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Camila Guzmán, a researcher and licensed therapist based in Winston-Salem, has been wondering for a long time about the mental health resources available for the Spanish-speaking community. EILEEN RODRIGUEZ/WFDD

Finding a mental health provider can be a fairly complicated process. The pandemic has exacerbated the need for many. Yet some people may not have the means or information available to them in their native language to access this information. For this episode of Carolina Curious, we answer this question from listener Camila Guzmán: What does the landscape for mental health aid look like for bilingual Spanish-speaking immigrants in North Carolina?

"I'm an immigrant from Chile. I was born and raised in Chile, but I lived in North Carolina for about 15 years," explains Guzmán.

Guzmán is not a disinterested party regarding the issue. She’s a licensed therapist based in Winston-Salem who works closely with the Latino community. In the field, she often sees a lack of bilingual providers for the rapidly growing community in the state, which she says is worrisome.

"Our community also doesn’t know where to look for them, or they're not accessible to them in way," she says. "Because our community is so isolated, as you probably know, especially here in Winston-Salem, they're very isolated. So it's hard for them sometimes to know where to ask for help."

Various resources for the Latino community show different data on exactly how many Spanish-speaking therapists are in an area. For example, the website Latinx Therapy shows in North Carolina there are 11 therapists who speak Spanish. None of those listed are in Winston-Salem. Guzmán created a list on her own website Salud Mental Health, where she lists 14 Spanish-speaking therapists and mental health resources in the city, some in churches.

In terms of statewide resources, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services has Hope4NC, a 24/7 hotline that can help Spanish speakers who might be experiencing emotional distress. It also partnered with local organizations, and there are general wellness resources in Spanish available as well on its website.

Deputy Secretary and Chief Health Equity Officer for North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human and Services Debra Farrington says there’s still a lot to be done, especially for young people.

"In the cases of the Latino community, we have a number of organizations who provide these community health workers who are responsible for connecting people to medical care and to social support," Farrington explains. "88% of Latino youth have unmet mental health needs. And that compares to 76% of white youth and 77% of Black youth. So we're seeing a higher percentage of Latino youth who have unmet mental health needs."

Milton Cepeda is the only bilingual school psychologist in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools system. He says that there’s an overall lack of mental health providers in the state, and this also includes schools. The National Association of School Psychologists recommends one psychologist per every 500 students, but the reality is that many are without that resource.

"I service three schools during the week, and then the other two days I provide district-wide support to other schools," says Cepeda.

Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools does have multiple language team support and they use interpreters to help with assessments when necessary. The most recent data from the state shows that suicide rates among youth in 2020 were the highest they’ve been in a decade, and according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Latinos have shown high rates of anxiety and depression symptoms.

"We don't only have a shortage of bilingual psychologists, we have a shortage of psychologists in general," says Cepeda. "So bilingual psychology is even more rare in this particular field. And there's a difference between someone who is certified as a bilingual psychologist and just someone who is a psychologist that happens to speak Spanish."

In North Carolina, without insurance, a private practice therapy session can cost usually between $150 to $250. There's also the option of doing a sliding scale, which can lower the cost for patients in need to around $50-$75.

El Futuro, a non-profit organization that provides support for the Latino community in Durham, is an example of one group that does provide low-cost therapy for, primarily, the Spanish-speaking population in the state.

El Futuro’s Communications Manager Mary Hondermann says the organization pays for the patient's therapy thanks to monetary help from counties.

"We don’t ask about immigration status to provide services," Hondermann says. "Depending on that person’s county, we go there, check the funds, and we cover the cost of that person’s treatment."

El Futuro might be able to provide lower-cost mental health treatments, yet as Camila Guzmán — our question-asker explains — not every provider is able to lower their costs.

"So that is, you know, a tricky balance because all of our bilingual providers are very passionate about mental health and about talking about these issues," says Guzmán. "But we also have to pay our bills and we have to eat."

But there are various organizations that are working to provide even more resources. Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools has partnered with a firm to recruit school psychologists, El Futuro is now providing group therapy, which helped decrease the number of people on their waitlist. The new suicide lifeline, 988, also has Spanish-speaking operators and resources available on its website.

This story was produced by a partnership between WFDD and La Noticia. You can read this story in Spanish at La Noticia.

Eileen Rodriguez is a reporter for both WFDD and La Noticia through Report for America, where she covers COVID-19's impact in the Latino Communities.

Periodista de La Noticia y 88.5 WFDD, Eileen Rodríguez reporta el impacto de COVID-19 en la comunidad Latina en Carolina del Norte. Rodríguez es miembro del cuerpo de periodistas de Report for America 2021-2022

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immigrant #latinos #mental health #mental health resources

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The letter on this chimney on Carver School Road matches the original homeowner's initial. KERI BROWN/WFDD

For the latest in WFDD's series Carolina Curious, we head to the Carver School Road community in East Winston-Salem. Listener Kayla Forrest moved to the area a couple years ago and something in the neighborhood caught her eye.

“I noticed that when I was walking my dog that there are a number of houses that have letters on them, on the chimneys in particular it seems, so I was just wondering what those letters represent or what they are for,” says Forrest.

WFDD’s Keri Brown takes us back in time to find out.

A tour of the neighborhood On a warm and humid summer morning, Kayla Forrest is excited about showing me around the area. There’s a new community center that recently opened and it’s hard to miss the large bright yellow and blue rock that sits in front of Carver High School.

A home in the Carver School Road community in Winston-Salem. KERI BROWN/WFDD

"I really have enjoyed living in this community, and you know the high school has a rich history to it too," says Forrest. "I’m just interested in learning more about the history of the neighborhood itself."

As we walk along the roadway, Forrest stops to point out the brick masonry on a nearby chimney.

“So see over here there's this house that has an 'H' on the chimney. You can see the 'H' there.”

A few houses down a large "C" adorns another brick chimney, and there’s also one with the letters "H-O-P." The masonry on each house is unique, and all of the letters were on older homes.

Learning more I started researching and making calls to historical societies, the Forsyth County Public Library and the city’s planning department. Unfortunately, no one had a clear answer.

But local historian Heather Fearnbach gave some historical context. She says embellishment on masonry chimneys — decorative patterns, motifs, or letters — was very common during the mid-20th century.

The difficult thing is that most of the masons who would have been working during this time period are no longer living.

After a few phone calls however, I was able to connect with 81-year-old Hugh Smith of Winston-Salem.

A family connection “My family was involved in home construction,” says Smith.

His grandfather was a carpenter and helped build houses in the community in the 1940s and 50s. Smith says at that time, there weren’t a lot of homes in this predominantly Black neighborhood in East Winston.

KERI BROWN/WFDD

Smith thinks the chimney letters stand for the American dream:

“After World War II, a lot of, a number of GIs came home or back to the area and they were able to build homes and in building their homes they wanted to put a mark or a symbol on their home that that was their home," says Smith. "So what they had the brick mason to do was build a place in the brickwork on the chimney — the first initial of their last name.”

