Category Archives: Winston-Salem

Face of Poverty in the Piedmont Triad

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This article in the Greensboro News & Record has a lot of disheartening statistics:

In the past 10 years, the state (North Carolina) has gone from the 26th-highest poverty rate in the country to the 11th. One in 4 children are living in poverty.

At the same time, 1 in 5 people in the city of Greensboro live in poverty — that’s considered to be having an annual income of less than $24,000 for a family of four…

Of the Second Harvest Food Bank’s 400 partner networks, 90 are in the greater Greensboro area, including the Greensboro Urban Ministry. Second Harvest is one of a handful of regional food banks in the state.

In 2009, the group distributed 7.9 million pounds of food. This past year, the group distributed 25 million pounds of food.

You might be tired of reading about the food drive to benefit Second Harvest at my day job, but when given the state of affairs around here it would be immoral not to remind everyone that there is a readily available way to help.

Remembering Tanglewood

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I’d heard that our little public golf course in western Forsyth County had once hosted a major tournament, but until reading Ed Hardin’s column I didn’t know anything about the 1974 PGA. It’s an interesting read:

Tanglewood comes to life at this time of year, a reminder of golf’s fleeting seasons and cyclical nature. The 1974 PGA Championship played here 40 years ago this week was one of the best tournaments in golf history.

And almost no one knows it.

That’s probably in part because it was a PGA, the least of the four majors in stature and style, a tournament seemingly locked in the ’70s with a great little storyline that gets lost in the strangest of ways…

Yet somehow, the 1974 PGA produced a classic finish. It’s doubtful that you have any idea how good a tournament it was. Almost no one does.

Lee Trevino won by one shot over Jack Nicklaus. Sam Snead, at age 62, finished third. Let that sink in for a second.

Trevino, using a putter found in the attic of a home he was renting that week, held off Nicklaus, who had hired a local heating and air conditioning salesman to be his caddie. Snead, 10 years after becoming the oldest player to win a tour event at the 1965 Greater Greensboro Open at Sedgefield, shot a 68 on Sunday to finish in a four-way tie for third, one stroke ahead of Player.

Here’s the kicker: you can play that same course today for as little as $29 a round. Since I’m not a golfer I don’t take advantage of it, but every time I drive by on my way to the tennis courts (Tanglewood has a very nice public tennis facility) I think about how envious my golfing buddies back in DC would be if they knew I lived 10 minutes from a course that good…and inexpensive.

Dealing With Surprising Social Media Fame

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Update 8/2/14 – NPR has a story about this and in it mention that they are checking with the Justice Department to see if the restaurant’s policy is a violation of the prohibition against public businesses like restaurant’s discrimating based on religion. It would seem not since the discount is supposedly at the discretion of each server, but then again stuff like this is often not obvious or all that logical. I wouldn’t blame the restaurant for discontinuing the policy just to play it safe.

Mary’s Gourmet Diner on Trade Street in Winston-Salem just found out what it’s like to have something go viral. From a story on HLNTV:

The tab belonged to Jordan Smith, who had traveled to Winston-Salem for a business trip and stopped for breakfast at Mary’s with two colleagues Wednesday morning.

She tells HLN the group “prayed over our meal and the waitress came over at the end of the meal and said, ‘Just so you know, we gave you a 15% discount for praying,’ which I’d never seen before.”

Impressed, Smith shared a photo of the receipt on her Facebook page. A mutual friend then posted the pic on the page of Orlando Christian radio station Z88.3 and it’s taken off from there, being shared more than 1,700 times as of Thursday afternoon.

Well, apparently things heated up on Facebook thanks to all the attention, causing Mary to post the following on her business’ Facebook page:

MarysFB

Here’s the text in case that’s hard to read:

There’s a lot of craziness going on in regard to the 15% discount. I will not respond to all the posts. I will say that it is not a “policy”, it’s a gift we give at random to customers who take a moment before their meal. This could be prayer or just a moment to breathe & push the busyness of the world away. Who you talk to or meditate on etc. is your business. I have lived in a 3rd world country, there are people starving. We live in a country with an abundance of beautiful food. I NEVER take that for granted. It warms my heart to see people with an attitude of gratitude. Prayer, meditation or just breathing while being grateful opens the heart chakra. It’s good for everyone!!!! Thanks to my local community for your support…you know who I am. As for all the people posting negative comments about me & my restaurant who have never met me or been to the restaurant, thanks for sharing, it’s your right to speak out, just as it is mine. Peace, love & happy eating!!!!

