Category Archives: Forsyth County

Benefit Second Harvest and Take In a Ballgame. Also, Is Winston Better Than Greensboro?

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The Triad Apartment Association (my employer) is hosting a food drive to benefit Second Harvest and one aspect of it is that we're having a competition between the Winston-Salem Dash and the Greensboro Grasshoppers to see which team/city can raise the most food for one game.  The Dash game is next Monday (July 12) and the Grasshopper game is next Wednesday (July 14).  We have slightly different arrangements for each game but the basics are that we're encouraging folks to bring food or financial donations and then stick around to enjoy the ballgame.  Here are the details:

Winston-Salem Dash, July 12

Bring food or financial donations to our table by the entrance and you'll get a voucher for a free Dash baseball cap.  Your donations will be counted towards the Winston-Salem total.

Greensboro Grasshoppers, July 14

You can bring food and financial donations to our table, and on top of that if you buy your ticket to the game from us $2 of the ticket will go to Second Harvest.  There will also be prize giveaways throughout the evening.  Your donations will be counted towards the Greensboro total.

Last year our Food Drive raised almost 210,000 cans of food and we're determined to beat that this year.  I hope to see many of you on either Monday or Wednesday!

Final note: I'd like to personally thank Mayor Joines, Mayor Knight, WXII, The Dash and The Grasshoppers for partnering with us and Second Harvest to help feed the hungry in the Triad.  Here's the commercial we all collaborated on the promote the event:

Local Pastor vs. NC Legislature

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A local Baptist pastor was invited to offer the NC legislature prayer for a week.  He was told what the approved method of prayer was (in a nutshell, non-sectarian) and that if he didn't adhere to those standards he would be uninvited to pray.  He refused to adhere to those terms, which is his right, and the legislature uninvited him, which is its right.  Now the pastor wants an apology and the opportunity to open a legislative session with a prayer in the manner he sees fit. A quote from the story:

"I was made to feel like a second-class North Carolinian when I was told that my services would no longer be needed if I could not offer the opening prayer in the manner prescribed by the House of Representatives, rather that in the manner my biblical faith requires," Baity said.

I guaran-damn-tee you that he's on the side of the sectarian prayer advocates in the case being fought here in Forsyth County.  To refresh your memory the pro-sectarian prayer folks are saying that they should be able to pray in whatever manner they wish, much like the pastor is arguing here.  The anti-sectarian prayer folks are saying, no, you can't because then the government is put in the position of endorsing a specific religion.  

Here's the irony to me: what the pastor is saying, that he's being made to feel like a second class citizen, is exactly how people who don't want to be forced to hear sectarian prayer at a government meeting feel when a clergyman is invited to give a sectarian prayer to open the meeting.  

Walk a mile…

I’m, Like, Gonna Be Famous

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Esbee asked me to write about my experience test driving the Cheerwine Kreme filled Krispy Kreme so that she could post it on Life in Forsyth.  For my friends from out of town that's about as big-time as it gets around here.  

My thanks to Esbee for treating my treatise with a gentle editing pen.  

$10 for Your Favorite Charity Could Turn Into $10,000

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Mybridges.net has a raffle ending on Wednesday that will net one charity $10,000.  That's cool, but here's what's REALLY cool.  When you buy a $10 raffle you get to choose a charity to dedicate it to, and $5 of it will go to the charity you choose whether it wins the raffle or not.  The winning charity is the one that gets the most "votes" or raffle ticket purchases dedicated to it.

So if you buy a $10 ticket on behalf of Second Harvest Food Bank then you know at least $5 will go to them, and if they win they'll get $10,000.  Since Second Harvest can get 12 cans of food (or seven meals) for every dollar that $5 will equal 60 cans of food or 35 meals.  That's pretty cool.

Visit mybridges.net for details.

Food Fight Between Winston-Salem and Greensboro

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Here's the deal: the organization I work for (Triad Apartment Association) has kicked off its annual food drive for Second Harvest Food Bank of NW NC.  For the past several years we've hosted an event at a Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball game and invited the public to bring cans of food to contribute to Second Harvest.  This year we've stepped it up and are hosting an event at the Winston-Salem Dash game on July 12 and the Greensboro Grasshoppers game on July 14 and we're holding a contest to see which game will raise more food/money for Second Harvest.

As part of our efforts WXII has agreed to partner with us and both Mayor Joines (W-S) and Mayor Knight (GSO) have filmed public service messages that will run on WXII as part of our efforts.  Obviously we're most thankful to the mayors, the Dash, the Grasshopper and WXII for working with us on this effort.