A trip back to 1946 To find out more about Smith’s insight, I headed to the hub for public records: the Forsyth County Register of Deeds. That’s where I met Timothy Williams, who manages the real estate and indexing division.

When asked whether he’s ever encountered this question:

“In 27 years, no ma'am, I have not come across the question. This is a first,” says Williams.

We begin with an online search using the address of the home with the "H" on the chimney.

“So, you can see each individual owner. There was a book and page number for each owner for the deed that was recorded for that particular property, which was great, so you can connect all of the previous owners without flaw and without question," says Williams. "It’s just, it's a clear title. You can see it all unfold all right out in front of you.”

Our online search only took us to 1986 and without a letter match. But that was just the beginning. Williams points out the block and lot number for that parcel of land and we head over to the microfilm machine.

We went all the way back to 1946. Harry Truman was president. It was a year of labor strikes, and those born then were the first of the baby-boom generation. And then we find what we are looking for.

“There’s an 'H' on the chimney and in 1946 we did find that Huntley is the owner, was the owner at that particular time," says Williams. "So Huntley purchased the property in 1941, but he purchased it, just the land, in 1941 and then he built the home in 1946."

It’s a match! We kept going and plugged in a different address a few houses down, and…found the same result — the letters represented the original homeowners’ initial.

They prove that history and the stories of our neighborhoods are all around us and can sometimes be found in unexpected places.

Follow WFDD's Keri Brown on Twitter @kerib_news

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carver school road #winston-salem #brick chimney #letters #initials #brick masonry #east winston #homeownership #carolina curious

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PAUL GARBER/WFDD

There are three Union Cross communities in the Triad area, one each in Forsyth, Yadkin and Surry counties. Listener Robert Myers of Kernersville had a question for Carolina Curious about the origins of the one in southeastern Forsyth County:

I have lived near Union Cross for many years, and I always wondered, where did the community get its name? I’ve asked many people in the community, but no one seems to know the answer.

The North Carolina Gazetteer — an index of the state’s geographic features — has a history for the name of only one of those three communities. Yadkin County’s Union Cross was apparently named for a Quaker Friends Meeting back in the 1880s.

So could Forsyth’s name also come from a Friends Meeting place?

Not likely, according to Quaker history authorities. The Friends didn’t start using the term Union Cross until the time the Yadkin community was named, decades after Forsyth’s community was founded.

Michelle DeLapp is chairwoman of the board for the Wachovia Historical Society. Using Moravian archives, she found references to Union Cross in records dating to the early 1860s, well before the Quakers used the term. The timing would also seem to rule out any connection to the Union Army in the Civil War.

Forsyth County’s Union Cross appears to date back to the days of a plank road in the mid-1800s that ran from Fayetteville, through High Point, and up to the Moravian community of Bethania.

DeLapp says the name may simply be a reference to an important convergence of roads during the middle of the 19th Century.

“I believe it had something to do with the location of the road,” she says. “It was an intersection between High Point Road and what is known as Union Cross Road now — it was kind of an intersection. And it was kind of a main road.”

Today, Union Cross is the site of an elementary school and a county park.

Union Cross wasn’t the only prominent use of the term “Union” in Forsyth County.

The Union Republican newspaper used it during its run from the 1870s to the 1940s, and Winston-Salem’s train stop was called Union Station when it was built almost 100 years ago.

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carolina curious #union cross #moravians #quakers #forsyth county #history

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Pigeons take flight in the morning fog. FILE: (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Rock pigeons — originally known as rock doves — are native to Europe, introduced to this country by colonists in the early 17th century, and due to their ability to adapt, they’ve thrived in both urban and natural settings ever since. Domesticated some 5,000 years ago, the birds have been used as messengers, in racing clubs, and their refined homing abilities lend the species to research to this day, helping scientists better understand how birds navigate. But it’s the feral animals that we see in the Triad — including Greensboro, says North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission bird conservation biologist Scott Anderson.

“If they were declining, I would be very surprised,” says Anderson. “The standard story of declining birds is that they rely on more natural habitat — like wood thrushes, for example. There are sort of forests around — and as we convert those forests to other habitat types, whether they’re more urban or suburban, then those birds are losing their habitat. But rock pigeons are kind of the opposite ... they do really well in urban environments.”

While recent estimates show a net loss of nearly 3 billion birds in North America since 1970, Anderson says pigeons are not on the list of threatened species. He adds there’s little way of confirming if there’s been a population decline specifically in Greensboro until the completion of the North Carolina Bird Atlas, where bird enthusiasts monitor and report populations among the roughly 470 species in the state. The five-year project wraps up in 2026, and it’s open to the public.

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pigeons #rock pigeons #threatened #bird atlas #north carolina wildlife resources commission

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A photo of the purple streetlight in Katy Shick's Winston-Salem neighborhood. Image courtesy Katy Shick.

Have you ever been driving along at night, and all of a sudden, the entire atmosphere changes? Everything appears in a different light – literally.

That’s what WFDD listener Katy Shick experienced in her Winston-Salem neighborhood. And it had her wondering: "Why are all the street lights being replaced with purple bulbs? I feel as though I'm being abducted by aliens when I drive home."

In this installment of Carolina Curious, WFDD's Bethany Chafin decided to illuminate the issue.

It turns out the purple streetlights are not intentional. Duke Energy spokesperson Jeff Brooks says they’re due to a manufacturing defect in a batch of 2018 bulbs that came from their distributor.

“What’s happening is the laminate on the LED fixture begins to erode there and it causes the light to change from the color we want it to be to that purplish color," he says. "And that’s what people have seen across the area.”

Brooks says it’s a gradual process which is why you might see lights in different stages, sometimes a slight purple tint, sometimes a deeper shade.

He says Duke Energy field crews have been working to replace these anomalies, but they need the public’s help.

“It’s hard sometimes for us to know where the lights have turned purple and so being able to report those lights gives us insight so we can get out there and make those repairs.”

Brooks says there’s an online reporting tool on Duke Energy’s website or someone can call their customer service department. He says that this issue affects several thousand lights in the Duke Energy Carolinas service area, out of about a million overall.

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duke energy #streetlights #led lights #carolina curious

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Salem Lake in Winston-Salem, N.C. Image courtesy of Cooper Sullivan.

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Since early September, Salem Lake’s water levels have been about 10 feet lower than normal as construction crews are working on the boat ramp and retaining walls.

For people, this just means a few months without water activities. But Kernersville native and frequent Salem Lake visitor Elizabeth White wants to know how the construction will impact the surrounding nature life.

"I want to know if the draining of Salem Lake, and also the flooding of Salem Creek is having any effect on the biodiversity of the plants and the animals that live in that area. And also what does that mean for our drinking water, since we get our drinking water from Salem Lake as well?"

