, you know, I do want to live in a world where that’s OK. My responsibility as a lover of food is to try to do interesting food, food that I think people will love.”

For his part, Josh remains on track. Over the course of our Skype call, his aggressive social media persona slowly melted away to reveal a sensitive, charming, and bumbling aesthete. People certainly love his food, but perhaps he’s gotten so caught up in these adulations that he never stopped to think why, or for the odd man out like me, why not.

I will confess that the new KFC (“Korean Fried Chicken”) sandwich on the Xiao Bao menu in Charlotte is phenomenal (“Goes well with WCS,” reads one of his Instagram posts); it’s massive and massively marinated, encased in a Hawaiian roll, and a sheer pleasure to eat.

When I had the okonomiyaki again, my opinion of it did change. The egg on top was sloppily presented, with the white separating from the yolk, and the okonomiyaki was so overcooked that the entire top layer was black. This was no longer warm cabbage salad, I said aloud to my dining partner that night, this was burnt cabbage salad.

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DIVE IN

Pg. 19 MAY 19 - JUN 1, 2021 - QCNERVE.COM

you didn’t grow up in, especially for customers who wasn’t met, people were bummed. But it’s not like it’s a bad dish.” have never had it before?”

“But doesn’t labeling a dish as okonomiyaki by He deflected. “For nine years, we just sold so “I felt bad for this lady because she was a single many of these and continuously had nothing but default create expectations? Whether that’s fair or mom, and she had two kids that were terrible disasters,” not, I think the word he said. “We were a good source of actually matters,” I labor for her, but she didn’t really said. want us there and kept wanting us “Look, my first to work more than eight hours a day.” experience of it was Despite this, she made them a personal thing, and okonomiyaki for dinner. now I’ve inadvertently This was the first time Josh had given some powerful ever had okonomiyaki, it turned out, gene boost to my and it was an experience he would weird, warm cabbage aim to recreate for customers when salad version of he eventually returned to the States okonomiyaki, right? and settled in Charleston to open Like, it is really funny Xiao Bao Biscuit. In that regard, he that this version, which has been successful. was my first version, One of his many adoring now inadvertently has followers had commented probably been pushed something along the lines of, “I on a lot of people as love this okonomiyaki, but I’ve KOREAN FRIED CHICKEN SANDWICH PHOTO BY KENTY CHUNG their first version. And never had it anywhere else.” it’s really taken off!”

“What’s your reaction to I asked where he thinks the line between cultural good feedback, and for our Charlotte experience, a comment like that?” I asked. “Do you feel any everyone had a certain expectation of what appreciation and cultural appropriation lies, and how, responsibility as a chef cooking food from a culture okonomiyaki should be, and when that expectation if at all, he tries to stay on the right side of that line.

LIFESTYLE COLUMN

AERIN IT OUT HEAVY MEMORIES OF HOME Wine, a garden, an old friend and a trip back in time

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BY AERIN SPRUILL

Oftentimes, when I’m meeting someone in Charlotte — a city without a distinguished accent if you were to take a poll — my cadence introduces itself before I can extend my arm for a proper handshake. I’ve tried to conceal my “country” many times, but after a couple of drinks, my Southern roots come tumbling out of my mouth.

I’ve become accustomed to the question, “Where are you from?” and wondering if the query stemmed from genuine linguistic curiosity or from sheer hilarity. I flash one of the fakest smiles I can muster and respond quickly, “Trinity ... North Carolina ... Greensboro area ... the 336,” then sigh hoping to signal my lack of interest in further dissecting the origins of my dialect.

Through this column, I’ve shared many aspects of my love-hate relationship with the place I call home. On one hand, it reminds me of how simple life can be — how going from point A to point B can be a slow drive to take in all the sights included in long stretches of land while tracing the curves of the winding back roads with a car’s tires like a finger would on someone’s lower back. I think of fans creating a gentle breeze on hot summer days, with lemonade to quench the thirst and the smells of cookouts or fresh-cut grass, or fire pits on cooler nights.

On the other, after leaving the bubble that is Trinity, I learned that home taught me a lot of other things, too.

That I’m more than “just pretty for a Black girl,” for one. That there’s more to life than traveling 15 minutes back and forth to different people’s houses and gossiping about everyone in between. Other cultures, cuisines, and religions exist.

Difference is what makes the world so beautiful. Being afraid of “everything that’s going on in the world” can be so limiting that one day you’ll look up and realize you weren’t living. Everything isn’t just black and white.

You’re probably wondering what this has to do with Charlotte. Well, just a couple weeks ago everything came full circle when I was able to sit down with one of my best friends from elementary school “back home” at Rosie’s Coffee & Wine Garden on North Davidson Street.