If you'd like to participate you can do so in several ways:

  • Attend one of the games and bring food or financial donations ($1 = 12 cans of food)
  • Drop off cans of food at one of our participating apartment communities (see the map below, or the list on the TAA website).
  • If you'd like to mail in a donation you can send it to TAA at 3407 West Wendover Ave., Suite E, Greensboro NC 27407. Checks should be made out to Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC
  • An added bonus: if you want to donate a couple of bucks just write "Shave Jon's Head" in the memo field of any check, or on a cover note with the donation, and if we get $1,000 with that note then I'll have my head shaved.

I hope to see you all at one of the ballgames!

Winston-Salem/Kernersville Drop Off Locations

View 2010 TAA Food Drive W-S Drop Off Locations in a larger map

Greensboro/High Point Drop Off Locations

Think You Volunteer a Lot of Your Time?

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Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center has benefited from the services of a world record setting volunteer.  According to this article a fellow named Don Moss has volunteered over 47,000 hours of his time to WFUBMC since 1982 and has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for his efforts.

If WFUBMC had paid Mr. Moss $5 an hour then it would have cost them $235,000.  I picked $5/hour because it's a nice round number that makes it easy to do the math and kind of the middle range of the minimum wage from 1982 until now.

I Guess Drinks Are On Dr. Hutton

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MyBridges.net is a local social networking thingamajig that gave away $1,000 to a lucky member to be shared with a charity of his or her choosing.  When I saw who the lucky winner was I was kind of gob-smacked: it was Dr. Ron Hutton with whom I served on the Lewisville Zoning Board of Adjustment for several years.  I don't think I've seen him since I left the ZBOA, but I might have to look him up to see how he's spending his lucre! 

Whitaker Park and Wake Forest

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My parents both worked for RJR while they were students at Wake Forest.  When I saw the news that Reynolds is closing down its Whitaker Park operation I emailed both of them to see if they'd heard the news (they hadn't) and to see if they'd actually worked at that particular facility.  Ends up that they had.  Mom told me that the first summer they worked for RJR they were downtown, but the second summer they were at Whitaker. Dad said he remembered working at the "state of the art" facility as well.  Mom mentioned that it was divided into six units, four for Salems and two for Camels, and that she worked in Unit 1 and Dad worked in Unit 3. Dad thought the shift ran from 4 p.m. to midnight.  

Dad also wrote, "Wake could use it for some type of recreation facility. Because of its location you would think that would be prime real estate and would make a sizable tax deductable gift, that is if they have any profits to shelter." Seems that he and Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce head honcho Gayle Anderson are on the same page.

Doctor vs. Big Pharma and Government: Burzynski at a/perture

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Cancer is insidious and I'd venture a guess that almost every person in America has been touched by the disease.  Whether it's a family member, a co-worker or a friend we know someone who has had cancer and we've seen first hand how it decimates them and their loved ones.  That's why watching Burzynski, the movie will likely infuriate you.

The movie is a documentary about a doctor and chemist named, you guessed it, Burzynski who discovered a revolutionary treatment for cancer more than 30 years ago. Thanks to battles with myriad government and private entities his treatment has had difficulty getting approved for advanced clinical trials, and has only been available to a limited number of patients as a result.  That's all I'm going to say about the actual content of the movie for fear of spoiling it, but I will say that while I found the movie to be obviously slanted towards supporting Dr. Burzynski, it also provides compelling and objective evidence in support of its stance.  I also found it refreshingly absent of the kind of stunts that Michael Moore has made popular with his movies, and instead relies on public documents, interviews and public hearings to make its case.

All that's not to say that the movie is boring or slow.  To the contrary the pacing seems just right, there's very little redundancy in the evidence presented and yet it still seems thorough.  As a result Burzynski is compelling, the story infuriating and it's a movie I highly recommend seeing.

Burzynski, the movie is appearing this weekend (May 29-30) through next week at a/perture cinema (across from Mellow Mushroom on Fourth Street in downtown Winston-Salem) was written, directed and produced by Eric Merola. You can find show times on a/perture's website.

Another Reason to Stay Out of Politics

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There are a gazillion reasons to stay out of politics, but one that never occurred to me until I read this post at YES! Weekly is that when you're stumping you'll likely have to deal with people in various stages of undress.  It's bad enough dealing with this at the pool, where you're at least expecting it, but I don't think I could handle it as part of what's the equivalent of a job interview. Ick.