In the 2018 election, Winston-Salem voters approved a bond referendum that allotted $3.7 million toward Salem Lake improvements. And in August 2021, Phase II of these improvements began. The projects planned include renovations of the shoreline bulkhead, rebuilding the boat ramp, adding additional kayak storage, creating boat slips and building a picnic shelter near the playground.

Bobby Hege, the lakes program supervisor for the City of Winston-Salem Recreation and Parks, is overseeing the construction. He said that the construction crews slowly allowed water to flow from the lake through an open valve on the dam into Salem Creek. This process prevented flooding along the creek and drastic changes in the lake.

“It hasn’t really had a negative effect on the animal life. The water being drawn down does compile and make all the fish closer together, which for the big fish they get real happy. Some of the smaller baitfish, maybe not so much,” says Hege.

Hege also mentioned that the lower water levels have attracted more freshwater birds, like egrets and herons to the area.

Wake Forest University professor of biology Miles Silman echoed Hege and said that many Piedmont area lake ecosystems are very resilient when it comes to disturbances because Salem Lake is manmade.

“If you think about the amount of flooding that comes down a river due to a hurricane, or a very large rainstorm event, those create tremendous volumes of water. I suspect similar to the kinds of water volumes that were put out by releasing the water to draw down the lake, if not more. The organisms that live in that water are used to having those kinds of disturbances, particularly when you get to larger streams,” Silman says.

And in terms of the water releasing into Salem Creek, Silman says it is doing more good than harm.

“One of the bad things that happens when you put a bunch of dams in the system is that you eliminate the flood pulses. And what happens then is that vegetation can grow into areas where they normally wouldn't be able to live. It can change the entire way the stream looks, what they call the morphology of the stream,” Silman added.

Urbanization can also affect the morphology of streams, and this is evident in the case of Salem Creek. If you were to look at old mapping records of Winston-Salem dating back to when the Moravians settled across Forsyth County, you would see that the streams of today look much different from the 18th century. This is what Wake Forest assistant professor of engineering Lauren Lowman and student Sam Matterazzo saw for themselves.

“The reason why they chose this area was because it had a lot of natural springs and it had a lot of underground stream networks to provide these natural springs. They came here because we are so rich in water. And as time went on and we moved towards industrialization and building this urban center, those streams got in the way. So we built over them,” Lowman says.

“Now we have a lot of asphalt and concrete and building groups. Those are all impermeable surfaces, which means that the water can’t get absorbed into the soils, so instead it runs off into our streams. So a lot of these streams, like Salem Creek, like some parts of Muddy Creek, you’ll see quite a bit of stream bank erosion. So when it rains, the water only has so many places it can go,” Lowman continued.

Lowman is talking about the Salem Creek Greenway, where portions of the pathway are subject to constant flooding. Matarazzo, a senior Wake Forest student who has been working with Lowman since his freshman year, says there are ways to mitigate flooding.

“You select a section of stream, usually a couple miles at a time, and you basically redig the channel back to the most natural possible way," Matterazo says. "You're going to use native plants, obviously, like they grow here for a reason. You're going to want to use those as a way to just act as a natural sponge, just to absorb. The Salem Creek Greenway is built almost right along the creek. But ideally, you'd have a riparian area where you have all that vegetation between the creek and the greenway so that it gives a huge natural buffer for it to flood.”

This process is called rewilding. But the chances of this happening at Salem Creek are slim as those natural buffer zones have already been built over. This would require extensive construction in a narrow area. However, this does mean that the current Salem Lake construction and draining is not having an impact on the flooding habits of Salem Creek.

The construction is also having no effect on the city of Winston-Salem’s water supply. Bill Brewer, water treatment superintendent for Winston-Salem, says that no water from Salem Lake is being taken to treatment facilities while the construction is ongoing.

“Our system is very resilient in the respect that we have three water plants. And we also have ample capacity in the Yadkin River that we can draw from just in this type of scenario,” Brewer says.

So to answer Elizabeth’s question, the impacts on biodiversity are minimal and the drinking water supply is still safe. And while the water levels returning to normal depends entirely on the amount of rain this area will get, the lake will hopefully bounce back by the end of the year. There is no reason to worry. Unless you are a small baitfish.

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salem lake #winston salem #biodiversity #wildlife

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Scientists say the bald cypress trees that line North Carolina's Black River are among the oldest on Earth. APRIL LAISSLE/WFDD

North Carolina is known for its natural features — think the Blue Ridge Mountains or the pristine beaches of the Outer Banks. Less attention though is given to its forests. That had listener Gayle Morris wondering:

"Where in North Carolina can a person experience old-growth forests?"

In short, the answer is along the banks of the Black River in eastern North Carolina, where towering bald cypress trees have stood sentry for more than 2,000 years. WFDD’s April Laissle traveled there to learn more about what these trees can tell us about the state’s evolving climate.

On the River Just off a remote road about an hour outside of Wilmington, I’m following a group of researchers past an abandoned cabin and down a gravel trail that leads to the banks of the Black River.

My companions today are dendrologists, scientists who study trees. Some have come from as far as the Czech Republic to study the ancient ones rooted under this river’s murky waters. We all climb into kayaks and set off on the water.

Old-growth bald cypresses line either side of the Black River in eastern North Carolina. APRIL LAISSLE/WFDD

The further down the river we get, the older the trees look. Then, as we emerge from a cypress knee obstacle course, the canopy opens and suddenly we’re in Jurassic Park. Knobby, moss-covered buttress roots jut out of the water, their grey trunks giving way to branches that sit almost perfectly flat – their bushy tops have long been knocked out by storms.

Then finally, we come across The Old One, a gnarled bald cypress that, at age 2,600, is among the oldest trees in the world. It’s been around since the early years of the Roman Republic, but it looks much like the rest of the trees in this area. That’s because it likely isn’t the oldest one here, it’s just the one with the most solid trunk. The characteristic is critical for the technique used to date these trees, called coring.

Coring Trees Each researcher is carrying an increment borer – a kind of T-shaped manual drill. It’s what they use to take samples from trees.

I watch as University of Tennessee researcher Savannah Collins-Key aims hers at a smaller tree and begins turning its top handle to drill into the trunk. She pulls out a perfectly cylindrical sample of what’s inside of it and stores it in a plastic straw.

Researcher Savannah Collins-Key shares a tree ring a sample she collected using an increment borer. APRIL LAISSLE/WFDD

This tree, like the Old One, is solid all the way through, but there are many more in this forest that are rotted on the inside, yet still living. The more solid the core, the more comprehensive the core sample will be.

The coring process is kind of like a mosquito bite for the tree – it doesn’t really hurt it. And it yields critical information.

“I sometimes call them like the first information superhighway, or the original thumb drive. There's tons of information in tree rings,” says Neil Pederson, an ecologist with the Harvard Forest who helped coordinate this trip.

