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Thank you to this week’s sponsor: Pride: Durham, NC! Hosted by the LGBTQ Center of Durham, you can enjoy a pop-up market, parade, FREE live music, and more on September 28th & 29th. This year, we’ll celebrate the courage and leadership of our trans and non-binary community members for a whole weekend with the theme, “GIVE THEM THEIR FLOWERS.” To learn more, visit pridedurhamnc.org — Happy Pride!
Hi! Happy weekend.
Like many in my demographic, I’m a diehard Swiftie and try to make it out to at least one show a year—the dramatic visuals never disappoint.
I’m talking about chimney swifts, of course, migratory birds that spend most of their life on the wing; wintering in South America and returning north for nesting season, sometimes covering as much ground as 500 miles a day. In late August and September, as you may have observed, they begin to amass into larger and larger flocks (“bird tornados”) in preparation for the long journey South.
Chimney Swifts are vertical perchers; historically, they nested in hollow trees in old-growth forests. Then European settlements came, and swifts adapted to roosting in chimneys. If you’ve seen swifts circling a chimney—there are even some local watch parties—you’ll be familiar with how beautiful and symphonic the phenomenon is, the kind of sight that instantly calms the nervous system.
Fast forward a few hundred years and the advent of central heating systems and chimneys began to be capped off or lined in ways incompatible with roosting. Swifts became endangered—according to conservation reports, the species has lost 50% of its population since 1970 and is in danger of losing another 50% in the next 50 years.
But wait! There’s some good news. This week, we have a story on Davie Poplar, the 400-some-years-old tree on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus that legendarily has the fate of the campus tied to it—and where swifts have chosen to nest, in what may be the only documented case in the state of chimney swifts choosing a natural roosting site.
On the INDY this week, UNC-Chapel Hill student Catherine Wiles unpacks the thrilling phenomenon and the Chapel Hill birder who discovered it.
Swifts at McCorckle place! Photo by Catherine Wiles
elsewhere in the culture section
Durham Pride is next weekend and we have a new Pride Issue on stands. Explore our Portraits of Pride series, curated by Desmera Gatewood, which hands the microphone over to young queer people in the community with poems, paintings, and essays.
From the feature: “These are young people who aren’t interested in making the case for their humanity; they are gifting us with the opportunity to discover and experience who they are. These youth challenge the notion that young people are our future—instead, they demonstrate that young people are our here and now.”
Take some for coverage of the Pauli Murray Center—the renovated site of Murray’s childhood home in the West End—and the plans that executive director Angela Thorpe Murray has to maintain it as a sacred community gathering place. There’s also writer Grace Yannotta’s celebration of the Triangle Pride Band, a 120-member community band with multiple ensembles and an inclusive, playful spirit to its membership. Read that story here.
Lena Geller visits Durham’s new cohort of bars—High Dive, Delafia, and Club ERA—and finds that they’re all a bit oxymoronic, but charmingly so. I enjoyed this description: “High Dive sort of evokes those times when you clean your apartment so rigorously ahead of having company that you need to stage some clutter so people don’t think you’re a serial killer, or that scene in The Incredibles when Dash, gifted with super speed, tries to run at a believably average pace at a track meet. That’s not to say High Dive feels inauthentic—just different, a little endearing.”
(Looking for more on this topic? Revisit our Guide to Triangle Bars and Drinks Spots.)
There’s been some unexpected leadership turnover at the Ackland Art Museum. And Glenn McDonald has a guide to the movies playing locally that you may want to go see (or skip).
Finally: If you want to go see the Bull Durham musical, it’s the last weekend to do so! I went last weekend and loved it—catchy, playful music and very fun to see the storytelling choices the directors made.
out and about in the triangle
A few things: A downtown Raleigh dessert shop is opening a second location. Hotly anticipated Chapel Hill restaurant Próximo officially opens tomorrow. Looking back on IBMA’s years in Raleigh. Happening this weekend: CenterFest in Durham.
out and about in the world
“Junk Food, High Art.” A profile of Ina Garten. Everyone should check out the Daily Tar Heel’s special edition on DEI. Amazing Oxford American feature: “Inside a pre-integration, Black Belt, Black-owned bookstore.”
— Sarah Edwards —
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