Month: March 2019

a class-based parking system (16)

Breena Holland is an Associate Professor at Lehigh University in the Department of Political Science and the Environmental Initiative. She is a past and current director of Lehigh University’s South Side Initiative.

(16th in a series of posts on Lehigh University)

Gadfly, Thanks for your attention to this ongoing issue. I have one point of clarification.

When Mr. Stellato asked where the 124 cars would go, and the response was a nearby garage, there are two options that come to mind. First, the top floors of the garage behind Maginnes Hall are currently reserved for students, and I think they plan to eliminate the student parking there so that the entire lot can go to faculty and staff.

Second, there is oodles of space in the new Benner Garage on New Street. I’m talking about the garage for which there was not a demonstrated parking demand, but which was built anyway with publicly backed bonds, in order to accommodate Dennis Benner’s desire to have parking for his new building at the corner of 3rd and New Street, which is now attached to the garage by a glass walkway built over a public greenspace. Now it would appear that the garage was built in part to accommodate Lehigh University’s need for new parking spaces. Of course, none of this was admitted at the time, although the University never opposed the construction of the garage, which is oversized and attached to an oversized building — completely out of scale with the Historic District.

So as long as you are trying to determine the impact of the new parking scheme on low-income folks, you really need to consider the imposition of a poorly located garage attached to an oversized building that has really just destroyed a key gateway to the south side, making it look like an ugly institutional setting rather than a historic city. And the developer continues to ignore the restrictions put on the building, backed by 5 members of city council who will apparently let him get away with anything, and a mayor who is willing to take the blame for anything the guy does wrong.

This garage, which will likely be at least half full of Lehigh University parkers, brings a lot of traffic right into the heart of downtown Bethlehem. It has created a canyon effect on the New Street and on the greenway, and because it has its own fancy restaurant (a destination in itself) and coffeeshop on site, it does not appear to be helping the local businesses much at all. Why would people leave the building when they can get everything they need on site and then take a glass walkway to their cars in the new garage?

As you know, the Bethlehem Parking Authority went into significant debt to build this garage for Benner and (apparently) Lehigh. The consequence is that everyone’s parking rates and fines will be raised. We knew this at the time and argued that the primary user of the garage should pay for it, since the parking study did not convincingly show demand for it. The inequity starts there.

In order to address the problem you raise, of the remaining need for parking pushing lower income people at Lehigh to the north side lot, parking fees at Lehigh should be attached to salary, so it is just as easy as my department coordinator to pay for a spot in the garage outside her office as it is for me.

Leave it to Lehigh to cook up a class-based parking system, rather one that is equitable.

Best, Breena

Still seeking info from Lehigh (15)

(15th in a series of posts on Lehigh University)
Monday, March 4, 2019

Brent, Darlene, and members of the Planning Commission (except Ms. Cohen, for whom I do not have a permissible email)

To reiterate my comments at the 2/21 Planning meeting. I am concerned that Lehigh’s decision to do substantial building on parking lots might negatively affect low income Lehigh faculty and staff and contract workers for Sodexo, BrightView, and etc. — people who may be Bethlehem residents and taxpayers.

The attached document was distributed to the Lehigh community in September. I attended three follow-up sessions on campus. I had personal contact with Mark Ironside and the Lehigh Transportation manager in November.

Contrary to the impression given by the Lehigh lawyer 2/21, there was no doubt in any of these documents, meetings, and contacts that Lehigh was using a “Northside Commuter Lot” at 123 W. Lehigh St., and running a bus from there to Farrington Square on lower campus.

The Lehigh lawyer 2/21 made the point that Lehigh has no lease for northside parking, making it sound as if there was no plan for Lehigh people to park there at all. Given the knowledge and experience I had, frankly, I was rather dumbfounded. I checked with BPA. Indeed, there is no lease. But there was/is no question in any of the documents, meetings, contacts about use of that lot.

Take a look at the attached document. Lehigh is losing 518 spaces, partially making up that loss to “respond to a reduction in parking supply” by utilizing 150 spaces in a “Northside Commuter Lot.” There, in black and white, is what I have been focusing on.