“Sometimes a tree will stop growing for a year around the base of the tree. And that happens for a variety of reasons. Sometimes drought, but sometimes other things. And all that information is stored in tree rings,” Pederson says. “So we can get the age of the tree, we can get growth rates, we can get changes in growth rates. And that all tells us a little bit more information about how these trees have lived. And we can use them to make inferences about what has happened in the past.”

Pederson says in effect, these tree rings tell a story. And they can sometimes give clues about mysteries in human history too. Researchers used tree rings to determine that the worst drought in 800 years occurred the same year that the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island disappeared.

Pederson and his team are coring trees along the Black River to do what’s called a climate reconstruction, specifically to learn more about how this ecosystem has historically responded to hurricanes. They’re selecting several trees in this area to create what he calls “a chorus” of perspectives about what has happened here.

“The hope is that this data will be information for modelers to try to understand how future hurricanes might impact these systems,” says Pederson.

Pederson and his team will spend the next few months traveling to old-growth forests along the East Coast for the same reason.

“You put on your backpack, you get your straw, you get your increment borer and you just go looking for the oldest trees,” says Pederson. “I mean, like, don't tell anyone this, but that's what we do often. And so you're like, 'oh my gosh, I get paid to look for old trees.'”

Keys to Survival Pederson is following in the footsteps of David Stahle, a dendrologist who teaches at the University of Arkansas. He’s been studying the trees along the Black River since the 1980s. He says when he first drove along the roadway through the forest, he knew he’d hit something big.

“Old trees are like old people. They don't hide their age that well,” says Stahle. “And so we just stopped right in the middle of the road and got out of the car. And we're dumbfounded by thousand-year-old trees on both sides of the highway.”

Stahle set out to core those trees, and eventually, he came across the Old One. He says the cypresses have survived for so long in part because they’re in an adverse growing environment.

“The Black River is a nutrient-poor, tannin-stained stream, a little bit acidic, you know, really kind of low in natural fertility,” says Stahle. “And so the growth rates are extremely slow.”

The environment was poor enough to hinder growth, but not quite bad enough to kill them. Their age is what helped them dodge the logging bullet, Stahle says.

“They're very old trees. From a logging point of view, timber production point of view, they are decrepit, over mature, pecky and heart rotten,” says Stahle. “And those are all negatives when it comes to board footage.”

Major storms also couldn’t knock these trees out. Stahle says that’s because as harsh winds blow in, the trees hold onto each other under the water.

“And so if you're going to blow it over, you’ve got to blow the entire forest over,” says Stahle. “They'll snap off, especially a hollow cypress will snap off in a hurricane. But rarely will you see them uprooted.”

Ghost Trees The continued longevity of these trees is something Stahle worries about though. He says human actions can seriously impact this ecosystem.

“All kinds of industrial activity could be installed within the drainage basin of the Black River that could impact water quality, and, in fact, has impacted water quality of the Cape Fear and her tributary. So, you know, we know this story, right, we know the story of the anthropogenic climate change, the human impact on the environment in North Carolina, and Arkansas, and elsewhere in the United States. And it's just not a trivial problem.”

Stahle says his research has also revealed insights into what the future may hold for these ecosystems if more isn’t done to address climate change. Tree ring data suggest that it’s only gotten wetter in the modern era due to warming temperatures. And with the sea level rising and the forest just two meters above it, these trees could soon be in dire straits.

“With uncontrolled anthropogenic climate change, you know, they're going to be ghost trees in the future,” says Stahle. “Now, that's not tomorrow. It's maybe not for 100 years, maybe 500 years, but, you know, I'm confident we're gonna have to get a handle on the energy crisis.”

Stahle says he has hope though. He sees enormous pressure, economic and otherwise, to address climate change.

“But those things are hard to turn around,” he says. “So you don't want to mess with Mother Nature. And we are.”

Stahle continues to advocate for conservation both at the state and federal levels. He plans to return to this river this month in search of more ancient trees, and the stories they have yet to tell.

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carolina curious #old growth forests #climate change

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Historical maps of Forsyth County displayed in the Wachovia Room at Old Salem’s Moravian Research and Archaeology Lab. APRIL LAISSLE/WFDD

County border lines in North Carolina are often far from symmetrical. That’s especially the case for Forsyth County, which is certainly not a perfect square. That had listener John Strong wondering:

“Why do Forsyth County’s southern boundaries look like Swiss cheese?”

WFDD’s April Laissle spoke to Martha Hartley, the director of research at Old Salem’s Moravian Research and Archaeology Lab, to find the answer.

Diagram excerpted from The North Carolina Atlas: Portrait of a Changing Southern State.

“Forsyth County's distinctive outline is a product of history and nature," Hartley says.

That history is centered around the Moravian Church and its purchase of 100,000 acres of land in 1753 in the backcountry of North Carolina. Hartley says they named their new colony Wachovia after the Wachau Valley they knew in Austria with its similar rolling landscape. The Moravians chose the land due in large part to the richness of water resources.

“The Moravians were thinking about the long term, they were thinking about a place that would support their plans for congregations and long-term stability," says Hartley. "And so this water, this amazing Muddy Creek system that is the backbone of Wachovia, is fed by thousands of springs and smaller tributaries. And when you think about where people are going to live in the 18th century, water is life."

Wachovia was situated in Rowan County for the first 20 years the Moravians lived there. But by 1771, population growth prompted colony leaders to create Surry County by splitting up Rowan. But, they drew a dividing line right through the center of Wachovia, worrying the Moravians.

“So the Moravians petitioned, and the line was redrawn in 1773, and it was redrawn by the Moravian surveyor. The southern line of Forsyth County is mostly from this particular moment, and it included the southern boundary of Wachovia, the distinct form that we see today.”

Both the southern and eastern lines of present-day Forsyth County came mostly from the split that created Surry County. For the next 18 years, Wachovia sat in the southeastern quadrant of Surry County, but by 1789 the population had reached another tipping point.

“As the population continued to grow, there was a need for people to be close to their county seat and courthouse, because that's where all the business is done, and it's a powerful place," Hartley says.

So, Surry County was cut down the middle, with the eastern half becoming Stokes County. The lower western side of Stokes was generally drawn along the Yadkin River. Rivers made logical borders because they had to be crossed.

The divide that would finally establish Forsyth County as we know it today didn’t come for another 60 years.

“In 1849 Stokes County was cut in half. And the lower portion, which contained Wachovia the whole while, was named Forsyth County after Benjamin Forsyth, a local statesman and war hero who was fatally wounded in the War of 1812," says Hartley.

From there, leaders had to decide where to place the county seat in the new Forsyth County.

“At that time, Salem was a center for trade and growing industry and was located in the middle of the new county, the logical place for a county seat," Hartley says. "But Salem was a theocratic community. It was a religious place, and church leaders did not want a courthouse in Salem with its courthouse business and places of execution. So within the Salem town lot, they sold 51 acres in the northern part for the new county seat, which was ultimately named Winston.”

