(23rd in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)
(stay tuned for more audio and video)
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(22nd in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)
(stay tuned for more audio and video)
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(21st in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)
Gadfly:
My 18 years in Bethlehem qualify me as “just barely” past newcomer status, so I did not live through the closing of the Steel years. But I am more than grateful for those who have worked to recreate Bethlehem into the place I gladly call home. Sure there are challenges but there are plenty of good people committed to continuously improving it. Last night’s opening was a testament to that commitment.
Carol Burns
(20th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)
(stay tuned for more audio and video)
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(19th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)
—–
click here to get hot links for Saturday’s events listed above
—–
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(18th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)
Gadfly is so sorry — Anne Hills — he misheard her name on the video
And sorry that the video is chunky and incomplete, but there is a full audio
So a dinosaur falls sooner or later,
Shakes the ground, leaves a crater,
A town to fall in, be torn apart
Leavin’ nothin’ but bones and a broken heart.
. . . . .
Now bones of steel they still are there,
Fossilized in the Lehigh air,
But time is short, it hurries on,
We look ahead as a new day dawns.
When the dinosaur fell, we felt the thunder,
It tried to push this whole town under.
But dreamers work and workers dream,
What may seem lost was soon redeemed,
Both sides of the river, new life is growing.
. . . . .
This valley sings of the men, the women,
Everything once made and all been given,
by those long here or immigrant hands,
we regenerate and restore these lands.
And where the steelstacks stood, there’s music ringin’,
Through the old mill walls, you’ll hear children singin,’
While the old men talk and recall the ways
That the dinosaur lived in the dinosaur days.
. . . .
Yeah, we look ahead as a new day dawns.
(stay tuned for more audio and video)
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(17th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)
We have gathered today in the spirit of community to rise up and embrace the possibilities of our future.
And what amazing possibilities they are.
They shine like a piece of polished Bethlehem steel.
They shine like our lights at Christmas time.
They shine like the Star of Bethlehem itself.
You see, for generations, Bethlehem defined itself through its pride of industry through Bethlehem Steel,
But for the last twenty years we have found so many new ways to define ourselves.
We can be anything we want to be.
We are free to dream.
We are unBound!
In this “Festival UnBound,” we will come together for a week of celebration and exploration.
Celebration of this wonderful community,
And exploration of just what kind of a future we want for ourselves.
Throughout the week we will share our dreams of the future,
and then like. like a message in a balloon,
we will send our dreams out into the world,
because those dreams, our dreams, make a difference!
And now I hereby declare,
LET THE FESTIVAL BEGIN!
(stay tuned for more audio and video)
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(16th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)
—–
(32nd in a series of posts on H.D.)
Bethlehem-born writer Hilda Doolittle — H. D. — (1886-1961) is
the “Lehigh Valley’s most important literary figure.”
Gadfly calls your attention especially to the Sunday showing of the play — see bottom of page for all showings — because of the panel that will follow. A panel that includes our Councilwoman Van Wirt, my Lehigh colleague Mary Foltz, and a Gadfly former student, the wonderful Emily Santana.
“The Secret: A New Play About Hilda Doolittle”
part of Festival UnBound
The premiere of a new play by Mock Turtle Marionette Theater on the Lehigh Valley’s most influential artist, the celebrated feminist writer and LGBTQ icon Hilda Doolittle, featuring narrative, song, and puppetry.
Post-Show Panel Discussion, Sun., Oct. 6, 2019, Play 1:00-2:30, Panel Discussion 2:30-3:30
“Who will follow the music?” WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP: Inspirations and Obstacles
Festival UnBound at Touchstone Theatre, 321 East 4th Street, Bethlehem, PA, 18015
Panelists’ Biographies:
Phyllis Alexander has been a champion for social justice for several decades, and civil rights professional for over twenty years working for both corporate America and city government. Phyllis is an experienced coalition builder and trainer and credits her skills to her 28-year affiliation as senior trainer and board president with the National Coalition Building Institute, an international social justice/ social change organization. Currently, Phyllis is a consultant with the Promise Neighborhood of the Lehigh Valley, and is the Project Director for the Leadership Without Limits Leadership Institute. Phyllis retired as the City of Allentown’s Neighborhood Coordinator. Prior to this role, Phyllis worked as the city’s Director of the Bureau of Human Relations & Equal Opportunity.