The clear impression I have is that the Northside Commuter Lot is necessary. Some people might choose to park free there and take the bus or walk the 3/4 mile to campus. That’s good. Yes, Mr. Malozi, Lehigh has an ambitious and laudable walking and public transportation plan. But I am concerned about those who will be bumped or forced off-campus by inability to pay the $500 on-campus parking fee or simply lack of space for everybody on campus.

For it looks to me there will be a kind of hop-scotch going on. Mr. Stellato cogently asked where the cars displaced at 124 will go. The answer was to the nearby Lehigh parking garage. But then the follow-up question should have been, where will the cars in that now-filled lot go?

There may be no problem. I am simply seeking clarity. At a Planning meeting last year, Lehigh said all displaced parking would be absorbed on campus. I questioned that, and it was so affirmed. Then, to the contrary, comes the Northside Commuter Lot in documents and meetings by Lehigh itself.. So that statement does not seem to have been true. And now the Lehigh lawyer made it sound, frankly, that I was making up the plan to use the lot. As if it were not clearly in the documentation and in the air during conversations among affected persons on campus.

The new Lehigh parking plan is to be rolled out in April. I think the city needs to know whether lower-income Bethlehem residents and tax payers might be unfairly impacted.

There may indeed be no problem, no issue. Many contract workers work after 4PM, for instance, and can park on campus. Maybe many contract workers already walk or take the bus or car pool.

My question(s) might be easily answered. These matters might have been thoroughly thought through. I think we should hear the answers. But it seems to me like Lehigh is avoiding.

At the previous Planning meeting where I brought this issue up, the Lehigh lawyer at that time (a different one) and I ended in an almost comical cliched stand-off. He said Lehigh had done everything right legally. I said there’s a difference between law and concern for people.

How will Lehigh’s new parking plan affect low income Lehigh faculty and staff and contract workers for Sodexo, BrightView, and etc?

I will write about this later in the week on Gadfly, in case anyone would like to respond before then.

Be well–

ED

Climate watch: March 3

(The latest in a series of posts relating to the environment, Bethlehem’s Climate Action Plan, Bethlehem’s Environmental Advisory Council)

Interesting day on the climate front —

CBS: 60 Minutes (March 3, 2019): Juliana v. the United States

“Of all the cases working their way through the federal court system none is more interesting or potentially more life changing than Juliana v. United States. To quote one federal judge, “This is no ordinary lawsuit.” It was filed back in 2015 on behalf of a group of kids who are trying to get the courts to block the U.S. government from continuing the use of fossil fuels. They say it’s causing climate change, endangering their future and violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property. When the lawsuit began hardly anyone took it seriously, including the government’s lawyers, who have since watched the Supreme Court reject two of their motions to delay or dismiss the case. Four years in, it is still very much alive, in part because the plaintiffs have amassed a body of evidence that will surprise even the skeptics and have forced the government to admit that the crisis is real.”

“Your View by 15 Lehigh professors: We really do need to worry about climate change — and act.” Morning Call, March 3, 2019.

“Climate has been in the news, thanks to the release of several concerning reports, plus reactions to the proposed Green New Deal. Our Lehigh colleague in Economics, Tony O’Brien, recently published an opinion piece in these pages (Feb. 17) in which he claimed that climate-change impacts won’t be very bad, so there’s no need to go all-in on the Green New Deal, and that a nonideological view suggests a carbon tax is the far better approach. We’d actually agree that a carbon tax would be one important part of an effective climate policy, but what motivates us to write is concern over widespread misunderstandings of the earth system and how it pertains to people and society, misunderstandings that happen to be well illustrated in O’Brien’s column.”

Inslee for America

Gov. Jay Inslee has formally announced for the presidency with basically climate change his sole position. Click on his initial campaign video on the top page of his web site.

Let’s keep climate change and our Climate Action Plan on our radar.

It’s Monday, March 4, do you know where your local Climate Action Plan is?