It’s a sign of our times that doing almost anything positive can be turned into a negative. Sheesh.

We were talking about this at work and we all had the same thought before Mary posted on Facebook: if we know they’re giving 15% off just for praying we’d bow our heads in a heartbeat. Of course that kind of defeats the purpose, but I wonder how many people around Winston were thinking the same thing?

Why We Help Second Harvest

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At the day job we’ve been running annual food drives for Second Harvest Food Bank of NWNC for ten years. Every year we try to do better than the last and so I find myself doing what appear to be silly or crazy things to gin up publicity and interest for our efforts – things like wearing a pink tutu while jumping into a pool with the word EPIC painted on my back. You may wonder why someone would do something that odd, but when you read about some of the programs that Second Harvest supports it becomes clear that a little embarrassment is the least we can do for an organization that fills a vital role for our community. Scott Sexton’s column in today’s Winston-Salem Journal brings us the story of one of those programs:

In six short months, the H.O.P.E. truck has become a staple in neighborhoods where fresh food is often a rumor.

It is part of a larger project dreamed up by Tennille and his wife, Marty, a retired couple with hearts as big as their imaginations. When they learned that children in Winston-Salem are more likely to go hungry than kids in Detroit or Chicago, they were horrified.

But instead of wringing their hands, stamping their feet in protest or simply writing a check, they decided to do something about it…

Since it started rolling in January, H.O.P.E. of Winston-Salem has mushroomed into something of which the entire community should be proud.

The Tennilles pick up items from the Second Harvest Food Bank and 50-pound bags of fresh food donated by the Vernon Produce Co. during the week.

A small group of volunteers meets every Saturday in a retreat center at the Children’s Home, where they set up an assembly line to make healthy bag lunches for kids and to box up fresh produce for adults who come with them. Groups from a variety of churches assemble lunches at their buildings, too, and pack them into giant coolers so a volunteer can pick them up later.

Around noon on Sundays, more volunteers start to trickle in at The Children’s Home to load the truck and a similarly painted minivan. The entire operation runs like Swiss trains; it stops at the same places every Sunday at the same time. By the time it finishes, more than 700 children get to eat and a few dozen food boxes are distributed.

By the way if you want to help us support Second Harvest you can do so by making a donation at helpsecondharvest.com. Also, if you want to see me embarrass myself yet again you can drive by the Robinhood Court Apartments and Villas this Thursday (July 10) from 4-5 p.m. where I’ll be part of “Two Guys Wearing Prom Dresses” to raise funds for Second Harvest. You guessed it: I’ll be wearing a dress. Here’s a handy map for you find us:

We Are Sooooo Uber Worthy

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Last week I was in Denver on business and needed to get a ride to the convention center from an area that didn’t have a cab within miles. One of the people I was with arranged a ride with Uber after I revealed that I didn’t have the app on my phone because we didn’t have the service where I lived (Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina). For the first time in a long while I felt like a backwoods Luddite.

Guess what? Uber’s coming to the Triad starting today:

The California-based company is expanding to Greensboro, Winston-Sale, Durham, Chapel Hill, Fayetteville and Wilmington, according to the newspaper. The company connects riders and drivers and has mostly been available in larger cities. It is already in use in Charlotte and Raleigh.

The mobile app is linked to a credit card and replaces hailing a cab or arranging for a car service. Customers download the app and the nearest available driver picks them up. A base fee of $2.43 is charged, and the customer is charged $1.46 per mile and 30 cents per minute. Uber gets a 20 percent cut and the driver keeps the remainder.

Back and Better Than Ever

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Lucy’s been writing the last couple of years, just not on her (in?)famous blog, Life in Forsyth. Now she’s back and better than ever:

You see a boy riding a bicycle.

I see four years of finding parking at CompRehab. I see a special chair in the lunchroom because he collapsed on little, round stools. I see a child laying on his belly over a giant ball and being gently rolled to learn balance. I see therapeutic pencil grips and modified desks. I see the little room where casts were made of his feet. I see IEPs and testing modifications. I see stair exercises with someone behind him for safety. I see adaptive technology.

I see strength and ferocity and determination.

I see a boy at long last riding a bicycle.

Hopefully she’ll forgive me for sharing an entire post.

Tennis Mecca in the Making in Greensboro?

