Just got a nice email from Kelly Bennett, Planner with the City-County Planning Board, about the work they're going to do to update the Legacy Plan. Info can be found here, but I thought you'd like the video they've come up with to promote their work. Fun note, at least for me: the last scene of the video was shot by the rooftop pool at the Nissen Building which is where I got my head shaved last summer for my office's food drive for Second Harvest.
I've lived in the Winston-Salem area for almost seven years and every one of those years I've vowed to go to at least one showing at the RiverRun Film Festival and every year I've managed to not do it. Well, this is the year I'm going to do it and after scanning some of the films on the slate this year I'm hoping to go on several occassions.
Dr. Anthony Atala of Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine recently spoke at TED. Here's his speech (thanks to Jason Thiel for posting this at the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership blog):
A front page article of the Wall Street Journal features a Winston-Salem boxer Jonathan Haggler fighting for the World Boxing Council's Baltic heavyweight title, which covers Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and the eastern half of Scandinavia. The fight's in New Jersey. It's boxing so whaddayagonnadoaboutit?
Meanwhile, if Mr. Haggler is successful this weekend, Winston-Salem will boast one of the Baltic region's top heavyweights.
In 26 professional bouts stretching back to 2000, Mr. Haggler has fought only a handful of times outside North Carolina, once at a Radisson hotel in Morgantown, W. Va., another time in a nightclub in Nashville.
He says the opportunity to fight in New Zealand three years ago was his way to fast-track a career. In addition to the pay, he was told the WBO Oriental heavyweight title would vault him into the top 15 of the WBO rankings, and presumably more lucrative paydays…
It wasn't until Mr. Haggler saw the banner for the fight, announcing "WBC Baltic Heavyweight Championship," that he realized he'd be fighting for a foreign title. "That just made it that much more important for me," said Mr. Haggler.
The North Carolina heavyweight, who works with at-risk youth and their families, admits he doesn't know anything about the region other than a few facts about the Baltic Sea that were in a recent email. He admits, too, that fighters like himself are seen as stepping stones. Still, he thinks he can win the fight if he can pace himself.
If he does prevail, he'd like to fight another Pole—two-time world champ Tomasz Adamek, though a trip to the Baltics is unlikely. "I'd be the people's champ from a distance," he said.
Winston-Salem is not a large city. Even so it is like every other city in the world, welcoming any number of people who are looking for someplace new or who are simply passing through. Through the wonders of Google I stumbled upon the story of one such person:
Their eyes met and she smiled as she passed Martin Tucker at an intersection in downtown Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The photographer and documentary filmmaker had been downtown setting up a photo exhibit at a local gallery.
"I don't know what it was about her," he said. "She looked dynamic in some way. She looked like she had a story."
Tucker chased down Patulla, who couldn't catch the northbound train until the next day> He wanted to meet up the next day, bring his cameras and audio recorder.
"Well," she replied, "I'm a hobo."
The next day, the two met and talked about religion, politics and relationships. No topic was off limits and she spoke openly, almost too openly, Tucker thought.
In the early evening, Tucker could tell she was antsy to catch her train. She signed a photo release form and was gone, leaving behind only an e-mail address. In hindsight, Tucker wished he had gone with her to the tracks, but he thought he had a complete story…
Tucker produced a 22-minute documentary, "Patty: This is My Normal," based off their afternoon together. The show premiered at a November film festival and will show at another in April.
Tucker read about her death a month later in a Texas newspaper.
He thought he'd told her life's story, but realized then had hadn't.
"I have more questions than I have answers at this point," Tucker said in a recent telephone interview. "This vibrant, 29-year-old woman who seemed like she had everything to live for but decided to check out, was quite a shock. I was crushed. I felt like I had lost a friend."
On any given day you can sit in a car idling at a stoplight on Jonestown Road, Five Corners, Stratford Road or any number of other intersections in Winston-Salem and see them. They are people who sleep outside, who may be passing through or have settled here for whatever reason, and their stories are likely as tragic as Patulla Williams'. We can only pray that theirs don't end as tragically.
You may not know it, but Winston-Salem is home to a food star. Rebecca Subbiah is a Brit living in our fair town and she has a great food blog called Chow and Chatter. She's also a wiz at Twitter and Facebook and she's been generous enough to share her Facebook wisdom by making a how-to video. I think her target audience is other foodies, but her advice pertains really to anyone trying to use Facebook for their business. Oh, and she's my new hero for using her Twitter feed to share a link to this story about beer being good for heart health. Gotta love when a vice is magically transformed into a virtue.
So I decided to try and motivate myself to lose a few pounds by signing up for the The Biggest Loser's Pound for Pound Challenge. The Challenge pushes you to lose weight while also helping your local food bank, which in our case is Second Harvest Food Bank. So I input all my info on the registration page of the website and found that it wouldn't accept my registration, not because I forgot to fill something out but because it seems to think that something about Winston-Salem is profane. Check out this screenshot (click on it to enlarge):
See how they politely ask for "No Profanity in Team City please"? Go figure.
So my team is now officially located in Lewisville. If you'd like to join and pledge to lose some weight while benefiting Second Harvest just go to www.pfpchallenge.com and sign up. You can do it individually or as a team; if you'd like to join my team the name is Lewisville Designated Losers. Let me know if you run into problems by leaving me a comment on this post and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
If you're of any maturity at all (i.e. old), have a busy life, lots of responsibility, and generally have to make time for yourself and your significant other, then you've probably daydreamed of dropping it all and driving off into the sunset. I know I've had that daydream many times, so when a fellow I've had the pleasure to meet over a cup of coffee did just that with his wife I looked on with just a wee bit of envy. Thankfully he took lots of folks along for the ride by blogging about it, so if you want to see what it's like to live the dream then you should check out Traveling With Bum.
Last February anyone who reads this blog probably got a little tired of me constantly writing about the Labor of Love project the Triad Apartment Association (the organization that pays me to work for them for some reason) took on at The Children's Home. Well, we had no idea that Fox 8 was going to do a story about how The Children's Home is using the building but it sure made our weekend when it aired.
BTW, you'll note in the story that they're looking to renovate another floor so they can house more kids. We actually fixed up every floor in the building, but my understanding is that there are lots of additional safety measures that have to be in place in order to move kids in. They are looking for $10,000-$15,000 to get that done so if you want to help out you can do so by contacting The Children's Home, or if you want just drop me a note and I'll hook you up with the appropriate people at the Home.
That room that she mentions is her favorite? Well it was my favorite too. Here's a photo gallery of all the work that was done to get it to its current state:
If my parents, proud alums of Wake Forest University, have any idea what the hell Jersey Shore is then they'll be mortified by this announcement:
Nicole Polizzi, aka "Snooki," will soon make an appearance at Wake Forest University.
Snooki is scheduled to appear at the school's Wait Chapel at 8 p.m. on Friday, January 28, said a spokesperson with the school in a news release.
It's one thing for a nightclub in Greensboro to welcome the latest village idiot who's gained a few minutes of fame in this country, but for a school trying to be mentioned in the same breath as Duke or Rice I think this is a little suspect. Don't believe me? Well hell, you'll just have to watch a part of one episode (it won't take long, believe me) because I can't possibly write a paragraph that adequately describes the depravity of the show.
I know it's the school's Student Union that's invited her to appear, and when I was in school my taste ran towards stupid crap like this too, but I just can't fathom why the school is putting out a news release promoting this whole thing. If I was an administrator I'd be trying to bury this story as deep as I could dig.
Befuddled 