The first edition of the Bethlehem Press, Bethlehem's new weekly paper, is out now. I have not yet seen it, because it is delivered by mail. It goes without saying that I hope very much for its success. Bethlehem has struggled for years without a paper of its own, and without adequate coverage of what is going on here. And, heaven knows, we have had almost too much news for our own good. Let's hope the Press fills the gap. It could be--I believe it will be--very good. I will be writing history articles for it.
I am not going to stop doing the Blog Times, which I see as my personal commentary. Personal commentary is what the internet is all about.
As to the Bethlehem Press, if you want to know more about it, or to subscribe, click the Leave a Comment button (or whatever it says) and leave your name and address. Also questions, if you have any; I'll try to find out the answer if I can. The key question is always "How much?" I believe the answer to that is "$19 a year," which--if I am right--is a pretty good deal.
I'll have a subscription card sent to you, and you can follow up if you are so inclined.

I have just returned (that is, within the past several hours) from a meeting on traffic patterns in Southside Bethlehem in the brave new world that, we are assured, is soon to come. This was another of the series of very useful meetings on Southside issues that the Rev. Canon Joel Atkinson has been having at the Cathedral Church of the Nativity--my parish, and of course his.
Listening to the two city officials speak about traffic in Southside Bethlehem was deeply depressing; it was as if nothing has changed since former Mayor Gordon Payrow proposed, back in the 1970s, to plow the neighborhood under. Well, I don't remember that he was quite THAT explicit; but that seems to have been what he meant.
One of the speakers, a man from the public transportation system LANTA Metro, was able by definition to deal with ordinary human concerns about getting around. The two city officials struggled, did the best they could; but it was clear they were expected to solve a corporate problem--viz., how to jam as many trucks as possible through Southside streets.
Somebody said (I think it was Neale Donald Walsche) that in Hong Kong corporations have the vote. That's also true in the United States. It's just that we are not yet so overt about it. But I sometimes think that, already, corporations have the only votes that really count.
Some people at the meeting did get up and assert the historic importance of the neighborhood (which is a historic conservation district), the needs of pedestrians and bicyclists, and the fact that all this increased traffic is planned to be dumped on what is essentially a small town.
I sympathize with these citizens. Southside Bethlehem has been at my heart's core for decades, to the extent that I founded a historical society for it. This is not something one does lightly.
But I don't know how to help right now.

Yesterday or the day before I came upon one of former Bethlehem Mayor Don Cunningham's campaign flyers, put out in an effort to win the office of Lehigh County Executive.
Cunningham has always thriven, politically, on playing fast and loose with the truth. This flyer centers on his alleged good fiscal management of the city. He should be ashamed. WHAT good fiscal management?
It is true that from the beginning he had to face challenges like the sieve-like leaks in the Penn Forest water reservoir. A problem like this was not his fault. Mismanagement in Bethlehem seems to have gone back a long time, to well before today's strong-mayor form of government.
But, although much of today's $374-million city debt cannot be laid at his feet, neither can any apparent efforts on his part to seal the existing rift. Indeed, he added to it.
This was over the issue of the city landfill, an asset he was determined to sell--and did. These day I am mostly housebound, and find it out to get out to do research--but I remember this issue rather well, because I was involved in the controversy as an opponent of the landfill sale. I believed that, under new management, the facility could make money for Bethlehem for some years to come.
But Cunningham had his way, no doubt to please all those New Jersey investors in his career.
The trouble is, he messed up the transaction. So the city was fined a million dollars. I believe Bethlehem citizens are still paying it off, although at the time they seemed unaware that their mayor had committed such an expensive misstep.
Likely, they are still unaware.

Hello, Visitors. I would appreciate it if you sign the guest book, with a comment. I'd like to know who you are and what you think.
I hesitated a long time before starting a blog; if you have ever gone through a list of them, you will understand why. The internet is a refuge for people who have nothing to say, but who insist on saying it. They usually post one entry, which very often incorporates the word "sucks." More than once.
Naturally, one hesitates to be seen in such company. Yet there can be serious and important reasons to have a blog. And one can handle the matter with dignity and good linguistic taste.
For more than 30 years now, I have lived in and around the historic and cherishable old town of Bethlehem, PA. I have thought that chronicling the sometimes disturbing changes in its life is worth doing, especially because disturbing changes are a more or less universal theme in the world these days. For me, and I suppose for others involved with the city, what happens here is a kind of paradigm--other places may learn from the experience, and perhaps avoid the worst dangers. For that matter, perhaps Bethlehem itself can avoid the worst dangers.
But to do that requires knowledge; and this has been very hard for citizens to get. Few people seem to realize that Bethlehem is in very serious fiscal difficulties; and why? Because the papers and other media have not told them about it, at least in any intelligible way. When Councilwoman Jean Belinski told off a list of the city's obligations and the limited resources available to pay for them, the information was not carried by the Allentown paper. When I called the Allentown bureau office of that paper to ask why, my call was not returned.
When I wrote a letter to the editor on a related theme, the letter was edited into mush.But this is so usual a happening that I am beginning to refer to that paper's letters to the editor column as the "letters from the edited" column. I have no plans to send anything there in the future. At least potentially, having a blog means never being suppressed again. And it CAN mean being useful to society in some small measure.
As to the name of my blog--Some may remember that Bethlehem once had a very fine paper named the Globe-Times. I was a freelancer for that paper, which did more for the city than is usually appreciated.
I still miss it; and "The Bethlehem Blog Times" is a kind of left-handed tribute to its memory.

For a long time people have been talking about hydrogen as the fuel of the future, post-petroleum world. The trouble is that little if anything has been done about making the transition. I am sure the word "hydrogen" has seldom if ever crossed the lips of George W. Bush and Dick Cheyney since those two noted oilmen took over the direction of the U.S. government--not that much had been done about it before. Looking back, I can't remember whether hydrogen technology figured in the plans of Jimmy Carter, the last President to pay serious attention to energy problems.
His preoccupation didn't get Carter much.
Now, maybe, it's different. As an environmentalist--as someone deeply concerned about the future--I hope so. Perhaps the consequences of the current, tragic hurricane season include a new seriousness about our energy future. And why shouldn't the Lehigh Valley, which is between industries so to speak, play a part in this new future? Why can't a center for hydrogen research and development be part of the mix at the old Bethlehem Steel site, which could hold so many good things?
John Stoffa, Democratic candidate for Northampton County executive, thinks this is an idea whose time has come. He has held a news conference at the grave of Eugene Gifford Grace, famed second chairman of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, to present the concept to reporters.
I think this idea by itself would justify the election of Stoffa as County Executive; and I wish I did not live just a few yards outside of Northampton County these days--I would get up very early to vote for him.