September 20, 2005
Living in the past is always tempting around here. We have, after all, a lot of past to live in--more than three centuries' worth.
I could not have gone to what I am sure must have been the mob scene of the city council vote on gambling; no place for people with walkers or canes, I am sure. And I still don't know how that came out. For that matter, there is a second vote to come, on October 4; and perhaps the losers tonight will work themselves up into a frenzy trying to get this original vote reversed.What is at stake here is a proposed zoning ordinance banning casinos on the former Bethlehem Steel land.
Anyway, I went with the artist Ken Raniere to the annual meeting of my South Bethlehem Historical Society, with which I have been at odds almost since I returned from Carbon County--that has to be well over a decade now.
The meeting was held in a chilly, noisy, barren room at the Forte Building, a former mill that is now low-income housing. (And, persistent rumor has it, a hub for drug dealers and users.)
Yet it was a very pleasant meeting. The group now seems to have some very intelligent program ideas, and maybe it IS time for us to join Historic Bethlehem Partnership--even though I well remember the snobbery we encountered with the Collegium. Still, the Northsiders now seem to need us more than we need them; and Professor Beall Fowler of HBP seemed to recognize that. At least, he spoke to us with respect.
The city needs us all.That truly is the way of it, and the more people recognize it the better off we will be.
It was our 20th anniversary meeting, and I was pleased to be richly acknowledged for founding the society in a special edition of the newsletter, and also during the meeting. This made up for many years of snubbing.
Tomorrow I learn what the citizens' representatives have done, and where we go from here.

Tonight and tomorrow night are likely to be pivotal in the history of Bethlehem, for good or ill. The issue is whether casino gambling should be allowed to come to town. The self-styled "righteous" are vocally, frighteningly against this, although both sides of the city are full of video poker machines and state lottery outlets. We evil-minded ones who favor the coming of casino gambling are far less certain of our standing than are our opponents.
What some of us DO know is that, due to long-term mismanagement, Bethlehem may be on the verge of bankruptcy, with all that would entail in terms of lost and catastrophically cut services, impossibly high taxes...
Most citizens do NOT know this. Otherwise more of them would surely favor the gambling option as the lesser of two evils--the only options the citizenry has been offered.
And WHY does the population not have this vital information on the state of the city? Frankly, because the papers have not seen fit to give it to them.
Anyway, tonight the city council will meet in the auditorium of Broughal Middle School, which no doubt will be packed with people wanting to fire off one last opinion. Tomorrow night the same scenario, only at Town Hall and with fewer people.
And at the end of that, they vote.
Stay tuned.

September 19, 2005
When I first came to Bethlehem,Pennsylvania--more than 30 years ago now--I was bedazzled. It seemed to have everything I had ever wanted in a place to live: history, music, a veneer of culture--all of which had been conspicuously lacking in my former place of residence.
And that was just half of it. There was also the great Wagnerian mill of Bethlehem Steel, which had played so vital a part in winning the World Wars of the twentieth century; and there was the fabulous South Side, where lived the members of the 50-plus ethnic groups who had come to America to work in that mill.This was a neighborhood where you could hear half a dozen languages during a short walk. At least, that was true when I came to town; nowadays it's pretty much down to Spanish and English.
I enjoyed it all. As far as possible, I still do. But I have been here long enough to have seen through to the town's imperfections. (Every place has them, after all. Where is the town that has no graft or mismanagement in its government, no drugs in its schools, no racial or social tensions? It wouldn't be Bethlehem. I am almost tempted to say it wouldn't be interesting. Problems are meant to be solved, and to stand as challenges until they are. And Bethlehem most certainly has problems.)
The difference between the problems of the past and those of today, at least as far as I am concerned, is my shuddery feeling that today's may be insoluble. After 9/11, the Tsunami, and now Katrina, not to mention the Iraq war, people seem frozen in denial and a sense of helplessness. And that is true as well, not only in world and national affairs, but in local ones.