Category Archives: Winston-Salem

Rumor Mill: Ask SAM Quits

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Rumor from a very reliable source: Rhonda "Ask SAM" Bumgardner has resigned from the Winston-Salem Journal effective Monday. I'm sure details will follow from the newspaper in six point font at the bottom of page A23 next to the funeral home ad. 

Not exactly surprising news since the paper laid off her husband not too long ago.

Free Pizza Downtown in One Hour! Oh, and BTW the Oral History Project is Coming to Winston-Salem

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WFDD is holding a press conference in about an hour to officially kick off the first day of the StoryCorps oral history project that will be in residence here in Winston-Salem until March 21st. If that doesn't excite you this might: Mellow Mushroom's providing free pizza at the kickoff.  From the press release:

88.5 WFDD, the National Public Radio affiliate licensed to Wake Forest University, will hold a press conference this Thursday, February 26th, at 11:30am, at Winston Square Park. The press conference will officially kick off opening day of the StoryCorps national oral history project, in residence in Winston-Salem until March 21st, 2009. While in Winston-Salem, StoryCorps will be collecting the stories of everyday residents of the Piedmont Triad and surrounding region. These stories will be archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, and some may be selected for broadcast on WFDD, as well as National Public Radio.

At 11:30am, Mayor Allen Joines will read a proclamation officially renaming North Marshall Street between Second and Fourth Streets "Honorary StoryCorps Boulevard" for the duration of StoryCorps's visit. Remarks from WFDD General Manager Denise Franklin and StoryCorps Site Supervisor Sara Esrick will follow. The first two interview pairs of the day will be present. H'tuyet Rahlan, a member of Greensboro's Montagnard community will be interviewed by her sponsor; and James Ballew, a well-known area piano tuner, will be interview by a long-time friend. The Mellow Mushroom will provide pizza for attendees.

StoryCorps's Airstream trailer, now a sound-proof recording booth, arrived in Winston-Salem last night. Parked in Winston Square Park, near Winston-Salem's iconic Sawtooth Building, it makes for a striking visual. 88.5 WFDD is proud to partner with StoryCorps to bring the mobile recording booth to the community. It is an honor for our area to be selected as a stop on the national tour.


Town & Country Memories

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Last night I was invited to a friends house to watch the Wake-Duke game and as I approached his neighborhood I realized it was just across Ransom Road from my grandparent's home in Town & Country.  I don't get over to that part of town much, but whenever I do it always brings back some great memories of coming down from D.C. to spend summer weeks with my grandparents back in the 70s and early 80s.

For those of you unfamiliar with Town & Country it's a small subdivision off of Reynolda Road that's comprised of 50's era houses built on rolling hills and situated around a couple of ponds.  Granny and Grandpa's house was on Loch Drive and their back yard was a steep hill that ran down to one of the ponds.  The hill was terraced, but in such a way that it looked like a series of ripples running down the hill so if you started from the top and ran down like an idiot you were almost guaranteed to spend the last half of the trip plummeting down head over kiester until you slid to a stop at the bottom.  What 10 year old boy wouldn't love that?

One year my uncle climbed one of the tallest trees in the back yard, tied a rope to a limb near the top and created what had to be the best rope swing in the city. The tree was situated about a third of the way down the hill so if you grabbed the rope and walked up the hill all you had to do was lift your feet and you were off like a shot. The only problem with the swing was that it didn't go over the pond so there was nothing to leap off of the swing and land in without breaking your neck.  Not to be denied my brother and I would aim ourselves at a stand of trees towards the bottom of the hill and if we managed to hit one we'd grab it in a bear hug, let the swing go and then slide to the ground.  We gave Granny fits, but I think Grandpa thought it was pretty cool.

