“Do you think this is a city of two cities?”

Arts, the, Fun Stuff, Touchstone Theater 1 Minute

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A quiet voice fairly timidly took the mic:

“I have a question . . . do you think this is a city of two cities?

And thus began in earnest the discussion after “Poets, Troubadours, and Troublemakers.”

The room got right to the question of identity that we sometimes seem unable to settle.

Are we the tale of two cities?

Are we the wail of two cities?

Northside and Southside–

And the conversation jumped quickly to an even greater multiplicity of cities within our city!

  • “There are three sides of town: Northside, Southside, and Lehigh.”
  • “There’s the Eastside . . . another neighborhood that everybody forgets.”
  • “In any town, there are many towns . . . for any town, any community to go forward, it has to recognize it’s a good thing and a bad thing that there are more than one town in that town . . . It can be diversity and opportunity if we recognize and try to bring those communities together and take strength from that rather than trouble.”

Ahhh, this is a rich subject that you must have some feelings about.

Lehigh as a third side of town?

Badaboom!

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Festival UnBound
Closed but never forgotten

Published by The Bethlehem Gadfly

Edward J. Gallagher, Bethlehem immigrant, retired, nearly 50 years as Professor of American Literature at Lehigh University, known as "Dr. G" and "Conan the Grammarian" to students, whose virtual world avatar "EdwardScholarhands" stares at you here, has reinvented himself as the Bethlehem Gadfly.

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One thought on ““Do you think this is a city of two cities?””

  1. Ed, I’ve always preferred to think of the divisions as neighborhoods, many very different than others. The challenge, as I see it, is to recognize that there are differences, respect that they exist, and make sure community/government resources and attention are doled out fairly. Dana

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