76th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre 
“The whole UnBound festival was about the future of Bethlehem and how can
we envision what we want to see Bethlehem in the future,
and who more important than the young people to talk to about that.”
Paul Pierpoint, Sustainability Forum Organizer
video by Thomas Braun
You thought I was done with Touchstone Theatre’s Festival UnBound, didn’t you?
Naaa, the Gadfly is going for a round 100 posts.
One Festival event that Gadfly didn’t get to was the Sustainability Forum (though Kathy Fox posted about it), and he is just now catching up on it.
And catching up big time — he is in the pleasurable process of reading 180 essays by high school students passionately concerned with the environment and the future of Bethlehem.
(English profs have a big appetite when students are serving up such deliciously thoughtful text.)
Students from Freedom, Liberty, Bethlehem Catholic, and Moravian Academy.
Writing about such pressing contemporary and local issues as climate change; access to safe, nutritious food; local air quality; stream and ground water quality; drinking water quality; health and fitness; alternative transportation; green space preservation; housing for a growing population; and preservation of pollinators.
Gadfly hopes he will be able to bring some moving examples of this activist writing to you in these pages.
For now enjoy the video sampler about Freedom’s participation in the project.
After writing their essays, many of the students participated in a Town Hall on Lehigh’s campus.
Here is a look at the ambitious full assignment set before these students by Touchstone through such home high school faculty as Freedom’s Donna Roman, John Wallaesa, and George Ziegler, and Liberty’s Lisa Draper and Anthony Markovich:
Town Hall Sustainability project — high school
When it looks to some of us of riper age as if the world surrounds us with seemingly insurmountable problems, it pays to look through the eyes of the young:
“If one person just stands up to make a change, others will too . . .
It only takes one person to make a drastic change.”
Staci Scheetz, Liberty High School