The borders of the county have stayed more or less the same since then. The original Wachovia tract still fills the middle of it. And in many ways, Winston-Salem’s city limits reflect Wachovia’s historic borders.

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Downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. KERI BROWN/WFDD

In this edition of Carolina Curious WFDD listener and High Point University Spanish Professor Adam Winkel wants to know the origins of his home city’s name: Greensboro.

“Why is the ‘boro’ suffix in North Carolina usually spelled 'b-o-r-o' rather than 'b-u-r-g' or 'b-o-r-o-u-g-h'?'”

As WFDD’s David Ford soon found out, it all goes back to history and other languages, because “burg,” “borough” — however you want to spell it — and “bury” for that matter (as in Salisbury) are all Anglo-Saxon in origin dating back centuries to the land of lederhosen and bratwurst. In Germany, “burg” means a town surrounded by a wall. And there are lots of them there: Nuremberg, Brandenburg, Hamburg. So, in England, the closer you are to Germany the more you’ll find “burg”s.

Director of Local History and Genealogy at the Randolph County Public Library “Mac” Whatley says the suffix “borough” — which also means town — has gone through an evolution over the centuries. For example, Edinburgh, Scotland may be spelled b-u-r-g-h, but it is pronounced as if it ended in b-o-r-o-u-g-h but just runs out of gas on the last syllable.

“So, there are all kinds of linguistic rules about dropping the vowels and things like that because of lazy pronunciation, but in England, all of these kinds of things come from history and language,” he says. “You know the Celts, the Saxons, the Vikings, everything in England goes back to some kind of historical event.”

Fewer than 100 people? That’s a Hamlet. Roughly 1,000 or less? Village. Less than 50,000? Town. More than 100,000? City. More than a million? Metropolis. Meanwhile, here in the New World, America, terms that may have been treated historically back in the day become political.

“That’s why there’s such a variety of names — or suffixes really instead of just names — because in this state in this country, cities and towns are created by the state legislature, and people petition the legislature for incorporating a city or town,” says Whatley. “And whoever is doing the petition can choose the name.”

He says, take Charlotte for example: 800,000 people and it’s a city. But Kannapolis is also known as a city, and it only has 45,000 people.

“And of course, it’s a real outlier because “polis” is Greek,” says Whatley. “It means city, so, it was named city of the cannons, you know the cannon mills founded it. But then you’ve got Pinehurst which is officially a village, and they have 16,000-some-odd people, but Franklinville, where I live, is a town and it only has 1,600 people.”

Whatley says some historical suffix influences do endure here in the South. “Ville” from the French began catching on shortly after the French Revolution starting with Louisville, Kentucky, in 1780, and three years later, Campbellton, North Carolina, switched to Fayetteville. And Asheville? Well, that’s where things get political.

“You would use ‘ville’ if there was already a ‘borough.’ So, Asheboro is 1796, and Asheville is 1797. And both of them are named after Governor Samuel Ashe. You also had Greenville, which is 1786 in eastern North Carolina, but you had Greensboro which is 1808, and they’re both after General Nathaniel Greene. Then you had Princeton in Johnson County 1861, but Princeville in Edgecombe County in 1885."

So, when you have lots of little towns like North Carolina has, you’ve got to be inventive with names. Interchanging suffixes is one way to do that. Whatley says the sounds of words count too. There are lots of Franklinvilles (after Ben Franklin), but no Franklinboroughs. As for all the b-o-r-o cities in the Tar Heel state —Greensboro, Asheboro, Tarboro, Carrboro, Pittsboro, Wilkesboro, Swansboro — he says, they just all sound better than “burg.”

But, getting back to our listener Adam Winkel and his question about the mysterious b-o-r-o ending to “Greensboro.” Will we ever know the answer as to why?

“Well, I think it’s linguistic laziness,” says Whatley. “Because Asheboro, when it was incorporated in 1796 was a ‘borough,’ and then it went through a whole period for 100 years where it was just Ashboro. And so, they weren’t even spelling Ashe right since it’s named after a governor, Samuel Ashe. But they didn’t know it had an ‘e’ on it, so they just did the quick and easy thing. So, b-o-r-o, it’s just easier — quicker when you’re writing a letter or [an] envelope or something like that.”

So, after all that history, politics, and linguistic evolution, the answer to our listener’s question is, “Because people are inherently lazy?”

“Yeah,” says Whatley. “I think that, and bad spellers,” he laughs.

Well, ask a simple question, and get a simple answer, but always know this: no question is too big or too small for the Carolina Curious.

Support for Carolina Curious comes from Buie’s Market Winston-Salem.

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A doe and her twin fawns graze comfortably in WFDD listener Donna Jaffe's yard in Winston-Salem. Photograph courtesy of Donna Jaffe.

Picture if you will a tranquil scene: two innocent, speckled twin fawns gently frolicking together on soft green grasses as their mother looks on protectively nearby. WFDD listener and Winston-Salem resident Donna Jaffe has front row seats to scenes like this one in her own backyard, and she’s curious about something:

“Do twin fawns stay friends or pals after they grow up?”

For this week’s Carolina Curious, WFDD’s David Ford starts at the very beginning — and that’s a very fine place to start.

When European settlers first arrived here in the Piedmont, white-tailed deer were plentiful. But within a century those populations were practically wiped out from over-hunting. Today, about a million of the animals call North Carolina home, and they're so adaptable, they can be found in just about every type of habitat — including neighborhoods like the west side of Winston-Salem where Donna Jaffe and her husband live.

“So, last year, I often saw a doe and twin fawns come into my yard and eat my vegetables and my wildflowers, and the fawns would play together,” says Jaffe. “And then later in the season I would see just the fawns. Mom told them you can go up there in that yard, but stay together, so they’d stay together.”

These days, that’s about par for the course, according to North Carolina Wildlife Resources Biologist Jason Smith. Over the years, he’s been getting more and more phone calls from urban-area homeowners complaining about deer eating their ornamental shrubs and other landscaping plants. He says the conflict is inevitable as the human population expands into what was once wooded deer territory

“Deer are very generalist, and they learn to adapt especially if there’s a good nutrition food source and they feel safe and secure in these urban areas,” says Smith. “And oftentimes urban areas don’t have hunting. The cities that don’t have that don’t really have a good control mechanism to help keep the population sort of in check as in the more rural areas where you have hunting, and they’re being harvested.”

As the number of urban deer continues to grow, so does the strain on the animals’ relationship with their two-legged neighbors — us. The maximum number of deer, or other animal species, that the human population will tolerate, forms what Smith calls the "cultural carrying capacity," and it varies from person to person.

Thankfully for the deer family in Donna Jaffe’s backyard, the only shots she’s taking are photographs chronicling their development as the seasons come and go.

“This year, I’ve started seeing two grown-up-size deer come in,” she says. “They seem to be together. They seem playful as if they’re young. Maybe they’re yearlings? Maybe they’re last year’s spotted fawns? But they seem to be playing together. One time I actually saw the two of them rear up on their hind legs and spar like boxers. It was an amazing thing.”

