The time is ripe to return to the history of Bethlehem history.
Readers of one of the newspapers covering Bethlehem are by now aware that the apparent intent of the Historic Bethlehem Partnership is not to merge with, so much as to eat, the South Bethlehem Historical Society. And as soon as possible. This cannot easily be dismissed as a matter of my opinion; it is the opinion of a great many intelligent people, both those directly involved and those who are only observing from the sidelines.
But why? It is hard to know; HBP has tried for months to keep the matter under wraps, and that in itself raises questions. To put it simply, if their plans are honorable, why not hold a press conference and, with joy and pride, make them public?
Could the northside organization need money? Very likely. It has a couple of buildings down in the Monocacy Creek valley, and in the past few years flooding has become unusually frequent down there--perhaps not as frequent as it is going to be if global warming is indeed part of our present and our future.
All this flooding requires cleaning up; and this does cost money--enough, perhaps, to keep HBP officials awake nights. But how is gaining access to the South Bethlehem Historical Society's few tens of thousands of dollars going to change much? That amount of money, it seems, would be very little help against the ocean--or rather, creek--of HBP's needs. And there is the additional inconvenience that much of SBHS's money came to that organization as bequests, with which to do South Side history. That moral obligation remains, even if both HBP and the current (and singularly unqualified) SBHS board choose to violate it.
If HBP needs money, I have a better idea for them. Do what the great old South Side entrepreneurs did, and put in your own money, Ladies and Gentlemen. This is how Lehigh was built--and saved. This is how St. Luke's was built.
At least some HBP associates are known to be very wealthy. Why shouldn't they find a way to establish an endowment for the north side historical organization, to tide it over difficult times? It seems more sensible than trying to make "affiliates" (read: appetizers) of other historical organizations--and especially since it seems SBHS is the only good candidate for affiliation. Eat this, and the meal's over.
But in the last analysis, this is not about money. This is about power. This is about a small group saying that only the parts of history it favors are important. If it should be proved otherwise, as in this case it has been, the group that seeks to dominate will attempt to extend its reach. Now that it realizes that--contrary to its expectations--Southside Bethlehem history really is important, HBP is attempting to see to it that it, and only it, can work on the South Side.
I think HBP and the current members of the SBHS board will achieve the destruction of the South Side organization. Too bad, since for me that represents a considerable portion of my life's work; but I can live with the loss.
What HBP will never do is achieve control over South Bethlehem history.

(Check out Berengaria's other blog, In Search of Healing, at http://www.insearchofhealing.blogstream.com)

Probably thousands of us have received a mailing from Congressman Charlie Dent, on the subject of illegal immigration. It contained the regulation rigged questionaire--these days, all politicians send their constituents questionaires designed to draw forth the answers they themselves want to hear.
I agree with the Congressman that illegal immigration is a very grave problem that must be solved. If we are overwhelmed by undocumented newcomers we will be of no further help, either to ourselves or to others.
But one element of the Republican Congressional ideas the Congressman seems to be pushing seems to me to be vindictive and short-sighted.
That is to bar anyone who is already here illegally from any possible consideration for U.S. citizenship. People who want to be considered are expected to go back and "wait their turn." For the politically and religiously persecuted, this day may never come. Those who are here without papers have indeed broken the law, and in that sense are "illegal." However, there ARE often extentuating circumstances for breaking laws, and in mercy--and even true justice--these circumstances need to be taken into account where they exist.
Bethlehem is a city made up of immigrants and their descendants. Most of these people, from the Moravians on, were not welcome to those who were here before. (Check with the Leni Lenape leader Teedyuscung on the subject of Moravian missionaries.)
In the philosophical sense, we are all alien to somebody else. We could all be rejected by somebody else, to our own destruction.
Let us remember this, before we agree to automatically cast others into outer darkness.
I believe only illegal immigrants who commit felonies while they are in the country should be barred from citizenship.