Yalitza Corcino-Davis is a Learning Specialist and Assistant Professor at Lehigh Carbon Community College. As a young child, she moved with her family from Puerto Rico to New Jersey. As one of the first women in her family to go to college, she understands the barriers some people experience to achieve their goals. Yalitza is now in her second year of a doctoral program in education at Lehigh University. Her passion is helping students, traditional and returning adults, achieve their academic goals so they can achieve their life goals. Yalitza is especially committed to the empowerment of underserved and marginalized populations.
Abriana Ferrari is 15 years old and in the 10th grade. She’s been homeschooled for 10 years and hopes to become an environmental lawyer when she is older. She loves the sciences (especially physics!) and aims to assist in the battle to conserve our environment. As for performance experience, she has been among the cast of many theatrical productions (including three Wizard of Oz’s, two Lion King’s, and two Beauty and the Beast’s in the span of three years). One of her favorite experiences was singing in Canterbury Cathedral in England. Outside of performing, she loves to write, compose, and play Dungeons and Dragons in the basement with her nerdy theatre friends. Abriana is a cast member and composer for “The Secret.”
Mary C. Foltz is an Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University; she also offers classes in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies as well as American Studies. For the past years, she has served as the Director of the South Side Initiative, a program at Lehigh that brings community members and Lehigh faculty and students to engage in research that benefits our communities and inspires increased civic engagement. With South Side Initiative, Mary has developed an LGBT oral history project, LGBT community reading group, and an online newspaper to highlight issues of import for residents of South Bethlehem as well as participating in a variety of public arts and humanities projects.
Nancy Matos Gonzalez, Magisterial District Judge, was elected to office in 1991, when at the age of 25 she became the first Hispanic Magisterial District Judge in the State of Pennsylvania. She has since continued to preside in South Bethlehem, attaining commendable audit compliance standard reports at both the State and County level. She has also served as President of her County Judge’s Association. Judge Gonzalez and her husband support varying youth athletic organizations in South Bethlehem. She also partners with multiple schools in and around her district to encourage the educational and personal advancement of youth.
Margaret Kavanagh, head custodian at Freemansburg Elementary is married and lives in Bethlehem with her three dogs. In her 20’s, she worked enough to travel to every state (all but Alaska). In her 30s, she was a massage therapist and house painter. In her 60’s, she and her wife will retire to South Carolina and travel in their RV, transporting rescue dogs to their adopted homes. Kavanagh has been working for the Bethlehem Area School District for 11 yrs. When not working, she volunteers with local animal rescues, plays djembe and recently joined the volunteer committee for Celtic Classic! Kavanagh founded an advocacy group for pitbulls, Mispits. She is passionate about truth, kindness and recycling!
Emily Santana is your friendly neighborhood waitress having worked at Jenny’s Kuali, in South Side Bethlehem, for over 6 years. She always knew she wanted to work for and with under-served families and worked in that capacity as a community resource coordinator for the Hispanic Center Lehigh Valley for three years. She has now embarked on a new journey as an ER Tech in St. Luke’s Sacred Heart campus located in the heart of Allentown. She believes she is one step closer to melding her dream of working in the medical field, being a social justice advocate, and teacher, in her community.
Dr. Paige Van Wirt is a physician who co-founded a mobile medical practice that cares for Lehigh Valley seniors in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. She is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Hospice and Palliative Care; her practice cares for over 2500 elders and now employs 23 people. She is a former urban planner with the City of New York, and is currently on Bethlehem City Council. She lives in Bethlehem with her husband Tim and 15 year old twins. She believes passionately in the power of local government and in an activist city council which truly represents the people.
——
DATES & TIMES:
Saturday, October 5 – 5:00-6:30p | Talkback 6:30-7:00p
Sunday, October 6 – 1:00-2:30p (Audio Description) | Panel 2:30-3:30p
Monday, October 7 – 7:30-9:00p
Tuesday, October 8 – 7:30-9:00p
VENUE: Touchstone Theatre | 321 E. Fourth Street, Bethlehem, PA
PRICE: $25 adult & $15 student/senior; limited amount of Pay What You Will tickets for purchase; please call 610-867-1689 to order.
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(15th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)
—–
Added attraction is seeing how magnificently Bill George has aged!
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(14th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)
—–
If it will make you feel any better, Gadfly will be standing in the doorway of Joe’s Barber Shop selling tickets!