So, do twin fawns remain playmates after they’re all grown up? According to Smith, it depends. He says fawns typically remain together with their mother throughout weaning — two to four months — and they continue to reside with the doe for the first year.

“Where the difference is, is with yearling does and bucks,” says Smith. “Yearling bucks, they will disperse and leave the area and begin establishing their own home range. And this can be up to three to five or more miles from where they were raised. But for yearling does, they will generally stay in the area where they were born, and they can often form family groups.”

Smith adds that while it’s most likely that twins would be one buck and one doe, there is a possibility that there could be two doe fawns born together still residing in the same area.

So, it’s a potentially storybook ending for our twin fawns, playing together side-by-side in their own little deer herd in Winston-Salem. But the fun is relatively short-lived. Does typically survive in the wild for just three to six years. For bucks, it's two to five.

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Don "Chef Don" McMillan with his homemade chess pie. DAVID FORD/WFDD

Traditional chess pie is easy to make and calls for the simplest of household ingredients — eggs, butter, sugar, cornmeal, and vinegar — and it’s been a Southern dessert favorite for more than a century.

And WFDD listener Sam Edwards wants to know more about it.

"I’m interested in the etymological root of chess pie," says Edwards. "It’s a favorite delicacy of mine. It’s a Southern dessert dish and I’ve always been fascinated by it — a.) because I enjoy the heck out of it, but b.) because I’ve always wondered where the name came from. It’s a curious title for a name. Blueberry pie. I can get my arms around that. Chocolate pie. I can get my arms around that. Apple pie. But chess pie?"

There are lotsof chess pie variations, and almost as many theories on the history behind the name, and every Southern chef has a personal favorite.

American Academy of Chefs Culinary Hall of Famer Don “Chef Don” McMillan is a New York transplant who’s called the Triad home for decades, and a trusted source on chess pie.

This is a pie from my childhood that I remember and a chess pie that my mom would keep in a pie chest if you can believe it. This is before the refrigerators became part of the kitchen. We even had ice boxes in the kitchen. But I remember we kept pies in the pie chest as well as bread was kept in there too, so baked goods were kept there. I think this is how it got its name: the "pie chest." This pie is loaded with so much sugar I don’t think it’s going to go bad anywhere. You don’t have to keep it in the refrigerator.

Nancie McDermott is a James Beard Foundation award nominee who has authored several books, including Southern Pies with an entire chapter dedicated to chess pies and their many iterations including Molasses Pie, Transparent Pie, Vinegar Pie, and more.

"The one that makes the most sense is that chess is a corruption of cheese. To make cheese the traditional way is to make milk curdle, strain off the whey, and you’re left with the curds," says McDermott.

She’s referring to the British sweets kitchen — cheese pies with sugar, butter, and eggs, but without any cheese. In fact, the early British cheese pies simply meant those with curds.

"And you will find a lemon cheese pie — if you look back in cookbooks to 1910 and 1920, you’ll find a lemon cheese cake. It’s separate words. So, the presence in Southern baking of lemon cheese and cheese pie, that makes sense that this would have been called by somebody a cheese pie because it’s made with — the iconic one is vinegar, probably apple cider vinegar, and a little bit of cornmeal."

Stephanie Tyson is the chef whose recipes have been featured in the New York Times, and co-owner of the award-winning Sweet Potatoes restaurant in Winston-Salem, where they serve a unique blend of Southern-inspired uptown, down-home cooking.

Before cornmeal — because that’s the basic ingredient in the chess pie is cornmeal, the binder was chestnut flour. And I was reading that and it’s like, okay, that’s a concrete thing for me as a cook that’s not lore, it’s fact. Before you had this, you used this. So, it makes sense to call the pie a chess pie. And then because of the American chestnut tree blight, the American chestnut tree disappeared, so they turned to cornmeal.

Chestnut Pie to chess pie, cheese pie to chess pie, and pie chest to chess pie are three of the most often cited explanations for how this delicious pie got its name. But the most colorful of chess pie origin anecdotes is perhaps the most famous, and like the pie itself, every chef and culinary enthusiast has a favorite version.

As one of the dozens of variations goes, an 18th-century woman was baking pies for neighbors at a time when nuts were scarce. To get around it, she made a sugar pie with eggs, sugar, flour or cornmeal, butter, and a splash of vinegar to cut the sweetness.

Stephanie Tyson recalls the story instantly.

“The slave that was making the pie with basic ingredients and somebody said, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s great,’ and the slave said, ‘Oh, no it’s jes’ pie.’ And you know how we Southerners say stuff, ‘Jes pie…chess pie,” says Tyson.

In the end, it’s clear that the elusive answer to our Carolina Curious question remains elusive. We may never know the etymological root of “chess pie.” And that’s okay, because, after all, it’s "jes pie."

If this edition of "Carolina Curious" whetted your appetite, you can try your hand at this simple chess pie recipe from Nancie McDermott's Southern Pies: A Gracious Plenty of Pie Recipes from Lemon Chess to Chocolate Pecan.

Betty Thomason’s Classic Chess Pie

Pastry for a 9-inch single-crust pie

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 tablespoon cornmeal

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 eggs, beaten well

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar or white vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup butter, melted

Heat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line a 9-inch pie pan with crust, then crimp the edges decoratively.

In a small bowl, combine the sugar, cornmeal, and salt, and stir together well. In a medium bowl, combine the eggs, vinegar, and vanilla and stir to mix everything well. Add the melted butter and stir well to evenly combine everything into a smooth, thick filling. Pour it into the piecrust.

Place the pie in a 325 degree F oven. Bake until the edges puff up and the center is fairly firm, wiggling only a little when you gently nudge the pan, 40 to 45 minutes. Place the pie on a cooling rack or a folded kitchen towel and let cool to room temperature.

Makes one 9-inch pie.

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“Wachovia,” P.C.G. Reuter, 1766, Collection of Moravian Archives, Herrnhut, Germany.

Centuries ago, thousands of Moravian and Quaker settlers came to the Piedmont in search of a better life, and their legacy lives on here in countless ways. WFDD listener James Sims had one specific contribution in mind and asked this question for Carolina Curious.

“What are the oldest streets in the three Triad cities that are still in use today?” asks Sims.

WFDD reporter David Ford set out for answers beginning in the Wachovia Room at Old Salem’s Moravian Research and Archaeology Lab. Martha Hartley directs that research and says the answer is complicated, with many layers of history.

Wachovia in the Backcountry. Photo courtesy of Martha Hartley, Old Salem’s Moravian Research and Archaeology Lab. “Now, if we think about the time when the Moravians came to North Carolina to begin their colony — they had purchased the land and they came in the fall of 1753 — and they came from southeastern Pennsylvania where they were settled in Bethlehem and Nazareth,” says Hartley. “And they came along a colonial highway, The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road, and it started in Philadelphia, came through the valley of Virginia, and into North Carolina, and crossed the Yadkin River in what we know as the Shallowford today. But when the Moravians came this was not a road, it was more a path known as Morgan Bryan’s Road.”