Someone has written that for every difficult question there is one best answer, and that someone has already written a book about it. Seems logical to me.
I have not written a book about the best answer to the illegal immigration problem, nor do I know what book that may be, or where it might be found. But I think I know what the best answer would be--or would have been. I think a lot of us DO know that answer; and the problem now is that it may be too late to go back to where we can apply it. (Maybe somebody can write a book about just that, about redeeming the time.There does not seem to be any obvious way to rewind, does there?)
The answer would be--or would have been--for the United States to support the right kind of governments and organizations around the world. These would be, or would have been, governments and organizations who considered it their primary duty to provide a good life for their citizens or constituents--decent jobs, basic human and civil rights, good education, food, and health care, in no particular order. In societies served by such governments and purveyors of services people might still travel, but for pleasure. Not the least of which would be getting home again; because if you live in a place you like and care about, where you are treated with respect and decency, you will want to spend most of your time there.
How do we get back to where we can make up for all we have left undone? Never forgetting, by the way, that our omission has not been neutral. Many have died because of what we failed to do, as much as if we had acted directly against them.
This brings me home to the Lehigh Valley and Bethlehem, definitely an at-risk spot on the map of the world. (As, no doubt, are all spots in these times.)
I have just learned that Bethlehem has been named to somebody-or-other's list of America's 100 most liveable cities of its size range. People are drawn by the arts and entertainment, educational opportunities, and apparently more than anything by the "commutable" distance to major metropolitan cities. Which means--and I am not the first to say this, nor am I saying it for the first time--within a few years we stand to lose many of the wonderful things which make our home a place that draws newcomers.
It would be very hard--in fact, blatantly un-Constitutional--to try to prevent American citizens or legal residents from coming here. It would also be just about impossible to weed out the illegal newcomers, who have no official papers, from the others.
As usual, this influx could have been planned for in a serious way. Our leaders and planners could have decided what sort of jobs we needed to have, what sort of infrastructure needed to be available; and also--unthinkable idea!--what sort of limits might be necessary. (By, for example, zoning, which could be used to control the size of the population and protect our natural resources.)
In what has become the Great American Tradition of Procrastination (which in turn replaced the Can-Do Tradition of World War II), nothing seems to have been done.
I do not give up easily. And I'd like to know, What can we do to redeem the situation, here where we live, and now?

Thank you to the person--evidently an attorney--who wrote to point out that the law (or ordinance) recently passed in Hazleton to curb illegal aliens will be used by xenophobes and bigots against people who might even seem to fall into the illegal alien categories. I don't want to distort what the writer wrote, but unfortunately I was unable to print it out. If I am right, you should be able to click a button somewhere on the blog and read his/her comments.
The writer kindly allowed that I myself may not be a bigot or xenophobe (Thank you for allowing that possibility!), but that it is naive to think the legislation will not be misused.
Well, I don't think of myself as a bigot or xenophobe--more of a Franklin Roosevelt type liberal, and actually almost old enough to have known FDR personally. (Just a little joke. I DID once correspond with his wife, Eleanor, who corresponded right back. I kept the letter for years.)
I don't think Mayor Barletta is any more of a bigot or xenophobe than I am, although I admit that here I am on shaky ground. I don't know the man personally, and what I am going on is his online letter--I hope it is still there; if it is, go and read it. He comes across as a dedicated public servant, trying hard to do his job for the people who elected him, and to do that job against increasing odds, with limited resources. (He also appointed a poet laureate for Hazleton, and I think that should count in his favor. After all, how many lovers of poetry do you know who are raving bigots? Or even mild ones, for that matter.)
I remember when, according to the news staff of WVIA-FM, a regional public radio station whose coverage area includes Hazleton, some Spanish-speaking newcomers came to him and asked him to hire Spanish-speaking police, presumably to protect them from other speakers of Spanish. (The language does not matter here; it could have been any language from Albanian to Vietnamese. It is the principle that matters; and that principle is that one should try not to impose extra burdens and expenses on the authorities of a place where one is living.)
Now, let us get to the whole matter of names like "bigots" and "xenophobes." I feel that these are tentacles of that great enemy of us all, Political Correctness. The fraudulent idea that no words that hurt anyone should ever be spoken (except, of course, about or to people who disagree with what pass for our own ideas) has done much to prevent the solution of America's problems. And do we have problems! What with war in the Middle East, global warming, and so forth, illegal immigration almost looks like the least of them. It isn't, really, because it is too easy to imagine this problem--or some combination of all of them--bringing down the fabric of society around our ears. That fabric already seems to me to be very frayed. Don't let's count people out of efforts to find solutions by calling them names.
(You are about to say, are you not? that I myself am still calling newcomers to the United States who happen to lack documentation by the "bad" name of illegal aliens. But I don't think of it as a "bad name;" I think of it as a descriptive phrase. That many of these people have suffered from various kinds of persecution in their homelands I also know, and regret very much. For these people the term "refugees" also applies.
But we cannot solve their problem unless we can solve our problem: in this case, what to do about the hordes of newcomers to our shores? Assimilate them, send them back, assimilate some and send the others back? Or what?
I believe Mayor Lou Barletta should be credited with taking action, and reasonable action in the face of his and his city's problems. He is not trying to deny any hard-working and teachable immigrant access to the American Dream. What he is trying to do is prevent that dream from becoming a nightmare for those who were born in this country. They, too, have human rights.