(13th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)
—–
click here to get working links for Friday’s events listed above
—–
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
Kim Carrell-Smith is a 31-year resident of Bethlehem’s historic Southside, where she taught public history at Lehigh University for almost two decades. She is also an aspiring gadfly, buzzing in on issues of historic preservation, public education, city government, and other social justice issues. She tips her wings to the master gadflies who have served our community for so long!
Thanks for posting, Kathy!
And our city forester David Shaffer (very kindly dropping by my house in response to my questions on Gadlfy–now there’s public service!) pointed me/all of us toward the city’s website for ordinances and more info regarding trees.
*See https://www.bethlehem-pa.gov/public_works/forestry.html for straightforward guidelines (not written like ordinances!) about types of trees they recommend, where and how to plant trees, etc.
*But also useful are the ordinances themselves: the city’s “SALDO,” which is the ordinance governing “subdivisions or developments.” This might pertain to Kate’s question on Oct 1 on the Gadfly blog. There ARE requirements developers need to follow, and the forester enforces them. Hurray!
*And the actual city ordinance governing trees and shrubs: https://www.bethlehem-pa.gov/ordinance/articles/ARTICLE0910.html
But how great that he is on the agenda for the EAC! He seems like a very professional, conscientious guy.
Tree tending and planting (even removal) on public property require a certified arborist, and can be costly, I learned. What if as a city we could figure out a way to do what Community Action Development Corp of Bethlehem did on Hayes Street (with Southside Vision funding), when they planted trees up and down the hill in the old tree wells?
Could the Environmental Action Committee perhaps apply for grants to get trees planted in some low income neighborhoods?
Kim
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(The latest in a series of posts relating to the environment, Bethlehem’s Climate Action Plan, and Bethlehem’s Environmental Advisory Council)
Alarming reports from a wide variety of science-based and international studies keep coming, warning us of disasters that lie ahead if the world fails to make massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Recognizing this, on Sept. 20, millions of people around the world engaged in a “Climate Strike,” the largest climate protest in history.
Despite the dire urgency for action, the Climate Action Summit produced only modest pledges from a minority of nations. Not surprisingly, the United States was silent. President Trump did not participate in the summit, instead declaring at a separate U.N. gathering, “The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations.”
There are two fundamental issues here.
First, most nations of the world, many states and localities within the United States, even some corporations and the U.S. military, now recognize that we all face a profound global challenge. While several governments have taken preliminary steps toward altering their emissions, and even more have pledged to do so, these steps remain woefully inadequate if the world is to avoid cataclysmic outcomes.
Second, the United States government, led by the Trump administration and its fossil-fuel producing allies, not only has done nothing to ameliorate climate change, it is blatantly accelerating the race to destruction.
By itself, climate change has caused 150,000 deaths each year (according to findings of a team of health and climate scientists from the World Health Organization and the University of Wisconsin at Madison). That number could double in a decade, and has contributed to 5 million human illnesses every year.
That would seem to suggest that those political actors and fossil fuel producers who resist the necessary changes are guilty of crimes against humanity.
It’s Thursday, October 4, do you know where your local Climate Action Plan is?
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(130th in a series of posts on parking)
The writer is known to Gadfly but prefers to remain anonymous for some strange reason.
Gadfly:
I’ll verify that I am one of those “I’ll take my chances” kind of folks. Mostly because I don’t think it’s a good idea to charge for parking (impacts businesses), and I sure don’t want to be paying for a new parking garage we don’t need (and surely will need even less in 15-20 years as technology changes). I am downtown about once a week and have not had a ticket in a couple of years. Do “that” math!
Let’s take a cue from Europe, which has much less room than we do. For one, excellent public transit/walkable cities/friendly to disabled folks. But the one thing I saw there that I don’t see here: underground parking.
When a new building is put up (say 3rd and New), the parking goes underneath. Not taking up valuable real estate next door. Just a thought!
Anon.
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(Latest in a series of posts on Walkability and Bikeability)
Gadfly has been using you followers for accountability.
Reporting again on his progress in the Tail on the Trail Challenge.
His goal is to double the basic challenge of 165 miles (the length of the Delaware and Lehigh canal) in the 6 months between May 1 and November 1 = 330 miles.
5 months now gone.
Gadfly has done 313 miles with almost a month to go.
Gonna make the goal with plenty to spare.
Now Gadfly also plans the Delaware & Lehigh Half Marathon November 3.
Training-wise, he’s up to 9 miles.
And an inch shorter.
