🗞️ Car crashes into the Kernersville Family YMCA

🗞️ A Kernersville preacher's book, finally published

🗞️ Korner's Folly opens its doors after dark (and a flower show is next)

🗞️ Big changes coming to the State Health Plan

🌞 Cooler with a chance of storms | High: 82°F | Low: 67°F

Big relief after that stretch of heat. Mostly comfortable today, with a chance of showers and thunderstorms after 2 p.m. and a light north breeze. Enjoy it.

The Kernersville Family YMCA is back open after a car crashed into the building on Friday. The good news first: the Y said in a Facebook post that no one was injured.

The branch reopened at its normal time on Saturday, though a few things are still out of service while repairs get sorted. The main wellness center is closed until further notice, but the free-weight room, the training center and the other amenities are open as usual. The Y says it will keep members posted as it learns more. If you are a regular, it is worth checking their Facebook page before you head over.

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Asa Joe Pizzino started writing his life story at 72, pecking it out on a typewriter. Seven years later it was nearly finished, and when he died at 91 in 2009 it sat unpublished. Now, 15 years on, his grandson has finally gotten it into print. "Preacher Joe: Fisher of Men" tells the story of a Kernersville minister whose life reads like a century of American history.

Pizzino was born in 1918 in a West Virginia coal town, the grandson of an Italian immigrant who came over at 16. He quit school after his father died, worked at a general store for store credit, then went into the mines so young he needed a signed release. When World War II came he wanted to enlist, but the mines would not let him go; he and his partner were pulling out too much coal. He was, by his family's telling, a drinker and a fighter who boxed a little, until his wife Hilda, to whom he was married 66 years, got him into church. He began preaching around 1942 and never stopped, serving as an interim pastor at Goodwill Baptist Church in Kernersville after moving to town in the early 2000s.

Getting the manuscript into a book fell to his grandson Nick Pizzino, a teacher and athletic director at Southeast Middle School. There was no spellcheck to fall back on, so he combed through the punctuation himself, a friend at Wake Forest helped scan the pages, and an aunt who taught English edited it and designed the cover. Nick added family photos, stories from relatives, and the names of the great-grandchildren he knew his grandfather would have wanted in there. The book is dedicated to Pizzino's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and is available on Amazon.

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Korner's Folly threw open its famously odd rooms for a "Night at the Museum," and families made the most of it. Kids ran science experiments with executive director Suzanna Ritz-Malliett, caught puppet shows, played a round of soft golf and spread out for picnics on the lawn, all with a little after-hours magic inside the strangest house in town.

If you missed it, the Folly has plenty more coming. Self-guided tours run Tuesday through Sunday, and the Folly Flower Show takes over the house next weekend, July 18 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and July 19 from noon to 4 p.m. It is a good excuse to finally see the place if you have somehow lived here for years and never been. Worth noting: the town just awarded Korner's Folly $115,000 from occupancy-tax revenue, the largest single grant in this year's round.

Event details

If you are a teacher, state employee or retiree, your health coverage is about to change in some meaningful ways. The State Health Plan's board voted Friday to bring Blue Cross Blue Shield NC back as its third-party administrator starting in January 2028, replacing Aetna, and gave Blue Cross the pharmacy benefit contract too. The plan is the state's largest purchaser of medical care, covering nearly 750,000 teachers, state employees, legislators, retirees and dependents. Officials say the deal could save up to $1 billion over the life of the contract.

The change that lands sooner is the new tiered network, which starts Jan. 1. Novant Health and UNC Health won preferred-provider contracts, meaning members who use them will see lower deductibles, out-of-pocket maximums and copays. Other providers will be sorted into access, non-preferred or out-of-network tiers, and choosing a non-preferred provider will cost you significantly more out of pocket. Novant's heavy presence in Forsyth County makes that especially relevant here.

Premiums are going up modestly for 2027, from under $2 to about $8 a month for individual coverage and roughly $29 to $42 for family coverage, with the salary-based structure staying in place to ease the load on lower-paid employees. Open enrollment for 2027 runs Oct. 12 to Oct. 30, so it is worth paying attention when the details land.

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