BURLINGTON — The Burlington Planning Department will host a seminar on Saturday, May 11, at 9 a.m., focusing on how historic preservation can have positive economic and cultural impacts.
This free seminar will be held at Burlington Beer Works in historic downtown. Lunch will be provided. Attendees must register by Wednesday, May 1, by emailing bfsmith@burlingtonnc.gov.
The seminar is being paid for with a state grant for historic preservation education.
Donovan D. Rypkema, principal of PlaceEconomics, a Washington, D.C.-based real estate and economic development consulting firm, will speak about the economic impacts of historic preservation. He also teaches a course on the economics of historic preservation at the University of Pennsylvania.
James Shields, the manager of the African American Cultural Arts and History Center in Burlington, will speak about historic preservation in underserved communities. His community involvement includes being chairman of the board for Snow Camp Historical Society, and he currently serves as vice president of the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society.
Tracy Schmidt, the general manager of Burlington Beer Works, will speak about the renovation of the building that houses the restaurant and about the value that the historic character of downtown brings to the city’s businesses.
For more information about the seminar, email bfsmith@burlingtonnc.gov.
Seminar schedule:
Of all the things to be afraid of on the reality show “Naked and Afraid” — including venomous snakes, wild animals and large, abominable bugs — the one thing Fairland Ferguson wasn’t afraid of was, well, being naked.
Whether naked in the jungles of South America or naked on national television — or, in her case, both — she’s comfortable in her own skin, and she’s not afraid to grin and bare it.
“That was never really a big concern of mine,” the 40-year-old High Point woman said of her appearance on “Naked and Afraid” Sunday evening on Discovery. “There’s this moment where you take off all your clothes, and then you walk up and meet your partner, and he’s also naked. And about eight seconds later, none of that matters, because it’s hot, you have no food, you have no water, and you don’t know where you are. The naked part dissipates very quickly.”
“Naked and Afraid” chronicles the adventures of two survivalists who meet for the first time, naked as jaybirds, and must work together to survive 21 days in the wilderness. Relying solely on their survival skills, they must build a shelter and find food and water while avoiding such perils as dangerous wildlife, aggressive bugs and heat exhaustion.
For her episode, which was filmed last summer, Ferguson and her partner, Keenan Williams, were put somewhere in the jungles of Colombia to contend with the possibility of predatory pumas, wild boars and a pit viper species known as the fer-de-lance, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world.
“Just being dropped down into a jungle knowing those animals are present is intimidating,” Ferguson said. “It’s all great when you watch on TV, but when you’re there, it’s pretty daunting. Everything becomes very real.”
Ferguson, the equestrian director at Shooting Star Horse Farm south of Greensboro, has always had an adventurous side. She used to be an equestrian trick rider with Dolly Parton’s Stampede and “Cavalia.”
She has also done some adventurous modeling, allowing her body to be a human canvas for body painters, which may help explain why she’s not afraid of being naked.
While in college, Ferguson decided to jump from a nearly 70-foot cliff into Virginia’s Smith Mountain Lake, despite signs prohibiting such a daredevil stunt. As she prepared to jump, though, she slipped and fell off the cliff. She broke 46 bones and nearly died. The rehab from her injuries, which included 13 surgeries, was grueling.
Still, Ferguson calls her time in the Colombian jungle even more difficult.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life — so much harder than you can imagine,” she said. “You don’t get help. You don’t get food. You don’t get water. You’re just out there on your own, doing the best you can, trying to survive for 21 days.”
Jtomlin@hpenews.com | 336-888-3579
State officials report that more than 400,000 North Carolinians have signed up for Medicaid health insurance coverage since the expansion of the program four months ago, including nearly 38,000 in the three-county region around High Point.
The governor’s office and N.C. Department of Health and Human Services updated the enrollment figures this week. Sign-ups began Dec. 1.
More than 6,200 in Alamance County have enrolled, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
New enrollees disproportionately live in rural counties and are between the ages of 19 and 29, Gov. Roy Cooper said.
“So many younger, working people desperately need affordable health insurance, and Medicaid expansion fills the bill for thousands of them and with people all the way through age 64,” he said.
Since Dec. 1 North Carolina has enrolled an average of more than 1,000 people per day in the Medicaid expansion, which North Carolina officials say is a faster pace than in other states that expanded the program.
For the more than 400,000 new enrollees, Medicaid has provided about 705,000 prescriptions and covered about $11.2 million in claims for dental services since Dec. 1, state officials report. The state is expected to sign up a total of at least 600,000 new Medicaid enrollees over two years.
After years of not being able to craft a deal on Medicaid expansion, Cooper and Republican leaders of the N.C. General Assembly reached an agreement in March 2023. The lag time between the deal and expansion of coverage gave state and county agencies time to gear up to handle the influx of new Medicaid applications.
pjohnson@hpenews.com | 336-888-3528 | @HPEpaul