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(The latest in a series of posts relating to the environment, Bethlehem’s Climate Action Plan, and Bethlehem’s Environmental Advisory Council)
ref:
At least a tree with each new build
Why is it so difficult to get more trees put in along our streets?
Everybody:
You are invited to attend the next Bethlehem Environmental Advisory Council’s meeting, which will be held on Thursday, 10/3/19 at 7 p.m. at Illick’s Mill. Dan Shaffer, the city’s new forester is on the agenda. Come out to meet him and ask your questions directly to the source. This will be the first time the EAC members will meet him too.
Kathy Fox
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(10th in a series of posts about 11 and 15 W. Garrison St.)
October 1 City Council meeting video
minutes 21:50-1:08:43 and minutes 1:11:13-1:34-30
So, as Gadfly hopes you witnessed by watching the video as he suggested in the last post, in their first reading, City Council defeated the proposal to rezone 11 and 15 W. Garrison by a 4-3 vote. Second reading will take place at Council October 15.
Gadfly is going to begin reflection on the Garrison decision presenting the petitioner’s perspective.
(Gadfly will avoid calling Mr. Connell “the developer,” a term that brings with it some baggage and has made him uncomfortable.)
You will remember that in the role-playing exercise two posts back, Gadfly opined that the petitioner had not “made his case.”
Well, then, the petitioner did make his case in this letter to Council, which it is very worthwhile for you to look at it detail:
Petitioner Letter on Garrison rezoning
Here are some of the things that Gadfly sees:
The petitioner did not say much at the meeting. He and his attorney spoke at the end of a long train of powerful, almost entirely negative resident voices — an unenviable position.
(Parenthetically, the petitioner’s comical self-reference to the devil incarnate with horns at the beginning and end of his short remarks probably refers to Gadfly’s depiction of the stereotypical perception of developers in an earlier post.)
The attorney reiterated the evolving process and the petitioner’s desire for dialog, his commitment to community, and his plans to live in the new building.
Gadfly has not been around all that long. He still considers that he’s participating in his first rodeo.
But he certainly has not yet seen anything close to this petitioner’s mode of “making his case.”
And Gadfly appreciates his sense of humor — saying in private communication that he
was going to have to start calling me “spotted lanternfly.”
Now that tickles Gadfly immensely.
Gadfly likes a guy with a sense of humor and who writes so well.
Let’s move on to a similarly closer look at the public testimony and then to the fullish reasoning behind each of the Council member votes in that tight 4-3 decision.
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(9th in a series of posts about 11 and 15 W. Garrison St.)
The portion of the October 1 City Council meeting dealing with the re-zoning of 11 and 15 W. Garrison was rather amazing.
Gadfly hasn’t seen any newspaper stories about the decision (did he miss?), so maybe you haven’t heard the decision.
All the better.
In the previous post, Gadfly asked you to role play being a Councilperson with him, going over all the things that might be in your head as you approached a decision.
Ok, now let’s see what happened, and how the end result (though there will be a second vote next meeting) matched your thinking.
As always, Gadfly likes you to consider the primary sources and make up your own mind before we analyze here.
Gadfly thinks you will find the testimony and deliberation very, very interesting.
So look at minutes 21:50-1:08:43 and minutes 1:11:13-1:34-30.
(A great time to thank President Waldron and other members of Council and the Administration for providing the video capability for us!)
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(12th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)
Gadfly made a pitch for “Festival UnBound” at City Council Sept 17 that you can see on the meeting video (min. 1:07:25) or hear below:
In that pitch you will hear him say that Gadfly was so excited that you might even see him dance.
And he was so flustered that, if you listen carefully, you will hear him call Touchstone Theatre “Touchdown Theatre” at the end of his pitch.
Lol
So that was September 17.
Today is October 3.
And his excitement runs even higher.
The Festival starts tomorrow with the opening ceremony on the Greenway 5:30.
And the opening of the original play Prometheus / Redux at 8.
And other events.
Their web site — How to Festival UnBound — has lots and lots on information.
Time to get with it!
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(129th in a series of posts on parking)
Here’s something to think about over your morning Dunkin’.
What jobs would you not like to have?
On that list might well be PEO –Parking Enforcement Officer.
Parking violation tickets have risen 300% in the last 5 years.
It’s not that there are more PEO’s on patrol — more people are breaking the law.
