Pennsylvania's primary election is just a few days away. The outcome will have perhaps an unusually heavy impact on Bethlehem, for a number of reasons. A switch to the right could happen, due in part to last year's uproar over an unpopular--and ultimately rejected--legislative pay increase. This led to a citizen backlash which surges on, its avowed purpose being to evict all the members of the legislature and replace them by newcomers. This movement is called, appropriately, Clean Sweep.
It remains to be seen how effective Clean Sweep will be. The Lehigh and Northampton Counties area has a number of legislators who are respected for their integrity and effectiveness. These include State Representative Steve Samuelson (D) of Bethlehem, and State Representative Robert Freeman (D) of Easton. Many are hoping these distinguished public servants and others like them will be spared any coming electoral purge.
On the other hand, it may be said that the citizen insurgency has already claimed at least one victim in the Bethlehem area. He is State Representative T.J. Rooney, who has also been state chairman of the Democratic Party. Rooney voted for the legislative pay raise, and kept what might be called a premature payout. He seems to have concluded that the resulting backlash made his re-election problematical, and now his seat is up for grabs.
Four candidates are in the running for the Democratic nomination here, and the matter be will be settled in the impending primary.
Setting aside the US Senate race, which probably will be between conservative Democrat Robert Casey and ultraconservative Republican incumbent Rick Santorum, there is the gubernatorial contest. To this writer, the selection here is of the "none of the above" variety. On the one hand, there is the enigmatic incumbent, Ed Rendell, whose accomplishments are hard for the average citizen to grasp or evaluate. Then there is a retired football player who seems to have no real qualification except a desire for political power. Lynn Swann clearly is not a clown; otherwise, he might be considered Pennsylvania's answer to Minnesota's famed former wrestler-governor, Jesse "the Body" Ventura.
No matter what we may think of the candidates, they will effect our personal and community lives, probably for decades. So go and vote--and choose on the basis of careful thought. Above all, don't let anger be what drives you. The same goes for such other values as party affiliation, color, religion, and anything else except the main point.
The main point is, What kind of future do you want? For your community, yourself, your children? And who, in your opinion, best serves that vision?
Those candidates, and only those candidates, are the ones to vote
for.

The Christmas City Fair was a summer event I always looked forward to when I first came to Bethlehem. I discovered it when I still lived on the north side, in the brick house next to the Moravian cemetery known as God's Acre. To get to my job as a night proofreader at the Globe-Times I would walk down to Heckewelder Place, down the steps through Central Moravian Church's lovely, well-kept green (this was before the days when children felt free to ride their bicycles on it), and across the Hill-to-Hill Bridge to the South Side.
One summer evening, looking over the bridge ramp, I noticed that interesting activity was going on down below, in the flat and treeless space known as "the fairgrounds." Flags of many nations were strung in a line across the space, an entertainment platform had been set up in the center, and booths were being erected all around.
My curiosity was piqued, and I could hardly wait to get to the office so I could find out just what this coming event was that was being set up.
I learned that it was the Christmas City Fair, an annual event in honor of the 1918 union of Bethlehem and South Bethlehem. No matter how one felt on the subject of the unification of the city--there always were nay-sayers, and some of the time I was one myself--it was hard to say "no" to the Fair. This was especially true if, like me, you came from a place where not much happened.
The Christmas City Fair was a pageant of ethnicity, with Greek and Portuguese and Mexican (and so on) music and dancing and food. You could count on encountering 10 or a dozen of Bethlehem's many ethnic groups every year.
As to eating and entertainment,you could start with Pennsylvania Dutch funnel cake, go on to Portuguese doughnuts, and pretty much eat your way around the world. The musical and dance offerings were not quite THAT extensive, but some of the musicians and dancers were spectacularly good. This was especially true of the Portuguese, who had wonderful costumes, and whose dancing combined fire and discipline in amazing ways.
Christmas City Fair weekend also was a time for non-profit organizations ranging from the Ba'hai faith to historical societies to Boy Scout troops to call attention to their offerings and to their presence in the city or its environs.In many cases it also allowed them to raise needed funds.
Walking around the fairgrounds, I felt positively enriched to live in a place with so many resources, so many pathways to explore. It wasn't New York City--that would have been overkill as far as interesting possibilities were concerned--but it was a lot more than I had ever had or dreamed of before.
The city no longer has its Fair. Indeed, it no longer seems to have the spirit of even minimal cooperation and mutual respect that made such an event possible.
But that spirit seems worth fighting to get back, because what we have known as Bethlehem is worth fighting for.