H.D.’s “sifted” Moravians (7)

(7th in a series of posts on H.D.)

Finding H.D.: A Community Exploration of the Life and Work of Hilda Doolittle

The next event in this year-long series is “Challenging Limited Understandings of Gender and Sexuality” by Lehigh University’s Mary Foltz, next Wednesday, March 6, 6:30-8 at the Bethlehem Area Public Library.

Here again is the full recording of Prof. Craig Atwood’s lecture on “H.D.’s Moravian Roots in Bethlehem” last Tuesday.

After a general introduction, Lehigh University Seth Moglen’s introduction to Craig’s lecture begins at min. 4:25, Craig’s lecture itself begins at min. 6:27, and the Q ‘n A session begins at min. 1:05:00.

Gadfly is revisiting Craig’s lecture in slices. In the 2nd slice (approx. mins 20 – 40), Craig reviews Moravian history and brings it up to the point of its influence on H.D.

Gadfly is a bit ashamed to say that he doesn’t know as much about the Moravians as he should. But he bets he is not alone. Some of what Craig covered in this 2nd slice of his lecture, we probably know. But for Gadfly key things are new: a radical religion, a controversial religion, the “Sifting Time” in which controversial elements are suppressed, H.D.’s attraction to those original “bad” elements, an island in the Monocacy named “Wunden Eiland,” a suppressed liturgy called “the Litany of the Wounds.”

Fire up the audio, and listen along!

Here are Gadfly’s “class notes” on mins. 20-40:

  • claims to be the oldest Protestant church — 1457
  • originally named the Brotherhood, Unitas Fratrum, destroyed by religious persecution, kept alive by some in exile
  • resurrected at the time of Zinzendorf, first Protestant church that was not an ethnic church
  • founded Herrnhutt, founded a community
  • missionary thrust
  • one of the most controversial movements of the time
  • the first Protestant missionaries to Africans and Native Americans
  • socially egalitarian, gender inclusive, multi-lingual, multi-racial, multi-cultural
  • answered William Penn’s call of possibility of religious toleration
  • in Bethlehem created the Moravian ideal community: religious commune
  • members taken care of from the womb to the tomb
  • challenged many of the norms of Western society
  • Aristocrats slept alongside of commoners
  • loved art and music
  • one of the most elevated musical cultures in colonial America 017
  • elaborate worship and rituals, candles, singing (crypto-Catholic)
  • H.D. saw all of this
  • settled down into typical Protestant sect by H.D.’s time but had radical heritage
  • period in 1740s called the “Sifting Time,” period of crisis
  • become conservative evangelicals, anti-Zinzendorf
  • destroyed many of the documents of the time
  • what was sifted naturally intrigued H.D.
  • took things normal for Moravians world-wide and make then unacceptable
  • lot of founding vision is buried: Motherhood of the Holy Spirit, the feminine nature of the human souls, the bloody wounds of Christ, etc.
  • H.D. sees echoes in her current Moravian practice lost on others
  • H.D. rejected thinking of others that certain original beliefs were pathological
  • H.D. believed Moravian spirituality symbolized by the lamb was the heart of Moravianism and true religion, the pacifist Lamb who triumphs despite being killed
  • the other great Moravian symbol is the chalice, the sacred cup, a feminine image
  • H.D. felt that Moravians united masculine and feminine aspects of divinity and  humanity and when this was done war would come to an end
  • the war she knew of was toxic masculinity, and it would only be when men and women discovered their masculine and feminine natures together that war would end
  • all of the repulsive imagery of the bleeding side of Christ was for H.D. the prayer that reaches Heaven because it’s the wounded Christ who restores the balance between masculine and feminine
  • “Island of Wounds” the Wunden Eiland, in the Monocacy creek, believed it was shaped like the side wound of Christ
  • Single Brothers would gather there after dark for singing and other rituals
  • in her autobiographical narrative The Gift, England, where she was living in the early 1940s during the war, becomes the Wunden Eiland
  • The Gift ends with sharing a ritual from 200 years earlier: “The Litany of the Wounds”

“it’s time to rethink how to share the news”

Although she’s lived in Bethlehem for almost 20 years, Carol Burns’ new career as a freelance marketer is giving her an opportunity to “discover” her hometown. She volunteers for several arts-related organizations, and her newest adventure is dipping her toe into local politics and community organizations.