During the thick of the pandemic, I learned my friend had

moved to Charlotte and lived just one neighborhood over. We promised we’d get together once things started to open back up. I was nervous and, honestly, chalked the conversation to one of those things that probably wouldn’t happen.

When Black Lives Matter protests were “reinvigorated” at the start of the pandemic, another childhood friend of ours was one of the first people to message me. I was in shock. I knew I had a vivid recollection of my experiences as a child growing up in Trinity, but I didn’t think she had come to the same conclusions I had, or if that was even possible.

I remember how hurt I felt when I was forced to “reremember” and some of the most precious interactions and relationships I had as bad memories. I didn’t realize how resentful and distanced I’d become toward a lot of the people and the places I grew up around until I saw her message, which included, “I’m sorry.” Yep, I was emotional.

When the opportunity to meet up came about, I remembered the DM and decided it was time to start forgiving myself, others, and even Trinity. As we walked from her complex to the front door at Rosie’s, I felt all my fears fall away. We grabbed a glass of wine and managed to find an unoccupied picnic table nestled along the backside of the beautiful McGill Rose Garden.

For a moment, I relished in the fact that this place made it through quarantine. When Rosie’s replaced Nectar, I remember thinking I shouldn’t get too attached, that it would be just a fleeting pop-up, and yet here it was. It really is a magical place.

My friend and I reminisced on the days when life wasn’t so complicated and discussed what had changed in Trinity, but more so what hadn’t. We were thankful for the family that was still there and how glad we were to make it out. At one point, she said something along the lines of, “We always made you be Scary Spice; ugh, that’s so awful,” referring to the times we would have sleepovers with our friends and dress up like the Spice Girls.

I laughed so hard remembering the moments as a child and being torn between whether or not I wanted to be Scary Spice or had to be Scary Spice. Were we just acting out what our parents and community had taught us? Or were we just children being children carefree and belting out the songs of our favorite girl group and pretending to have British accents?

Whatever the case may be, I realized quickly how comforted I felt getting a chance to “re-know” someone who’d been so much a part of my friendship fabric.

Tuesday Trivia faded away in the background as we updated one another on each other’s lives and, of course, gossiped. It was as if nothing had really changed and yet everything had all at the same time. All it took to bring us back together was a couple glasses of wine and a Charlotte garden.

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HOROSCOPE

MAY 19 - MAY 25

MAY 26 - JUNE 1

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) A once-harmonious relationship appears to be hitting some sour notes.

Spend some time together to see why things have gone off-key. What you learn might surprise you.

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) Home conditions still demand attention. Also, keep an open mind about a sudden question of trust involving a close friend. All the facts are not yet in.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) You feel a need to make some changes. Good — you can do it on a small scale (some new clothes, for example), or go big and redecorate your home and/or office.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) With summer just around the corner, travel begins to dominate your sign. Make plans carefully to avoid potential problems in the first half of June.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Control your tendency

toward early boredom. A situation in your life might be taking a long time to develop, but patience pays off. Stay with it.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) A romantic Libra sets a challenge that your “sensible” side might question, but your idealistic self finds the prospect too intriguing to resist. The choice is yours.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) You might feel that you’re on an emotional roller coaster this week.

Don’t fret; just ride it out and let things settle down.

A Pisces shows understanding.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) Those tense times in your personal life are just about over. Concentrate on reaffirming relationships. Your love of travel opens a surprising new opportunity.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) Do something different for once — compromise. A stubborn stand on an important issue proves counterproductive. You need to be open to new ideas.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) The Big Cat usually loves to be in the center of things. But this week it might be wiser to watch and learn from the sidelines. A Pisces wants to make you purr.

VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) A friend

VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) “New” is your

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) A year of

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Some difficult

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) Your words

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) You still

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21)

Be careful about whose secrets you’re being asked to keep. They could impose an unfair burden on a straight arrow like you.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) Aspects continue to favor expanding social opportunities. A Gemini reaches out to offer a chance for re-establishing a once-close relationship.

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) While you prefer taking the tried-and-true course in life, be adventurous this week and accept a challenge that can open new vistas.

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) There’s a potential for misunderstanding in both your job and your personal life. A full explanation of your intentions helps smooth things over.

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) Your

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) You might

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) You need to build a stronger on-the-job support system to convince doubting colleagues that your innovative proposals are workable.

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) Your business sense works to your advantage as you sort through the possibilities that are opening up. A Libra is Cupid’s best bet for your romantic prospects.