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Could Greensboro’s Spencer Love Tennis Center become the region’s tennis mecca? From the Triad Business Journal:

The city has committed $175,000 to the project, with the management company that oversees all of Greensboro’s staffed tennis centers contributing another $175,000.

That would allow the center to add five or six courts. But if private fundraising is successful, the expansion could add as many as 18 courts.

Doing so would create one of the biggest clay-court centers in the South and make the center a destination for national and sectional tennis tournaments.

As for Winston-Salem, it’s great to have the Wake Forest tennis complex, but what should be our signature courts at Hanes Park could use some serious, well, love. Those things are a hot mess right now and someone should do something about them. Winston-Salem is hosting a bunch of USTA state tournaments this weekend and the out-of-towners who play at Hanes are going to wonder why we our primary downtown courts are a sandbox.

Pedaling Winston-Salem

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Those of us who live in Lewisville, NC are very aware that the Winston-Salem area is a hotbed for road cyclists. Once the weather gets warm we start to see cyclists by the dozen park in downtown Lewisville so they can take off for what I hear are several very good routes for them to ride. So it's no surprise to us that Winston-Salem would be selected as the home for the US Olympic cycling training center. From the Triad Business Journal:

A vacant 42,000-square-foot building at 505 N. Liberty St. in downtown Winston-Salem will house the new U.S. Olympic cycling training center.

The city itself has been home for the last two years to the Winston-Salem Cycling Classic, a road cycling race that attracts national attention and draws racers and fans by the thousands.

“The Southeast has become the hottest, most rapid growth of cycling in the country, and the reason North Carolina leads all that is our geography,” said Dr. Rick Rauckof Carolinas Pain Institute in Winston-Salem and chairman of the Winston-Salem Cycling Classic committee. “Why Winston wins over Charlotte and Raleigh is we have Pilot Mountain, Hanging Rock, the mountains that these cyclists have to ride to compete are very close to us.”

I'd say this is one more step in what has become a nice renaissance for Winston-Salem and its surrounding communities. 

Winston-Salem’s Innovation Quarter Highlighted in Wall Street Journal Piece

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In today’s (4/16/14) Wall Street Journal, Winston-Salem’s very own Wake Forest Innovation Quarter plays a starring role in the paper’s Deal of the Week segment about the role of historic preservation tax credits in redeveloping mills and factories in North Carolina:

The old plants are worth preserving because they represent North Carolina’s “industrialization at the turn of the 20th century,” said Myrick Howard, president of Preservation North Carolina. “The textile and tobacco industries provided the capital for the rise of our modern banking and energy industries.”

A big user of the tax-credit program is Wexford Science & Technology, a unit of San Diego-based BioMed Realty Trust Inc., BMR +0.66% which has renovated three former R.J. Reynolds tobacco factories in Winston-Salem. The old tobacco factories are part of the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter biomedical-science and information-technology hub, where researchers are working on treatments for smoking-related ailments.

This redevelopment is leading to new apartment communities being developed as well, including one of PTAA’s newest members, Plant 64.

Wake Forest Innovation Quarter in Winston-Salem

*Please note that this is a cross post of a piece I wrote for the blog at work.

Winston-Salem Doc’s Orgasmatron Can’t Get Lift Off

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Following is the true story of a Winston-Salem doctor who has discovered a way to give women an orgasm with the push of a button, but can't get his device to market because of a surprising lack of volunteers and funding:

The doctor who discovered in 2001 that a pain-relief implant could also trigger orgasms is still struggling to raise interest in studying it further.

Stuart Meloy, a surgeon at Piedmont Anesthesia and Pain Consultants in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was investigating how the device could be used to treat woman who have difficulty achieving orgasm, but we reported in 2003 that volunteers for early tests were proving hard to find.

As of 2014, the massive media interest in the device has not translated into the $6 million that Meloy estimates would be needed to run a full trial…

Meloy stumbled on the idea while performing a routine pain-relief operation. "We implant electrodes into the spine and use electrical pulses to modify the pain signals passing along the nerves," he told New Scientist in 2001. The patient remains conscious during the operation to help the surgeon find the best position for the electrodes. Meloy's breakthrough came one day when he failed to hit the right spot. "I was placing the electrodes and suddenly the woman started exclaiming emphatically," he says. "I asked her what was up and she said, `You're going to have to teach my husband to do that'."

This is an obvious candidate for a Kickstarter campaign.