Thanks Gadfly — agree 100%! I came across last year’s [the Mayor’s “State of the City] address (by accident/happenstance) on the city website, and I was stunned to learn all the news he shared (I see as I’m typing this that you also have it linked on your blog :).

I’m guessing the venue/audience was changed to the Chamber in response to low interest/low attendance, but I agree it’s time to rethink how to share the news. Can we think, “get a better quality video” and make available to view, maybe at the Library — or “get a decent audio” and make it a podcast (hey, the Library has a new set-up for making podcasts). Either/both could be available on the city’s website and social (in fact, all the city departments’ different social accounts should push it out, for better distribution). And — radical thought — include a QR code to link to audio/video with a short article in the next (boring/boring-looking) city newsletter.

Carol

 

“one heck of an expensive breakfast!”

Gadfly:

Here is a thought about this event [the Mayor’s “State of the City” address]. Why not do it in Town Hall where it can be live-streamed? Then it can be watched live and stored on the City’s website with a link for anyone who wants to view it. And, for FREE!

How many City officials will attend, pay their $49 or $99, whatever the cost, and then submit it to the City for reimbursement? That is just plain wrong that Bethlehem taxpayers should be on the hook for any costs associated with a speech to which they should have unfettered access. And, at $49 (which is the cost several people have quoted to me who won’t be attending), that’s one heck of an expensive breakfast!

We go to the Hotel Bethlehem’s Sunday brunch several times a year, and you’ll get a far better selection of food at much less the cost.

Dana

$49 if you are a Chamber member, $99 if you are a “Future Member.” Curious, see below, I just noticed the wording. It’s as if the general public is NOT invited. Even at $99, Gadfly would have to pretend he was joining the Chamber.
——————-

Chamber

 

A modest proposal: dressing up the Address

(4th in a series of modest proposals)

Gadfly is a shy guy, doesn’t like spectacle (wink, wink, to you-know-who-you-are), spent his academic life with the American Puritans and Pilgrims (“plain people”), distrusts politicians who live to talk (Stephen Crane called them “wind demons”), but, curiously, he wishes he heard more from Mayor Donchez.

Gadfly means no disrespect, but the Mayor does not speak much at “Mayor report” time during Council meetings, and I remember thinking it took me a while to recognize his Donchezvoice. From the Gadfly observation post in the cheap seats, the Mayor looks like a man who doesn’t waste words. And that is good, very good.

But, still, Gadfly wishes he heard more from the Mayor. At least, at times.

The “State of the City” address is coming up: this Thursday, March 7, 7:30AM, Arts Quest.

Gadfly was not Gadfly last year at this time, and he remembers that the address was over before he heard about it. And that didn’t seem right.

It seemed to me that there really wasn’t a lot of coverage by the media. I even had to dig down a layer or two on the City web site to find the text (it was subsequently moved to the Quick Links on the top page). The accompanying video is poorish quality (and mostly slides), seemingly recorded from within the audience at a distance. The Morning Call had a one-minute interview with the Mayor that felt rushed and competing with collateral noise. To me, the Mayor understandably looked kind of uncomfortable in that squeezed situation.

Just didn’t seem good. Not first-class. There was lots good and positive in the address itself, but, to me, the medium seemed to diminish it. Here was the highlight speech of the year, and it did not seem – to Gadfly – to have the highlighting it deserved. And the Mayor deserved.

Gadfly feels that this is the occasion for the Mayor to strut his stuff proudly in a more widely distributed and visible way.

For the “State of the City” address is hosted by and delivered to the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce: “The Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce is comprised of approximately 750 Bethlehem based businesses that are members of The Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce.”