BORN THIS WEEK: You might not say much, but

BORN THIS WEEK: You have a gift for being open-minded about people. This helps you make friends easily. You would do very well in public service.

offers advice that you perceive as an act of betrayal.

But before you turn against the messenger, pay attention to the message.

riding an emotional pogo stick finally settles down.

Use this calmer period to restore frayed relationships and to pursue new opportunities. can sting, so be careful how you respond to a friend’s actions. A calm approach could produce some surprising facts.

strong sense of justice helps you deal with a job- or school-related situation. Stay with your principles. A Sagittarius emerges as a supporter.

you’re capable of extraordinary achievements. You are a loyal friend and a devoted family person.

watchword this week. Be open to new ideas, both on the job and in your personal life. A romantic Aries or Sagittarian beckons.

family decisions have to be faced, but be sure to get more facts before you act. Be careful not to neglect your health during this trying time.

need to support a loved one through a difficult time.

Meanwhile, things continue to work out to your benefit in the workplace.

be feeling restless on the job, but delay making any major moves until all the facts are in. A Scorpio has a surprising revelation.

2021 KING FEATURES SYND., INC.

LIFESTYLE PUZZLES SUDOKU

TRIVIA TEST

BY FIFI RODRIGUEZ

BY LINDA THISTLE

PLACE A NUMBER IN THE EMPTY BOXES IN SUCH A WAY THAT EACH ROW ACROSS, EACH COLUMN DOWN AND EACH SMALL 9-BOX SQUARE CONTAINS ALL OF THE NUMBERS ONE TO NINE.

Pg. 19 MAY 19 - JUN 1, 2021 - QCNERVE.COM

©2020 King Feautres Syndicate, Inc. All rights reserved.

1. MOVIES: How long was the shortest Academy Awards ceremony?

2. TELEVISION: Which U.S. state was the setting for the 1980s “Newhart” TV sitcom?

3. MEDICAL: What is a common name for the condition known medically as ankylosis?

4. GEOGRAPHY: Which European nation colonized Haiti?

5. HISTORY: What was the Monroe Doctrine, a policy stated

by President James Monroe in 1823?

6. ADVERTISING: Horatio Magellan Crunch is the mascot for which cereal brand?

7. FOOD & DRINK: What is bannock?

8. BIBLE: What is the Pentateuch?

9. SCIENCE: How do mosses reproduce?

10. INVENTIONS: When did the first patented drive-in movie theater open?

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Having lasting import 9 Enzyme name ending 12 Directory no.

15 Toasty 19 In a busy way 20 Wacky 22 86-Across star Nastase 23 * Earth’s layers of rock strata 25 Met VIP 26 Reaping mo.

27 Partner 28 “Keystone” officer 29 Revolting one 30 Sit in on, as a class 32 * Top-end 35 Accompany 39 -- -um (gnat) 41 Delicious 42 * Taking baby steps, perhaps 45 Cause to take notice 49 Touch-related 50 Away from home 51 -- -en-Provence 53 Altercation 54 Spanish for “these” 55 Bank account amt.

57 Tick off 59 Indigo dye 60 Japanese religion 62 * Criterion applied unequally 66 Brainchild 68 Boosting drink 69 Prefix with dynamics 70 * Football receiver’s success 76 Swab analysis site 81 Everyone, to Germans 82 Dust specks

83 See 124-Across 85 Ballplayer Lefty 86 Tennis site 88 Org. for an air marshal 89 August hrs.

91 13th-century king of England 93 Final stops 95 * Classic coaster at Disney parks 98 Muscat native 100 Driving around in a Winnebago, e.g.

101 Mourned loudly 102 * Not on a leash 106 Dying fire feature 108 Go wide of 109 Apple apps use it 110 Norwegian port 111 Kin of -trix 115 Axel relative 116 Repeatedly (or a hint to both halves of the answers to the starred clues) 121 Ballet dip 122 Hauled 123 Rendered unnecessary 124 With 83-Across, gave spoonfuls to directly 125 Plane domain 126 Paper crew, for short 127 Proximity DOWN 1Witchy types 2 Frozen drink treat 3 “Uncle!”

4 Arcade error 5 Lacto- -- diet 6 Bylaw, briefly 7 Epic of Troy

8 Tour de France activity 9 In a skillful way 10 Brit’s title 11 Book before Daniel 12 Heisman, e.g.

13 Be human 14 Fronted 15 Erudite 16 Perp’s out 17 Kind of bolt 18 Soft, dry and crumbly 21 Slip -- (flub up) 24 Certain aria 29 Thruway exits 30 Like painters 31 Elec. or water 32 August woe 33 Man of La Mancha 34 Steak- -- (frozen beef brand) 35 Politician Kefauver 36 Hoard 37 Mojave plants 38 Dramatist Joe 40 Dallas coll.