It is Easter; but I must admit my thoughts are heavy. When I consider the likely fate for this place, all of the possibilities seem very grim. Will our population be devastated by an avian flu pandemic? Will we be wiped out by an al Qaeda attack, undertaken to show Americans that comparatively small places are not immune to terrorism?
Or will we destroy ourselves, consumed by greed and bigotry?
So far this last possibility seems the most likely.
I am one of those who believes that, since the state is willy-nilly going over to gaming, Bethlehem needs to have one of the casinos. As things stand, we have few jobs and no way of protecting irreplaceable aspects of our heritage--a heritage that may well be the most valuable thing we have, even as an economic asset.
But if we get the casino, it WILL bring disruptions, some personal and some communal. There is no doubt of that. Some of these disruptions are on the way even if we don't get a casino. The fact is that New York City is in an expansive mode, and we are as much in the way as if we were standing in the middle of Route 22. (Speaking of which, "improvements" are once again planned for this giant road, and it is believed these "improvements" will take 50 years.)
It takes an enormous amount of hubris to believe these "improvements" will be needed, wanted, or even possible over the long run. Hubris--and greed.
And not the only examples of such to be found in the current situation. A friend of mine last week attended a meeting in Lower Saucon, just east of the South Side of Bethlehem. He told me talk of "development" was wild. People spoke of driving low-income tenants out of their apartments and doubling, and even further increasing, the rent. They spoke of getting control of vast tracts of land, even land with houses on it whose owners don't want to sell. The plan is that, when the trap snaps, when the homeowners discover they've been caught up in a plot they knew nothing of, and the big hotels are ready to move in and build, they--the homeowners-- will be offered so much money they'll be more than happy to sell.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, "O brave new world, that has such evil in it."
I do not know how this will come out, but I fear it may take a terrible tragedy to avert a terrible tragedy. And THAT may be looking at things optimistically.

Please excuse my being a few hours late this week. I have been contemplating an extraordinary experience I had yesterday, when I would normally be writing this weekly message.
That special experience, which I would not have missed for the world, was a live performance by the Allentown Symphony Orchestra of Gustav Mahler's great Symhony No. 2, known as the "Resurrection" symphony for reasons unconnected with Easter.
It was stunning!
I have always believed that a mark of the good life in a particular place is the access its people have to music. All sorts of music, but especially classical music. This kind of music, to my mind, has a special spiritual content which attracts many even from other cultures. That is why even Japanese and Chinese cities have symphony orchestras, and in some cases opera companies; and audiences for them, too. Western classical music is far from the only music with spiritual content; but many find it indispensable. Everyone,in a civilized place, should have a chance to experience it.
Bethlehem's early Moravian founders understood this. Their Collegium Musicum was perhaps the first orchestra in Colonial America--at least in the English colonies. They had composers and instrument makers. They had the first performance in the United States of Haydn's "Creation;" and. much later, of Bach's B minor Mass. They now have the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, the Bethlehem Bach Festival, and of course many fine classical performers passing through Lehigh's Zoellner Arts Center and, to a far lesser extent, Musikfest.
But neither Bethlehem by itself nor the Lehigh Valley as a whole has ever been able to sustain a good classical orchestra for long. Now there is another chance--or rather, THREE other chances. For there are now three fine orchestras in the Valley, none in Bethlehem but all involving at least some Bethlehem people. All deserve the support, not only of Bethlehemites, but of those who care about Bethlehem.
The three are: the Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra, Donald Spieth, music director, www.lvco.org; the Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra, Allen Birney, music director, sinfonia@fast.net; and the Allentown Symphony Orchestra, Diane Witry, music director, allentownsymphony.org. This last I have personally heard come from being a pickup band, years ago, to being an ensemble capable of yesterday's incandescent Mahler performance.
My suggestion? Get in touch with one or all, find out what there is to hear, and find out how you can help get the word out.

It is edifying in some ways to watch competing forces struggling for the hearts, minds, and souls of Bethlehem and its residents. Nothing could do more to encourage the idea that the town and its people are worth the effort.
They are. But, however the struggle over casino gambling comes out, one group or another is going to feel the place is doomed, its fate sealed.
I know I will feel that way if the anti-gaming forces win. Yet I continue to be amazed by my own point of view. Decades ago I was asked to work at a bingo tent at the Carbon County fair before returning to college. Having every student's need, or at least desire, for more money, I accepted. It was a disquieting week. I could not fail to notice the glazed looks on the faces of some of the players. These people were not having fun; they were gambling the rent money, or whatever they could not afford to lose.
Would that happen here, with a casino? Yes, unfortunately. But it is already happening here, without the presence of a casino. The case of the Lehigh University student who was driven to rob a bank to pay his online poker debt illustrates this. People have always gambled, and will always gamble, wherever they are. The difference a casino will make to Bethlehem is to bring people here, to spend money and to supply jobs. We need jobs, so people can be fed, clothed, and educated; and not least so we can preserve at least part of the city's wonderful heritage.
It should be pointed out that there are no jobs, there is no potential economic development, without risk and without victims. The deaths caused by accidents at Bethlehem Steel and the railroads on the South Side--and, no doubt, by the zinc mills that were there earlier--cannot be written off as if they had never happened. Yet it is unlikely that anyone ever spoke against the steel company's presence in the Christmas City, at least purely on moral grounds.

NOTE ON ANOTHER WORK BY THE WRITER:
For those who have an interest in the Middle East, the memoir "Jerusalem Journal: Adventures In A Desert Landscape" is now available in a kind of preliminary edition. It may be had either as a print-on-demand book or as an ebook. For more information, go to http://lulu.com/campion1.