Mayor State of City

Now Gadfly realizes how important business and businesspeople are to the quality of life in a city. But he is by nature and nurture a populist.

And asks.

Why is the “State of the City” addressed – or addressed only – to businesspeople?

Why not to “the people”?

As writing teacher, Gadfly used to stress that job #1 was to consider your audience. Who is your audience? Whom are you writing for? Different audiences demand different content and different delivery.

This Chamber event costs $99 to attend. Gadfly would like to attend. Nothing like being there. But that’s too much. And too much for the majority of “the people.”

And Gadfly wonders how differently tailored the address would (have to) be to an audience of “the people.”

The “State of the City” address might well (need to) be different delivered to businesspeople at Arts Quest over breakfast than to Southsiders on bleachers and folding chairs in Donegan School at dinner time.

Symbolism is meaningful.

So Gadfly’s latest modest proposal is to find ways to better engage the general public in the “State of the City” address and to think how to significantly improve the means of transmission and distribution.

Paige Van Wirt: the doctor is in! (12)

(12th in a series of posts on candidates for election)

For Immediate Release

Dr. Paige Van Wirt Announces Election Bid for Bethlehem City Council

Bethlehem – Dr. Paige Elizabeth Van Wirt today announced her election bid for the Bethlehem City Council four year seat. Dr. Van Wirt was appointed to Bethlehem City Council in March 2018 and has brought a new voice to City Council, emphasizing accountability and transparency. She is committed to improving walkability in Bethlehem, and an approach to economic development that is built on a thriving small business community.

A physician with prior experience and training in urban planning, low-income housing Van Wirt 2development, and municipal finance, Dr. Van Wirt believes deeply in the oversight responsibilities of City Council. Since her appointment, she has consistently voted on issues with the following question in mind: “Is this in the best interests of the citizens of Bethlehem?”

Dr. Van Wirt is a co-founder of a medical practice that cares for the region’s elderly in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. She previously worked as a Project Manager for the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development where she managed the selection, development, and approval of low-income housing. She also worked as a municipal bond analyst for Moody’s Investors Service.

During her tenure on City Council, Dr. Van Wirt has also worked to develop stronger lines of communication between City Council and the citizens of Bethlehem. She regularly meets with local businesses and residents to hear concerns and increase overall engagement. For example, she solicited ideas and feedback from over 60 downtown businesses to better inform her decision around a key parking issue. Dr. Van Wirt has also developed a strong social media presence where she keeps her constituents informed about upcoming council meetings and decisions.

“I am honored to have been appointed to Bethlehem City Council last year, and I look forward to continuing to be a voice for the city’s residents. My priorities include sustainable and accountable economic development that genuinely supports small businesses, responsible municipal budgeting, and the much-needed work on local government ethics reform. Bethlehem needs to attract young people and businesses by creating a city where people want to live and work. There is much work to be done to fulfill this goal, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on council to get the job done.”

A reminder that the other new candidates for Council thus far are Will Carpenter, Carol Chamberlain Ritter, and David Saltzer. Incumbents running are J. William Reynolds, Michael Colon, and Paige Van Wirt. Incumbent Shawn Martell is not running. There are three four-year seats and one two-year seat on the ballot this year. As far as Gadfly knows, Crampsie Smith and Carpenter are running for the two-year seat. Ritter, Saltzer, Reynolds, Van Wirt, and Colon are running for the four-year seats. Now that the field seems filled, Gadfly will soon invite candidates to make position statements. Stay tuned. 

Craig Atwood’s work on the Moravians and H.D.: “a gift to our city” (6)

(6th in a series of posts on H.D.)

Finding H.D.: A Community Exploration of the Life and Work of Hilda Doolittle

The next event in this year-long series is “Challenging Limited Understandings of Gender and Sexuality” by Lehigh University’s Mary Foltz, Wednesday, March 6, 6:30-8 at the Bethlehem Area Public Library.