The summer that I was thirteen years old I took one of my grandpa's bamboo-and-string fishing poles down to the pond to see if I could catch anything.  In earlier years I'd managed to catch a bunch of little "sun" fish (our term) that could have only weighed a couple of ounces each, and bless her heart Granny would cook them up if I asked her to, but this year was destined to be my year.  I hadn't had the line in the water more than five seconds before this monster hit on my line and about broke that bamboo pole in half.  I grabbed the string and yanked as hard as I could and a nine pound catfish flew past my head and smacked into the hill behind me.  I sat there for a second looking at the thing and started trying to figure out how I was going to unhook it.  All I knew about catfish was that they had some kind of stinger thing and I would be damned if I was going to touch that fish before I figured out where it was.  Then I remembered that Grandpa was home so I ran up the hill dragging that catfish along behind me the whole way.  My Grandpa heard me yelling and came out to meet me.  As soon as I saw him I said, "Grandpa I caught a big ole catfish, but I don't wanna touch it or it'll sting me!"  My Grandpa took one look at that fish, covered in grass clippings and conspicuously not gasping, and after he was done laughing said, "Son, that fish is as dead as it's gonna get.  Lemme show you how to unhook one of these things now that we know it can't thrash around."  With that he grabbed the fish, then grabbed my hand and put it on the appropriate part of the fish and showed my how to best unhook it.  I haven't caught another catfish since, but I still remember him showing me how to unhook it so I figure I'll be okay the next time I do.

I asked my Granny if she'd cook the catfish and for once she declined. She said that catfish were "garbage fish" and she wasn't going to mess up her skillet with it.  She did offer, however, to freeze it so that I could take it back to D.C. with me the next week.  I really wish I'd taken a picture of the look on my Mom's face when she saw that thing.

Dying Anonymously

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Yesterday I received a text message from one of my kids that said a girl from her freshman class had died the night before.  She didn't provide details so I replied and asked if she knew the girl.  She replied in the affirmative.  I then asked if they'd been told what had happened and she texted back that they hadn't.  All she knew was that during morning announcements the principal had said that this girl had died the night before.  She also said that one of her teachers had read an email from the principal that had provided a little more detail.  My last question was to ask if the school had provided any counselors for kids to talk to if they needed it and she said that she hadn't heard of any.  My son who also goes to school there said he assumed they had because they usually do, but he hadn't heard of anyone going to see a counselor or an announcement that counselors were available.

Later in the day I went to get my hair cut and while there the barbers told me that the girl had lived right across the street from their shop and that she'd had a tough life.  She didn't know her father and her mother had moved north without her or her brother and left them to live with the girl's grandparents.  Her great-grandparents lived next door and apparently they were all pretty close.  A while back both great-grandparents passed away on the same night and not long after that her grandfather died.  Her mother moved back home for a year but then left again to return north, again without her and her brother.  Despite all that they said she seemed to be a really happy kid, always with a smile on her face. 

All of this has been running through my head over the last 24 hours.  What's troubling to me is that when we lose one of our students under tragic circumstances like a freak accident on the football field or a car full of students killed by a drunk driver, we tend to pay a lot of attention and go to a lot of effort to honor those students' memories. That's as it should be. On the other hand when a student dies in quiet solitude we don't seem to react the same way.  If we speak of the child at all we do so in hushed whispers.  We don't come together as a community to celebrate that person's life or to acknowledge the impact of their loss on our community.  I think that's a shame and I think it robs our children of the opportunity to deal with the impact of losing one of their peers.  

Sadly a young member of our community died two days ago and very few of us know what we've lost.

Furloughs at Journal Now Official

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Media General, parent company of the Winston-Salem Journal, announced today that they're requiring their employees to take ten days of unpaid leave.  Employees have to take four days by the end of March and three days each in the two subsequent fiscal quarters. I guess if you look at the glass as half full at least these folks are keeping their jobs.  For now.

Any suggestions for what these folks should do with their involuntary, unpaid "vacation"?  BTW, I've used quotes around the word vacation ever since my wife returned to work from maternity leave and received a heap of abuse from her boss who said she should be well rested from her "vacation".  In all seriousness I have some friends that work at the Journal and this stinks for them, but I am glad to know that they still have their jobs. 

Today’s Retail Rundown

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Two completely unrelated events from yesterday have me thinking a lot about local retail experiences this morning.

