It's not quite singing the blues, but the St. Joseph's Historic Foundation needs $50,000 by Sept. 3 to help stage its annual Bull Durham Blues Festival.

Bull's Eye couldn't reach anyone at the Foundation's Hayti Heritage Center for comment, but the Center has announced it started a Kickstarter campaign to raise money. As of noon, five contributors had pledged a total of $175.

According to a statement on the festival's Kickstarter web site (http://kck.st/OyGW4n), "with a strained economy (it) is no easy feat" to pay for a festival costing $250,000 or more.

The Hayti Center is further fiscally challenged by having to pay back almost $190,000 in misappropriated grant money from the Golden Leaf Foundation.

St. Joseph's, which operates the Hayti Center at the former St. Joseph's A.M.E. Church on Fayetteville Street, receives an annual grant from the city, along with the Carolina Theatre, Durham Arts Council and Lyon Park Community Center. For 2012-13, the subsidy is $292,000.

The 2012 Blues Festival is scheduled Sept. 7-8 at Durham Athletic Park. Headliners are Marcia Ball on Friday and the Bobby Blue Bland on Saturday.

The Hayti Center and its St. Joseph's Historic Foundation have staged the Bull Durham Blues Festival each fall since 1988.

Biff Henderson, left, Durham native and stage manager for "The Late Show With David Letterman," is headlining a Hayti Heritage Celebrity Golf Tournament April 24 at Falls Village Golf Club.

Jazz player Branford Marsalis, a Durham resident, joins Henderson in the celebrity field along with NCCU football coach Mose Rison, Duke football coach David Cutcliffe, Mayor Bill Bell and other Durham-area personalities.

The event is a benefit for the St. Joseph's Historic Foundation and Hayti Heritage Center.

See www.hayti.org.

A walk around the world will pass through Durham on Wednesday.

The walk, called the Trail of Dreams World Peace Walk-a-Long, involves a group of women who have spent the last three and a half years walking across six continents and through 17 countries on a mission to promote peace and understanding among people of all nations, cultures, and religions.

In Durham, the walk will include a march from City Hall to the Hayti Heritage Center, 804 Old Fayetteville St. at 3 p.m., a chance to meet the walkers and hear their stories at 5 p.m., and an interfaith service at 7 p.m

Hearing about the mission in October led Goddess Deborah Webb of Durham to agree to help get out the word about the Durham stop.

"It is an honorable thing they are doing," Webb said. "I was in awe that someone would do this to raise awareness. It just resonated in my spirit to help them out."

The women are on the last part of their walk and plan to continue on to their home base, the Spirit of Truth Foundation in Atlanta, by April.

For more information, visit the group's Web site at http://www.trailofdreamsworldpeacewalk.com

If you're one of 120,000 registered voters in Durham, a new mailer will soon be hitting your mailbox boasting a pro-foods tax slogan: "A Taste for Durham's Future."

Nearly 40 Durham cheerleaders, movers and shakers have come together and formed a non-profit to promote a 1-percent prepared foods tax. The tax could be implemented if voters approve in Nov. 4 referendum.

If implemented, the tax is expected to generate as much as $5 million a year to pay for new and improved cultural attractions, including the Hayti Heritage Center, a Minor League Baseball museum and the American Tobacco Trail.