Here is the full recording of Prof. Craig Atwood’s lecture on “H.D.’s Moravian Roots in Bethlehem” last Tuesday. Gadfly followers know that we always go first to the primary Craig Atwoodsource, so take advantage to refresh yourself if you attended or to listen anew if you didn’t. But below as well over the next post or two, Gadfly will present pieces of Craig’s lecture with some soundbites.

After a general introduction, Lehigh University Seth Moglen’s introduction to Craig’s lecture begins at min. 4:25, Craig’s lecture itself begins at min. 6:27, and the Q ‘n A session begins at min. 1:05:00.

Seth introduced Craig as “one of the foremost scholars of the Moravian Church . . . and especially of the men and women who created this extraordinary community here in Bethlehem . . . author of [the must-read] Community of the Cross. . . . . Craig’s work really matters for this community. We as a city are extraordinarily blessed to have somebody who has devoted decades of patient, careful, precise, fastidious scholarship to the exploration of what really happened at the start of this community . . . a gift to our city.”

Craig:

“How did I first learn about H.D.? Because a classmate in grad school accosted me in the dining room one day, he was a big Ezra Pound fan . . . ‘is it true the Moravians used to worship the bloody side wound of Jesus and wanted to crawl inside the side wound?’ Well, yes. . . . [I was] translating The Litany of the Wounds, one of the more controversial Moravian liturgical pieces.”

Have you ever heard of The Litany of the Wounds? I need to know more!

“What makes [H.D.] so interesting for me is she does leave her home town but she never stops thinking about it, writing about it, and later in her career she focuses quite a bit of research on the Moravians in Bethlehem.”

“Her mother was Helen Wolle, and the Wolle family is one of the most important Moravian families in the history of Bethlehem, especially in the 19th century and especially in Bethlehem’s musical culture. So H.D. was aware of this rich Moravian heritage of music and hymnody, and some of the hymns the Moravians no longer sing, she knew. She participated actively in the rituals of the Central Moravian Church. . . . She had some of her visions and experiences in worship. . . . Her grandmother is one of the major ones communicating this Moravian heritage, which included the Moravian heritage of strong female leaders, strong female missionaries to Native Americans. . . . As far as I can tell, it was her psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud that led her to re-examine her Moravian background. She was convinced that her gift came from this Moravian heritage.”

Here’s an example of her gift in practice. H.D. has a vision of the Moravian past in one of the final paragraphs of her autobiographical work The Gift, written during and written about living in London during the great bombings of World War II – the Blitz — the first systematic, sustained bombing of civilians in world history. (Listen beginning min. 13:35)

H.D. Renatus

Craig explains:

“Paul [“in a glass darkly”] was referring to our current situation of not being able to see the ultimate reality clearly because our perspective is distorted by our earthly limits. Paul says that one day we will see God face-to-face . . . we do not fully know ourselves until we have this experience. And H.D. is turning that around and says the experience of war and death that she is seeing in London means that her generation was already facing ultimate reality.”

“[H.D.] imagines Christian Renatus [the son of Zinzendorf, who died in London and was buried not far from where she was having this vision] with other Moravian leaders and the Single Brothers in her hometown of Bethlehem on Sand Island, which was called the Isle of Wounds.”

There was an island here called the Isle of Wounds????

“Why would she have this vision of this dead person singing to the wounds of Christ in a place he never visited? Why would a poet . . . be at this time of her life looking to one of the most controversial Christian groups for inspiration? The simple answer is that H.D. became convinced that her own Gnostic religious ideas, her mystical experiences, her poetic gifts, her prophetic gifts were rooted in an esoteric spirituality of Zinzendorf and the Moravians in Bethlehem in the middle of the 18th century. She embraced some of the most controversial aspects of Zinzendorfianism, which the Church in her day had suppressed. But she could hear the echoes of it . . . and always had the feeling the Church was hiding something from her.”

Pretty damned interesting, no?!

Stay tuned for another slice of Craig’s lecture.

Remember: The next event in this year-long series is “Challenging Limited Understandings of Gender and Sexuality” by Lehigh University’s Mary Foltz, Wednesday, March 6, 6:30-8 at the Bethlehem Area Public Library.