88.5 Wfdd - Carolina Curious

Camila Pulgar 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 Pulgar 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 Pulgar Guzmán.  Pulgar 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 s

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/WFD

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 fo

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 ur

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

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 com

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 land

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 ce

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 si