Hartley says through diaries, we know the trip wasn’t easy for the early Moravians. For starters, they were forced to narrow their enormous Pennsylvania wagon in order to accommodate the small pathway.

“They had to cut trees and make way for themselves because it was a path, but it did become a colonial highway,” she says. “And if you’re in Virginia — if you’re in the Roanoke Valley for instance — there are highway markers about this road, but it’s called the Carolina Road because it was on the way to Carolina. But we typically call it The Great Wagon Road or the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road. So, this road is what I know of as the earliest road that Europeans were using here in what we know of as Winston-Salem, Forsyth County.”

And the first major roadway here is still going strong.

“Parts of this road are certainly currently in use, and if you’re in northern Forsyth County right as you come down Highway 8 and it breaks off into Stanleyville Drive, there’s a huge road cut that you can see that’s enormous, and that is the vestige of the Wagon Road,” says Hartley. “And so, Stanleyville Drive parallels the old roadbed, and it comes through sort of urban Winston-Salem. But we know this road very well in the Lewisville area because from Lewisville out towards the river is the Shallowford Road.”

Hartley says The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road — the path pioneered by Quaker Morgan Bryan in the 1740s — was a crucial part of North Carolina’s backcountry settlement in the colonial period. It’s the granddaddy of Winston-Salem area streets, but there are plenty of other centuries-old roadways still with us today, many of which developed along the ridges of waterways like Muddy Creek and its tributaries where springs provided a ready source of clean water: Indiana, Akron and Old Walkertown Roads; parts of Reynolda in the north, Miller Street in the south, and Polo Road in the west.

Highway 8 at Stanleyville Drive, view south, Wagon Road cut (2015). Photo courtesy of Martha Hartley, Old Salem’s Moravian Research and Archaeology Lab. And what about the earliest street in the Gate City? Greensboro History Museum Curator of Community History Glenn Perkins says it’s hard to say exactly — commuters there are still probably unwittingly following trading paths of the Indigenous Keyauwee and Saura peoples from centuries ago — but he says one of the most important colonial roads still in existence today is New Garden.

“It ties so much to Guilford County history,” says Perkins. “So, right now you know one stretch of this road is a multi-lane expressway almost between Guilford College and the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. But that was an old route by which the Quaker settlers who founded the New Garden Meeting in the 1750s traveled and connected to what would become in the 1770s the administrative center of the new Guilford County.”

Perkins says the New Garden Quaker Community thrived and the roadway that made it possible eventually supported other Quaker settlements, providing a means for travel and commerce. Even the city’s namesake, Quaker General and Revolutionary War hero Nathaniel Greene, was likely familiar with New Garden Road.

“Because there was a skirmish before the battle of Guilford Courthouse called the Battle of New Garden that occurred in 1781,” he says. “So, you have both the British and the colonial troops traveling along that road and making their way up to what would become the big battle at Guilford Courthouse. Then about ten years later, George Washington came to visit the area, and he would have traveled up that route as well because he stayed at a tavern that was near what is today Guilford College and would have wound his way up New Garden Road to see the courthouse site.”

The road’s impact was felt strongly in the 19th century as well, providing the pathway to Guilford College founded in 1837, and before that, leading enslaved people from bondage.

“In the early 1800s, it becomes known for its connection too to the Underground Railroad of course because the New Garden community was so critical in helping freedom-seeking enslaved people to find their way north to freedom,” says Perkins. “So, this highway where you might even see a coffle of enslaved people walking along is also going to become a point from which people can depart and go off onto the Underground Railroad trails and find their way to Indiana or another free state.”

The Haley House which is located on the Museum’s campus and is the oldest house in Guilford County still on its original foundation was located on the Petersburg-Salisbury Road and appears on an 1808 map of North Carolina. Public domain. Image provided courtesy of High Point Museum. So, Greensboro’s New Garden, a road for travel, commerce, education, battles for independence, and freedom. And in High Point? According to Marian Inabinett, the Curator of Collections at the High Point Museum, one of the most important historic roads still in use is what is now Greensboro Road and Lexington Avenue. She says today the road comes from Greensboro, connects with Gate City Boulevard, continues straight to northern High Point, and arrives there as Lexington Avenue. But it dates to the mid-1700s.

“And it was the Petersburg-Salisbury Stage Road,” says Inabinett. “Jamestown’s main street was also part of that road, but it was one of the most important north-south routes through North Carolina, and it started in Petersburg, Virginia, on the James River and came down and obviously met up with Salisbury in North Carolina going through what was in Martinsville, the county seat of Guilford County, and catching New Garden and going down through Lexington. Well, High Point wasn’t here then as a city. So, it connected all those places and once it got to Salisbury, other roads led out to the western part of North Carolina to Charlotte and down into upstate South Carolina.”

Inabinett says the Petersburg-Salisbury brought settlers here from the coast of Virginia, circumventing the dangerous fall lines and cliffs near Raleigh. And unlike most of the Triad’s oldest streets, Petersburg-Salisbury has a clear marker dating back to the road’s early beginnings.

“For us here in High Point and the High Point Museum, the 1786 Haley House is actually sitting on that road,” she says. “And it’s still sitting on that road. The Haley House is the oldest house in Guilford County still on its own foundations, and it appears on early maps. In fact, the first official state map in 1808 of North Carolina shows the Haley House sitting on that road. And Mr. Haley was a sheriff, a landowner, a blacksmith, so it was to his advantage to be sitting on the main road that’s going through — one of the main roads — going through North Carolina.”

Curious to learn more? The public is free to view the Haley House in person on Saturdays on the High Point Museum campus and learn about the New Garden community — including its connections to the Underground Railroad and the life of one of its most famous residents, Dolley Madison — at the Greensboro History Museum. And beginning in August, The Old Salem Visitors Center will reopen with the new exhibit “On the Road Again,” exploring travel and transportation in 18th and 19th century Salem.

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Litter Sweep volunteers help clear trash from the roadside. The next sweep will run from April 10-24. Photograph courtesy of NCDOT.

There are familiar signs of spring in North Carolina — birds singing, daffodils popping up everywhere — but there’s also something unfamiliar going on that’s making the views around here far less scenic.

WFDD listener Karen Mercer asks, “Why is there so much trash on the roads and byways of North Carolina?”

State Roadside Environmental Engineer David Harris says he’s well aware of the problem, and the answer boils down to available resources. The North Carolina Department of Transportation took a huge hit with the high costs of road repairs following massive storms last year. Then came COVID-19 and the pandemic-related budget cuts.

“They were predicting a $700-million drop in revenue,” says Harris. “So, if someone told you that you were going to have a reduction in your salary by a significant amount, how many things would you put to a higher priority? Litter and roadside items don’t really kill people. So, we want to keep our roads safe. We want to keep traffic signals operating. That’s our priority. And so, yeah, we started pulling back hard when the forecasters started predicting that.”