“It’s contentious out there,” said the Bethlehem Parking Authority exec director at Tuesday’s meeting with the Public Safety Committee when he was proposing an increase in the fine structure as a stronger deterrent, a proposal that was tabled.
“It’s contentious out there.”
Gadfly said yesterday that he found this meeting very interesting on several fronts and suggested that you listen in.
The topic of human behavior and how to change human behavior and maybe — ha! — if you can change human behavior especially got him thinking.
What makes getting a parking ticket so horrendous? And often so out of proportion to the money involved.
What makes the interaction with a PEO in the act of giving you a ticket so volatile?
“It’s contentious out there.”
So listen to a minute or two of Councilman Reynolds here:
“The biggest complaint that we hear is the interaction of getting a parking ticket . . . We need to do something that limits those interactions . . . We need to do something that reduces how parking tickets are written?”
Agree?
What would you suggest?
—————————-
The Bethlehem Parking Authority’s leader first asked to raise its parking violation fines in 2014. The authority issued about 22,940 tickets that same year. Five years later, forgetting to feed your meter still only lands you a $10 parking ticket in Bethlehem. But the authority wrote 78,000 tickets in 2018 and is on track to write about 82,000 this year.
[“The current fine schedule is not penal enough to encourage motorists to simply pay for parking instead of breaking the law [because] the number of parking violation tickets issued over the past five years has increased by more than 300%
by the end of 2018.” BPA report]
That’s why authority Executive Director Kevin Livingston is appearing before Bethlehem City Council’s public safety committee at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday night to again ask council to raise fines $5 to $15 per violation.
In 2018, the authority again asked for a fine hike in concert with Mayor Bob Donchez’s decision to raise meter rates 50-cents an hour to $1.50.Raising meter rates in concert with fines is meant to get more people to feed the meters, drive long-term visitors to park in garages and fund repairs and new parking garages.
Council refused to act on the request without more information on the new Polk Street garage and the potential for variable rate parking in the city. Livingston recently updated council on the authority’s plans for a new parking deck at Third and Polk streets.
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(128th in a series of posts on parking)
In Gadfly’s opinion, Councilwoman Van Wirt was the focal point of the Public Safety Committee meeting with the Bethlehem Parking Authority on October 1.
Gadfly sees PVW challenging BPA decisions and trying to push them into thinking about their work in wider terms than they are used to, ending in engaging them in discussion for a pilot project.
PVW is aggressive, incisive, data-driven, and progressive here.
“How is this affecting our downtown businesses?”
PVW accepted the BPA consultant’s recommendation that variable rate parking not be implemented, but she pushed the BPA on thinking about other ways to manage curb parking. “Where is your parking the softest?” Why can’t we “do something much simpler . . . [like] lower the rates over in the Southside where the parking is supersoft and raise them in the Northside where parking is tight?” I don’t understand why this “pretty simple thing” wasn’t implemented, she said. And “did any of your consideration include the fact that a lot of the parking meter rate has affected our downtown businesses in terms of the public’s perspective that this is a more expensive place to shop?”
“It’s my job to compare apples and oranges.”
PVW beats an old dog here: “I do not believe the data supports the building of another garage.”Exactly how Gadfly felt reading the BPA consultant’s report. “What we’re reading here supports my contention that there’s not a huge need for this garage? . . .Why are we building a $17m garage on the Southside?” “Without a full understanding of why we are increasing our parking meter rates,” says PVW, “I don’t understand why we would put that stress on the system if we have such vast parking ability on the Southside?” Showing herself once again a budget-hawk, PVW says the “bigger question” is that we have taxpayer-backed bonds buried in the BPA debt with no security that they will be paid if trouble hits. “Taxpayer backed debt is at risk with your financial decision making.” “We are looking at a study that says that demand is too soft everywhere in Bethlehem, but particularly on the Southside, to merit any change in the way we set our meter rates, and yet at the same time you are telling me that we need to build a $17m parking garage on the Southside right where the demand is so soft.”
“I’m talking about helping our downtowns.”
PVW says she “would be willing to support a ticket/fine increase with either a commensurate general parking meter decrease back to $1.00/hr. or to turn our central business district parking over either to free or hourly-limited parking.” It’s the latter that she pushes: “A reasonable suggestion would be to create free parking downtown with a limited time frame to help our downtown businesses to encourage shopping and visiting downtown.”