  1. Esbee's had it with OfficeMax.  She wrote a post yesterday about how on multiple occassions she's taken clearance items to the register only to be told that she can't buy them because they'd already been sold back to the vendor.  She reasonably asks why the items are still on the floor.  She also relates an unsatisfying experience with the manager there.  Me thinks the folks at OfficeMax have a wee issue with their systems and management that they might want to clean up, and if the comments on Esbee's post are any indication I'd say that lots of folks here in Winston-Salem share the sentiment.  I wonder if the manager is getting a call from corporate asking him why his dissed a woman who has about a bazillion readers?
  2. Celeste was in Costco yesterday and paid cash for our items.  The cashier didn't have change in his till so he called the manager to get some.  The manager came by the register and said that he was sorry but he didn't have any cash for change because the bank had not made its daily cash delivery for the third day in a row and he also wasn't able to get any from the nearby Home Depot or Lowes.  I'm not sure which bank Costco uses, but I find it a little disturbing that the bank is letting down what has to be one of its more prominent customers.  It causes me to wonder if there's a problem with deposits at the bank or if it's just poor management. Or is there a problem with Costco's credit?  Normally I wouldn't think much of it, but in this day and age every little signal causes me to wonder if there's something more ominous going on behind the scenes.  Oh, and in case you're curious Celeste was able to get her change when the customer behind her also paid cash and gave the cashier enough small bills to make change.

Another Reason to Set Up Online Tracking for Your Name

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In today's connected world one thing all of us should do is track our identities online.  You might think, "Well, I don't blog, or use Facebook or any of those other web things so it's really not worth my while" but I'll have to disagree with you and I have a real life story to help explain why.

This morning I was checking my Google Alert feeds.  I have several set up for various interests, like "winston-salem arts" or "forsyth county business" and I also have alerts set up for tracking blog searches for similar terms.  This morning I came across a listing for a blog that sent chills down my spine.  Essentially it threatened some people at a local institution with severe physical harm and it did so by naming them specifically and providing their home addresses so I thought it needed to be taken seriously.  I'm not going to go into any more detail than that because I don't want to give the threatened folks any more angst than they have already experienced.  I called security at the institution to give them a heads up and they gave me an email address to send them the URL of the page containing the threats.  I heard back from them about an hour later and they said that the page had been found by someone else last night and that the threatened parties had been alerted.  I can't tell you how relieved that made me feel.

But here's the point.  The people who were threatened could have found the same information if they had an alert set up for their name because their names were used specifically on the threatening page.  Even if the threat ends up being a false alarm they will have known about it even if someone else hadn't warned them.  Of course this only happens if you're threatened by name online, but there are other practical reasons to set up an alert system:
  • Someone might be saying nasty things about you on a message board.
  • Someone with your name might be doing nefarious things, and if they are you want to be aware of it so you can let people know it's not you. 
  • Documents that you might have thought were private somehow end up online.  At least you'll know about it and maybe you can take action to have them taken down.  
  • A friend posts pictures that have you in them and tag them with your name when they upload them. You may not have your friend remove the pictures but if you're uncomfortable with your name being attached to them you can ask them to remove the tags.

I think you get the point.  Anyway, if you want to set up an early warning sytem for yourself it's easy and free to do with Google.  Simply visit the Google Alerts page and follow the easy prompts to set up the alert.  You can set up the alerts to be emailed to you as they happen, which means any time your name appears online you'll get an email, or you can have all the alerts compiled and sent to you once a day or once a week.  Here's a helpful tip: use your full name in quotation marks, like "jane smith", because if you don't you'll get an alert for everyone with your first name and everyone with your last name.  By putting both names in quotes you can cut down significantly on the number of "false positive" alerts you'll get.

One last thing: it's kind of fun finding other people who have the same name as you.  I've found that there's a high school baseball player in Oklahoma with my name (seems he's pretty good too), and there's someone else here in North Carolina with my name.  I'm going to have to track him down some day.

