Category Archives: Forsyth County

Merry Christmas! Wanna buy an Ice Cream Shop?

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Merry Christmas!  I wish I could give this to you, but I don't have $99,000 lying around so I'm just going to point you in the right direction.  If you've ever dreamed of owning an ice cream shop you can buy a Cold Stone Creamery in Winston-Salem for a low, low, low $99,000.  If you end up buying it please remember me when I show up with one of my kids' teams in tow.  Discounts and gifts are always welcomed:)

Esbee’s Gift to Winston-Salem

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Esbee's been running a "Shop Local" series over the last few weeks and she's done us all the favor of compiling the local listings into two pages so you can check them out in two easy clicks.  Considering the traffic that Esbee gets to her site I have to believe that her features were a God-send to the local merchants she highlighted.

Actually the title of this post isn't quite accurate since Esbee is a gift to Winston-Salem; the series is just more of that gift.

Reclaiming Futures in Forsyth County (and Elsewhere)

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Reclaiming Futures is a project that tries to help young people in trouble with drugs, alcohol and crime.  They have a blog called Reclaiming Futures Every Day and it's there that I found a post about the site visit that Renate Reichs, the Network Coordinator for Cook County, Illinois made as part of her coaching of the Forsyth County and Crossroads (a collaboration of Iredell, Surry and Yadkin counties) networks.  From the post:

The strengths of both sites were readily apparent. Although
Forsyth County is more urban (think Winston-Salem), and Yadkin, Surry,
and Iredell (“R-dale”–?) are more rural (think Mr. Airy and Andy
Griffith), both sites have committed, experienced, and professional
fellows well versed in cooperative planning and collaboration. There is
also a zeal for the tasks involved in Reclaiming Futures that's very
energizing.
 
This is especially noticeable at the Crossroads site, as there are
three counties working together, meeting on a regular basis, and
assembling and smoothing disparate pieces to fit the Reclaiming Futures Model. Specifically, they have regularly-involved people who are not “Fellows”
to bring a wider pool of experience, commitment, and knowledge to the
table. For its part, Forsyth County has chosen to expand Reclaiming
Futures from its established drug treatment court, championed by its
Judicial and Justice Fellows, thus starting on a firm foundation.
 
All of that is good news. However, one of the challenges that both
sites face — and it is huge — is a lack of treatment resources.
There's great enthusiasm for implementing better screening and
assessment tools (everybody was off and running with their rapid cycle test for screening), but the “Then what?” question looms large:
  • What if the kids funneled through screening and assessment completely overwhelm treatment capacity?
  • How do we grow treatment—good treatment, administered by professionals?
  • Where do the dollars come from?
  • Is Reclaiming Futures capable of pushing treatment expansion, and exactly how does that happen? 

We'd love to hear from sites that have successfully answered these
questions or are grappling with the same problems. Forsyth, Crossroads
(is that “Ire-dale”?), and I await your wisdom.

This sounds like a worthy program and for the sake of our local at-risk youth I hope they are able to solve their treatment conundrum.

Lest You Think all Sheriffs are Old, Fat or Both

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Sheriff will flynt Who's that strapping young fellow pictured to the left?  Why that's Forsyth County's first duly elected sheriff, one Will Flynt who served as sheriff from 1850-1854.  Is it just me or does he look like he's 12 in that picture?  More photos like that can be found at Digital Forsyth. (Picture courtesy of the Forsyth County Public Library Photograph Collection)

Digital Forsyth Group on Flickr

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A little over a year ago I read about the Digital Forsyth group in the paper and was pleased to find some really interesting information on the site.  Today I discovered a Flickr group that Digital Forsyth has started that I hope will expand their portfolio of interesting Winston-Salem and Forsyth County images as local Flickr members contribute their own pics to the project.