“I want to help make the system better”: a pilot study
PVW repeats her concern over the amount of debt that BPA is amassing with “unclear pathways” to pay for it. But she moves quickly to her big new idea: “I would love to see a pilot study done on Main St. and the first block of Broad St., as well as 3rd St. on the Southside, a pilot study for free parking there, and instead of doubling the tickets, you triple the ticket there.” “Let’s get some data and see how human behavior changes . . . so that we can both make the system work and we can help the businesses in downtown Bethlehem be as strong as they possibly can be.” “I can’t think of anything,” PVW says, “that would encourage shoppers more in downtown Bethlehem than knowing that they have a free spot to come and park.”
“Would you be open to a pilot program to see how we can benefit our downtowns?”
So, PVW’s idea is a pilot study to provide free parking in a select area of the downtowns but triple the cost of a ticket to $30.
Gadfly, he tells you, was pretty excited.
Now, the BPA made a commitment only for PVW to discuss her ideas before the Board. But that is a positive step.
And Gadfly had to chuckle because he has not yet seen a serious discussion of any substantive issue at a BPA Board meeting.
This should be a first and should engage all the members in the trading of ideas.
Gadfly loves the beginning stages of new ideas and projects and can’t wait to be a gadfly on the wall at such a meeting.
But what do you think? You didn’t think I was going to forget to invite your response, did you?
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(127th in a series of posts on parking)
Gadfly found yesterday’s meeting of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee with the Bethlehem Parking Authority to be very interesting and informative.
The designated topic was the BPA proposal to raise the fine/violation structure, which got tabled.
But the discussion went well beyond that to the goals for parking, ways to change behavior, design of the Polk Street Garage, what to do when the Walnut St. Garage gets worked on, leases and contracts, etc.
The reason for the wide-ranging discussion, as Councilwoman Van Wirt said, was that “there isn’t opportunity often to interface” with the BPA.
Gadfly’s ears perked up at this similar comment by President Waldron, that “we don’t really have an opportunity to weigh in and talk about parking from Council’s point of view”:
Now, you know that if Council is a bit starved for information, we, the public, aren’t getting any.
(Gadfly would like to remind you and any Council members listening of his modest proposal — “A modest proposal: the more the merrier” — to improve the information flow by inviting BPA to Council twice a year for a friendly discussion.)
Thus, here is an audio of the entire discussion, and Gadfly invites you to listen in, learn some things, and maybe have some questions.
One of Gadfly’s goals in providing audio and video is to help you get to know your elected officials better.
See what they are thinking about, see how their minds work.
So here are time marks for the Councilmember sections of the discussion if you want to use that for navigating through the meeting: Van Wirt (mins 7:00, 55:05), Negron (mins. 18:30, 46:29), Waldron (min. 21), Reynolds (min. 29), Crampsie Smith (min. 45:45), Colon (min. 59:21).
But if you have time just sit back and follow the flow.
Gadfly will come back and highlight the main sections of the meeting shortly — there was an interesting and important action item concluding the meeting.
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
(31st in a series of posts on H.D.)
Finding H.D.:
A Community Exploration of the Life and Work of Hilda Doolittle
Bethlehem-born writer Hilda Doolittle — H. D. — (1886-1961) is
the “Lehigh Valley’s most important literary figure.”
Come on, now, it’s time to get your tickets for the original play on H.D.’s life, The Secret, by Bethlehem’s own fabulous Mock Turtle Marionette Theater.
DATES & TIMES:
Saturday, October 5 – 5:00-6:30p | Talkback 6:30-7:00p
Sunday, October 6 – 1:00-2:30p | Panel 2:30-3:30p
Monday, October 7 – 7:30-9:00p
Tuesday, October 8 – 7:30-9:00p
VENUE: Touchstone Theatre | 321 E. Fourth Street, Bethlehem, PA
PRICE: $25 adult & $15 student/senior; limited amount of Pay What You Will tickets for purchase; please call 610-867-1689 to order.
http://festivalunbound.com/the-secret/
Lehigh University photo
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
ref: “At least a tree with each new build”
Kate:
We need someone to weigh in here who understands the ordinances about where and how trees can be planted near sidewalks, roads, and buildings in Bethlehem. As I was told by one local revitalization expert, there are pretty restrictive ordinances when it comes to trees (perhaps because of sidewalk heaving? Sewer lines? Other??). Are there any readers here who are familiar with these issues, who might help us understand perhaps why it is so difficult to get more trees put in along our streets in Bethlehem?
Kim Carrell-Smith