Winston-Salem Might Be Barking Up the Right Tree

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For as long as I've lived here I've been reading about plans for revitalizing Winston-Salem.  The strategy seems to be to revitalize downtown, concentrate on developing a business community focused on what can generally be classified as the "creative and design industries", and to try and attract and retain young, well educated professionals.  Two items I've read over the last couple of days cause me to believe that the government, business and civic officials driving this strategy might be going in the right direction.  Here they are in no particular order:

  • An article in Atlantic Monthly by Richard Florida titled How the Crash Will Reshape America that focuses on the fundamental change wrought by the recession and the areas that will be winners and losers in the process.  To put it simply he writes that the areas that will prosper are those that effectively cultivate an economy based on the creative class, and not heavily dependant on manufacturing.  He also references research showing that cities with a greater population density of creative and professional types leads to more innovation which in turn spurs economic growth.  In the article he talks about mega-cities like New York, but there's no reason that similar formulas can't work for mid-tier cities like Winston-Salem, especially when they are within shouting distance of other hubs of creative and professional classes like RTP and Charlotte.
  • An article about the growth of Winston-Salem's downtown and it's potential to grow even more.  See the bullet point above for why this is important. 

While it might seem like things are moving slowly, what Winston-Salem is doing seems to be pretty smart.  If things continue to develop well then eventually the city will have a core comprised of a few square miles filled with what every city center needs: office space of varying quality and expense, restaurants, retail (need lots of work there), arts and other entertainment venues, apartments and condos.

While it's wholly appropriate to debate the use of public dollars to entice businesses to move here or help finance ballparks, it's also important to keep in mind that we're lucky that city leaders seem to have a fairly coherent strategy for downtown development.  The city leaders aren't perfect, and not everything is working as expected, but I think we're in much better shape than many cities in similar situations because we are primed to take advantage of the direction the economy is heading in America.

Don’t Sell Me a Recession

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So, raise your hand if you aren't aware that we're in the midst of a recession of epic scale.  If you raised your hand then please let me know what cave you've been living in so I can move there with my family.  My point is that we all know there's a recession on and we're not likely to forget any time soon.

I confess to a morbid fascination myself, as is abundantly evidenced by my posts about the economy, real estate, etc.  I've watched with fascination as people started pointing fingers at each other in blame.  "It's the bankers' fault" some say.  Others blame homeowners, the media, the government, the…well, almost everyone.  Basically the recession is the most significant event since at least since 9/11 and it has had arguably a greater impact on our daily lives than any event for a couple of generations.  As much as we'd like to we can't escape it.

All this has me wondering: why is every company out there playing off the recession to sell their services.  Many seem to be using gimicky plays on the 'stimulus plan', as in "Come shop at ACME shoe store and take advantage of our toe stimulus plan!"  Or they come across with messages like "We know times are tough, that your budget's tight, so we're offering deep, deep discounts on…"  My problem with this approach is:
  • I hear enough about the recession on the news, at the water cooler, etc.  I don't need to be reminded of it by every merchant out there.
  • How is it effective marketing to remind me that I'm broke as you try to sell me your discounted wares?  The reality is that if I'm broke and if your product isn't a staple (milk, bread, eggs, Nintendo Wii) then I'm not going to be swayed by your discount.  In effect your discount is going to woo people who have money and still have their jobs so why create a negative association with the recession? 
  • If everyone else is doing it how are you separating yourself from the herd? 

My advice?  Go back to the basics and play up your strengths.  Better quality, better service, customers are treated like family, etc.  Unless you're Wal-Mart the likelihood that you'll win on price is pretty low, and who really wants to be known as the cheapest shop in town?

So merchants of the Piedmont Triad please, please, please do me a favor.  Don't sell me a recession, sell me what you've got.

An Idea for Valentine’s Day Pre-Game in Winston-Salem

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Wine Merchants Gourmet is hosting a tribute to Aussie winemaker Chris Wingland this Saturday February 14, otherwise known as Valentine's Day.  If you're looking for something to do as a warmup for your romantic night out this might be the ticket.  They are offering seven of his wines for a tasting and it runs from 11 am to 5 pm.  Good on ya!

Wine Merchants Gourmet
1901-B Mooney Street
Winston-Salem, NC  27103
(336) 765-8175