43 Kan. neighbor 44 Narrow way 46 Big Sicilian volcano 47 Ruckus 48 Auction cry 52 Wacky 56 Gets used (to) 57 Jai -58 Unit of 36” 61 Lakers great Lamar 63 Beehive State athletes 64 Exacta, e.g.

65 Titleless one 67 Being hammy

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CULTURE

BLOCKS

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70 War ender 71 Salve plant 72 Put-down 73 Preached 74 Grassy fields 75 Most regularly 77 “It’s --!” (“You’re on!”)

78 Old ship-locating system 79 World War II hero Murphy 80 Sightless 84 “In excelsis --” 87 Demure 89 Jazz great Brubeck 90 -- -fi flick 92 “Valley of the Dolls” co-star Patty 94 Flatbread of India 96 Foretell 97 Film studio roarer 99 “Excuse me, but ...”

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LIFESTYLE COLUMN

PG.19 PUZZLE ANSWERS

SAVAGE LOVE SHAFTED

What’s the big rush?

BY DAN SAVAGE

I’m a European heterosexual girl and reading your column from afar has been a good way for me to better know the sex world! I am wondering if you have advice for me about a “faster” way to do blowjobs. Or rather a way to make my boyfriend come faster from them. I like doing them but after some time my mouth begins to hurt and I’d like him to finish. My partner is “slower” to come than other men I’ve been with. During intercourse sex I don’t mind. I usually come first but is not a problem to wait for him to finish. But during oral sex, it is harder to wait. Sometimes I say no to giving him a blowjob because I know the effort it will take.

I don’t want to talk with him about this because I don’t want to make him self-conscious. I know how good it is to receive oral sex without thinking about having to rush my own orgasm and I don’t want to make him feel rushed. In the years of our relationship I haven’t found a trick that gives me the power to make it faster. I need some button to push. Maybe you have some tips for me?

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SEX TIPS INDUCING DISCOMFORT

FASTER

FINISH

EASING

I have some good news: There is a button. It’s doesn’t work on all men, sadly, but for many men a little pressure on this button can speed up an approaching orgasm considerably. While this button isn’t hard to find, STIFFED, you can’t see it with the naked eye … because it’s inside a guy’s ass. The prostate is a walnut-shaped gland that produces seminal fluid; it’s located inside and up a man’s bum. If you’re facing your boyfriend — which you would be while blowing him — his prostate the same side of his body that you are.

Slip a finger in his ass, make a gentle “come here”motion with your finger, and you’ll be hitting that button. Keep gently pressing on his prostate as his orgasm approaches and you should feel it harden, swell, and contract.

But you’re gonna need to get your boyfriend’s consent before sticking a finger in his ass, STIFFED, which means you’re gonna have to talk to him about trying this — and I think you should level with him about why you wanna try it. You don’t frame it as a problem (“You take too long!”) because it isn’t a problem. He has amazing stamina, right? And while that stamina is great during PIV (you always come first), it’s a challenge when you blow him. Figuring out what you can do to get him there a little

faster without making him feel rushed is something you should be able to talk about. You need to be able to talk honestly with your partner about sex in general, STIFFED, and it’s particularly important that you’re able to freely give him feedback when sex is physically uncomfortable.

While there’s an obvious upside for you to speeding up his orgasms during oral — e.g. less wear and tear on your face — there are two big upsides for him: You’re gonna get him there faster by making blowjobs more intensely pleasurable for him and he’s gonna get more of those more intensely pleasurable blowjobs once they’re less physically taxing for you. And if a finger in the butt is a no-go for your boyfriend (or you), STIFFED, there are some other tricks you can try. Some guys get there a little faster during oral if you cup, squeeze, or gently pull on their balls; some guys get there a little faster if you play with their nipples (or they play with their own). And you can always use your hands to speed things along, i.e. pull his dick out of your mouth, give him a few good pumps, get him a closer to the finish line, and then dive back down on his dick.

TRIVIA ANSWERS:

1. The first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929 lasted 15 minutes.

2. Vermont 3. Stiff joint 4. France

5. The U.S. opposed further European 8. The first five books of the Bible: colonization of the Americas, but wouldn’t interfere Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers with existing colonies or meddle in the affairs of and Deuteronomy European countries.