Possibly not since September 11, 2001 has an American mayor attracted as much attention as Hazleton's mayor Lou Barletta. The only possible exception might be Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans. But both New York's former mayor Rudolf Giuliani and Mayor Nagin had the advantage, if you want to call it that, of leading great American cities caught in the throes of terrible tragedy. It was hard for them to avoid media attention, even had they wanted to.
Lou Barletta is different. Mayor of a former coal mining town of not much more than 30 thousand, Barletta decided to stand up and be counted on a vital public issue: illegal immigration. And he and Hazleton have now done so, by passing a law designed to make it very hard on illegal immigrants who come there.
Is the mayor--and is his city--right to have done so? It remains to be seen what the courts will say, of course; yet I know a number of people whose instinctive response to their actions is an emphatic, "Yes!"
In an open letter which can be read online, Mayor Barletta has made it clear that he--like most of us, a descendant of immigrants--does not oppose people coming to the United States legally, in search of the fabled opportunities of America. But he as mayor has been faced with rising crime, demands for bilingual police, and a populace living in fear, plus great additional municipal expenses, all caused by people who have no respect for American values and no legal right to be in the country.
He takes pains, too, to make clear that, when it comes to language, it is not Spanish he is opposed to, but the expense of forcing the government to function in ANY second language. In effect, he asks, if one additional language, then why not a second, a third, a fourth, and so on? Residents who know, or who have experienced, the history of Bethlehem will know just what he means. Once the city was largely German-speaking, a distinction it gradually gave up in favor of fuller participation in American life. At one time, too, members of at least 50 ethnic groups lived on the South Side of Bethlehem. This implies that at least 50 languages must have been spoken there--including, by the way, Spanish. There were at least a few people from each of most of the Central and South American countries from the early years of the neighborhood; and there were quite a few Mexicans in particular.
But none of the 50 plus South Side languages was proposed as a second language for the city, let alone the country. And why not? Because it was acknowledged that if newcomers sought to be in the United States, it was for benefits the United States had to confer--such as safety from oppression, and economic opportunities. To gain those benefits they needed to learn to some extent to fit in; and that meant learning the language of the country--English. Unless we want to have the kind of linguistic and cultural divisiveness that they have in Canada, it should still mean English. What people speak to each other is their business; but at work and in dealing with the government it must be English. It can't be an undoable challenge. Your ancestors learned it, and so did mine.
Taking one consideration with another, as they used to say, what Mayor Lou Barletta is trying to accomplish makes a lot of sense to me. What do you think?