Last month as revenues began returning, the Board of Transportation shifted more than $30-million dollars within the department to contract more workers and address roadside issues. Harris says since January they’ve picked up more than two million pounds of trash along the more than 80,000 miles of roads they control, with hopes of collecting an additional $18-million pounds by year’s end. But there’s much ground to make up following the temporary shutdown of all NCDOT-sponsored Litter Sweep programs due to the pandemic.

“This time last year, we didn’t know what to do,” says Harris. “We were being told to wear masks, stay safe — so, we felt like it was just best to cancel that event because we weren’t sure. That led us into the fall. But now, people wear masks, and we as a society have learned how to handle COVID-19 and we feel like people are going to go out there and they’re going to be safe. So, the April 10 through 24 [Litter Sweep] is still on.”

That’s welcome news for WFDD listener Keisha Redd. The Winston-Salem attorney says she passes piles of litter during her frequent drives along Highway 52.

“If people wanted to volunteer and clean it up, is there somewhere we would need to get permission from?” she asks. “I imagine they don’t want just groups of people walking around the highway.”

Harris says the department’s volunteer base is the backbone of the operation, with Adopt-A-Highway program volunteers alone picking up roughly 160,000 pounds of trash to date this year. For individuals like Redd willing to roll up their sleeves, Harris has a ready solution.

“I would encourage them to look up Litter Sweep,” he says. “At the NCDOT website, there’s a lot of information there. It’s going to tell you who to contact in your county. We have resources like trash bags, gloves, and vests. And that individual at the county DOT office can say, ‘That’s a good road,’ or ‘Maybe you need to pick another road; our traffic’s pretty bad out there,’ and they’ll try and steer them toward a safer environment.”

Harris says he’s troubled by the amount of trash that continues to be discarded along roadways. Last year NCDOT spent roughly $20-million dollars cleaning it up, money he says that could have been spent improving roadways and bridges. He adds as the current generation of volunteers gets older and less able to get out for Litter Sweeps, he’s excited to see more young people getting involved and taking pride in their communities and their roads.

“North Carolina has a history of looking really good,” says Harris. “Our wildflower program is legendary. People come to this state and will detour on their way down south or up north to come here. But recently we’ve been getting these letters saying, ‘Oh my god, what’s happened to North Carolina?’ So, the Department of Transportation wants to get the state back to looking great, because when this COVID-19 is over with, tourism is going to come back full steam and I know everybody wants to get out of their houses. So, just make sure that the trash ends up where it needs to go.”

For the most up-to-date information on coronavirus in North Carolina, visit our Live Updates blog here. WFDD wants to hear your stories —connect with usand let us know what you’re experiencing.

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In this Jan. 4, 2021, file photo, Carlos Dennis, left, 65, rolls up his sleeve so that Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue paramedic, Capt. Javier Crespo, can administer a COVID-19 vaccine shot. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

With the recent rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations, many people in the Triad area are wondering, ‘When’s my turn?’ A WFDD listener in Summerfield asks: “Where do I get the COVID-19 vaccine? I am over 75 and anxious to get the ‘jab.'"

For this edition of Carolina Curious, reporter David Ford has more on where things stand right now.

So far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advice on priorities for the vaccine have been in flux. But county officials are already rolling out the vaccine for the 75 and older population across the state.

North Carolina Institute of Medicine Project Director Brieanne Lyda-McDonald says the situation is evolving.

“The recent guidance from the federal government would lower that to 65, however, North Carolina and all other states apply these guidelines in different ways,” says Lyda-McDonald. “So, over the coming days we’re going to be hearing from the Department of Health and Human Services in North Carolina to find out how they’re applying that guidance.”

Because vaccine supplies are currently very limited, seniors 75 and older may have to wait a little while. They’ll likely need to make an appointment with their local health department or hospital. Those seeking a COVID-19 vaccination can search online by zip code on the NC Department of Health and Human Services “find your spot” website, or call their toll-free number.

Lyda-McDonald says frontline health care workers have been in the highest prioritization group.

“If they are in contact with patients who are known to have COVID-19 or have risk of contact with those patients, many of those workers have already been vaccinated or are in the process of being vaccinated still,” she says. “And none of the prioritization for that worker-group will be changed.”

As of January 13, North Carolina lagged behind most other states in the number of vaccines administered thus far with roughly 2,500 out of every 100,000 people.

For the most up-to-date information on coronavirus in North Carolina, visit our Live Updates blog here. WFDD wants to hear your stories — connect with us and let us know what you’re experiencing.

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Deer in the Great Smoky Mountains. Photo credit: Missy McGaw, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and his pals may hold a special place in our hearts during the holidays, but what about big herds of deer descending on neighborhoods and eating everything in sight? WFDD listener Kate Brinko wonders what’s going on in Boone.

White-tailed deer in the Great Smoky Mountains. Photo credit: Missy McGaw, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

“We live on the mountain in the northwest corner of Boone, so we’re up against a lot of woods above and around us,” she says. “We have so many deer in the High Country here and beyond. Is there any program to limit their numbers to protect their health and safety?”

Reporter David Ford set out for answers in this installment of Carolina Curious.

First off, he wanted to know more about the conditions on the ground.

“Year before last there would be herds of 8, 10, or 12 deer that would come passing through," says Brinko. "And they’re hungry and eat everything. We put in eight field-grown rhododendrons and the first week they were down to nubbins. I asked some friends to do some bow hunting and they went down along our property and said, ‘This is like Highway 95 over here,’ so many deer. But then this year, all we saw were a doe, her two fawns, and I did have a sighting of two yearling buck.”

One thing that’s clear: North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission data for Watauga County show that there haven’t been too many deer at least in terms of the available habitat. In general, they’re not overrunning their surroundings. But District 7 Wildlife Biologist Jason Smith says people’s tolerance is another concern. Feeding patterns change year to year — often due to urban development.

And when local deer populations do surge?

“The best answer to that is actually hunting,” says Smith. “Because hunting is the best tool and program that we recommend and has a long-term solution. It helps to maintain herd health in the deer population and also reduce these human/wildlife conflicts.”

Smith says residents would have to change their local ordinances to allow for hunting there, but the Town of Boone can participate in the Commission’s urban archery season. And for neighborhoods like Kate Brinko’s on the outskirts, the Community Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP) allows homeowners associations to request extra tags for hunters to use in designated areas.

And for those residents who want to live in harmony with area deer populations but who also would like to keep their gardens and landscaping plants from being eaten every year?

“Even in rural areas, deer are going to get into people’s gardens just because these plants are very palatable and generally preferred by the animals,” says Smith. “The best method for protecting them really that I’ve seen and have folks do is use electric fencing to fence off these garden areas. And we have information concerning the proper ways to fence off these areas on our website.”

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