9. Spores 6. Cap’n Crunch 10. 1933 in Camden, New Jersey 7. Flat, quick bread of Scottish origin

VANQUISHING “IT” BECOMES ESSENTIAL QUEST

probably haven’t seen many men jerk off, VIBEQ, but I have. Some men (and other people who have penises) focus all of their efforts on the heads of their cocks — working the glans — while others barely touch the head and focus most of their efforts on the shaft. Basically, there are women out there who need the “shaft” of the clitoris stimulated in order to come — not the exposed glans, but the majority of the clitoris, which is inside the body. The sensations provided by a powerful vibrator is the best and, for some women, the only way to hit their shafts with the sensations required to get them off.

So my advice … after all these years … is to finally learn to love “it.” Invite your wife to incorporate “it” into your sex sessions; don’t make the mistake (or continue making the mistake) of forcing her to choose between sex with you that doesn’t get her all the way there and masturbation sessions with “it” that do. Let her use “it” on/with herself when you’re having intercourse and ask if you can use “it” on/with her when you’re not, e.g. every once in a while leave your dick out of it and focus on your wife’s pleasure.

Hopefully you’ll come to see “it” as an extension of your body when “it” is in your hands and as your loyal wingman when “it” is in hers. Good luck and happy anniversary.

Stop trying to compete with “it.” Sex is not a competition, VIBEQ, and “it” is not your competitor. “It” is a tool, VIBEQ, and “it” could and should be your friend and collaborator instead of your nemesis.

First, your wife is not broken and her clit does not have addiction issues. Your wife is most likely one of the many women out there who can only come with the help of a vibrator. Some women (and some other people with clits) need sustained deep-tissue vibrations in order to get off. Remember: dicks and clits are made up of the same starter-pack of fetal tissues; a dick is a big clit, a clit is a small dick. But most of the clit — the “shaft” of the clit, e.g. the erectile tissues and chambers that anchor the exposed glans of clit to the body — is internal. You

My son, a 15-year-old straight guy, occasionally enjoys dressing in girls’ clothing. When he was little it was his sister’s tutus and painting his nails. These days he does it more to be funny. I have noticed, however, that once the joke is over he keeps the makeup and dress on longer and longer. This has never bothered me or his dad. We don’t encourage or discourage it. We have never gendered things in our very liberal house (no girls/boys toys, etc.). He is a pretty open kid with friends across the spectrum of sexual and gender identities so I don’t get the feeling he would hide it if he is struggling with gender issues. I think he just likes to wear a dress around the house sometimes. I’m wondering if we

My wife and I just celebrated our 34th anniversary. For the first year it was great. We shared many intimate moments. But on her 26th birthday (33 years ago!) she got “it.” A vibrator.

Ever since I feel like I’ve been bumped down to a distant fourth in our relationship. Her priorities: family, job, “it,” then me. She thinks everything is fine and that we’re soul mates, friends, lovers, etc., but I feel like her lowest priority. I’ve read articles where women can be become addicted to these devices, essentially snubbing their significant others. I know it’s complicated, but what can I do to win her back? I’ve tried romancing her but I am always competing with “it” for intimate attention.

How many others have been replaced by “it” in their relationships? What can I do?

still refer to a guy dressing in women’s clothes as “cross-dressing” or is it now just “wearing a dress?”

Is there a more modern term/name? Cross-dressing feels derogatory for some reason. We have no intention of trying to change his behavior but I’d like to use the right words if he wants to talk about it.

DEMONSTRATING SINCERE SUPPORT

RESPECT

EXPOSES

No one is more up to date on the right words than the word cops at GLAAD, which used to stand for the “Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation” and now just stands for GLAAD … because coming up with a catchy acronym that incorporated B (bisexual), T (trans), Q (queer), Q again (questioning), A (asexual), A again (ally), I (intersex), 2S (twospirited), P (pan), P again (polyamorous), K (kink), etc., etc., prompted several dozen supercomputers to threaten suicide if they weren’t immediately reassigned to bitcoin-farming duties.

Anyway, DRESS, GLAAD says the term “cross-dressing” is fine: “While anyone may wear clothes associated with a different sex, the term cross-dresser is typically used to refer to men who occasionally wear clothes, makeup, and accessories culturally associated with women.”

GLAAD recommends people use “cross-dressing” instead of “transvestite” and notes that most cross-dressers identify as both male and straight and “have no desire to transition and/or live full-time as women.” But your son is only 15 years old; he may be a straight male cross-dresser, DRESS, or he may be exploring his gender identity under the guise of wearing dresses for laughs. Give him time, give him space. And just as you’re keeping an open mind about your child’s gender identity, DRESS, I would encourage you to keep an open mind about his sexual orientation. My mom thought I was straight when I was 15 years old and look how that turned out.

Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage; mail@ savagelove.net; savagelove.net

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