The question has been raised by more than one person I know: How can slots be tolerated at historic places, such as Bethlehem and Gettysburg? Beyond that, how can one person (this writer, for example) be for a slots parlor in one of these precious places and not in the other?
My answer to that is that I believe a slots parlor will destroy the nature of one place, but may save the other.
To put it bluntly, I'd as soon put a slots parlor in Arlington National Cemetery as at Gettysburg. The idea of even putting such a thing there, where so many thousands suffered and died for their disparate visions of the American future, strikes me as obscene. Not only that--it is hard to avoid the impression that the would-be Gettysburg developers chose that town, rather than some other pleasant central Pennsylvania town, because they KNEW the proposition of building such a thing there was obscene. Their proposal is, perhaps, a measure of how far America's spirit and values have fallen. It deserves to be fought tooth and nail.
Why should I feel so differently about the Bethlehem area, where I have lived for so many years? It is because a casino would play a different role here. Bethlehem began as a City In The Wilderness, a center of spiritual development and mission work. It has retained much of its spirituality, but its role relative to the society of which it is part has changed.
No longer is the city a settlement of one church; its people trace their origins to many nations, and belong to many churches and religions. So that, instead of a limited palette, we have rich multiple hues. I submit that many colors are in this case better than one, or only a few.
But we are at the point at which many of the things that have made Bethlehem individual and special are in danger. Many of those things have to do with the giant industry that, far more than the Moravian settlement, made the city famous. When people from our city have traveled around the world, it has been Bethlehem Steel, far more than anything else, that they have been asked about.
The Steel site is likely the only site of its kind left in the world. I understand that the steel mills of Germany are far different from our blast furnaces. The blast furnaces and the buildings that surround them are a kind of industrial Stonehenge, a monument to a vanished way of life that, for all its limitations and the genuine horrors it perpetrated, also did many magnificent things.
I believe that, without the casino, Bethlehem as we have known it, in all its ethnic and cultural richness,is doomed. And this great world-class monument, so unmistakable a symbol of the city's special greatness, will be doomed first of all.
So far, nobody has offered a better prospect of preserving at least a memory of the essence of this small, remarkable place than have the BethWorks people. And that is why, unless someone has a better idea very soon, I am for a slots parlor on the banks of the Lehigh. Right here at Bethlehem.

(Please Note: Henceforth I will be posting here every Sunday. I'd have started this schedule next week, except that the news of Senator Jeannette Reibman's passing pushed the matter to the front of my agenda.)

It is always too bad to lose someone of Senator Reibman's caliber, especially since they seem to be making relatively few of them any more. I remember being in high school when an interesting thing happened in neighboring Northampton County--that is, a woman was elected to serve in the state legislature, where in fact she became the first woman speaker of the house. I found my attention drawn to her sporadically through the years, as she became the first woman elected to serve a full term in the state senate, and challenged unsuccessfully for the United States Senate and the House of Representatives.
She championed all the "women's issues," by which I mean issues that deal particularly with the survival of civilization as we have known it--things like education and the arts. Because of her political adroitness, she was enormously successful in promoting her causes, which also included the cause of working people.
I had the luck to make her personal acquaintance when I served briefly as a member of the Bethlehem and Northampton County Democratic Committees. Little as I ever knew her, and unimportant as I was, I found her friendly and outgoing, with a special charisma that accounted for her high standing with voters. I imagine she was not as friendly toward those who opposed her political purposes; she reminded me, because of her achievements, of the old phrase "iron fist in velvet glove." (Although, come to think of it, I doubt if she ever made an actual fist. She came across as a lady.)
I last saw her in the mid-fall of 2004,when she, her late husband Nathan Reibman, a friend of mine and I happened to be in Southside Bethlehem's Bridgeworks Restaurant at the same time. At that point she had been retired for 10 years; yet to my astonishment she looked as well and seemed as mentally alert as she had ever been.
And that's the way she will stay in my mind.

This blog is going on vacation until the writer has more time.

On Monday, for the first time in many years, I attended a school board meeting. There were many reasons for the long lapse--part of the time I was out of town, writing either "In The Lion's Mouth" or "Smokestacks And Black Diamonds." Most of the time I simply found other local issues more compelling than school issues.
This time, though, as the founder of the South Bethlehem Historical Society, I bestirred myself to get there. My intent was to put in a word in a last-ditch effort to save historic Broughal Middle School, which the board plans to raze.
Predictably, I made no headway with them. Having made a wrong-headed decision, they merely recommitted themselves to it. With the money they could save by an intelligent redesign of the old school, they probably could supply each and every child in the district with a laptop computer. This is a goal that seems highly important to them, but not important enough for them to call off their historical depredations.
Getting to this meeting was well over half the challenge. It was held in the school district's offices in the former Edgeboro School, a building with no elevator. Two flights of stairs--perhaps a total of 40 to 60 steps, separated by a landing--led up to the meeting room. Hard going indeed for a person with a prosthesis and a walker.
There was some nasty discussion (initiated by me) over this fact. The Powers That Are apologized, claiming they did not know I was coming. My contention was--and is--that they had to ASSUME that either I was coming, or that some other disabled citizen was coming. If the Americans With Disabilities Act still means anything, it means THAT.
I will be going back whenever it seems necessary and potentially useful.

Hello. A combination of general holiday downtime (we ARE in the vicinity of America's Christmas City, after all), my own technological ineptitude, and my need for personal downtime, all have contributed to scant postings lately. My apologies. I intend to pick it up now, all things being equal; and I also intend to start another blog, this one having to do with health and wellness. In this new one I hope to share what useful things I have learned in my battle with diabetes and other health problems. Also, I hope to learn from readers--and to pass on to other readers--things they have discovered to be useful in keeping or regaining health.
So stay tuned for that; and meanwhile, let us contnue our delayed consideration of what will become of Bethlehem. Which way to the future?
Can the place survive with a casino? Can it survive without one? Who will replace the powerful State Representative T.J. Rooney, and what difference will that make?
We'll talk about these things beginning tomorrow.