For this early morning edition blog, 2014 is under the ice and over the dam. Between fighting to preserve Wehr's Dam, running for office and providing reality checks about downtown Allentown, it's been a busy year. I believe that the unvarnished truth is a commodity in short supply in the Lehigh Valley. From the main stream media, out of town readers would think that Allentown has turned completely around. We who actually plug the meters on Hamilton Street know that although the new buildings are in place, the promised commerce has yet to begin. So far even the arena events can be counted on one hand. Mayor Pawlowski had read so many promotions about the New Allentown in the local paper, he thought that he could ride that bus to Harrisburg. Although the articles about success were premature, I do believe that real change is coming Allentown's way.
molovinsky on allentown will be glad to celebrate that success when it arrives, but in the meantime will tell it like it is.
above reprinted from December 31, 2014
ADDENDUM DECEMBER 30, 2024:Although I lost the election as an independent for state rep, I, along with others, did manage to save Wehr's Dam. Despite all the new buildings and taxpayer money spent for the personal benefit of one developer, success, a decade later, still hasn't caught up with Hamilton Street... It's still a ghost town.
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Allentown’s decline remains something of an as yet undocumented saga that defies contemporary analysis. It will be seen as a remarkable story someday, a perfect storm.
ReplyDeleteIt’s often remarked that comedy is tragedy revisited.
ReplyDeleteWhat astute observer can doubt that Allentown is passing through its comedic phase?
Who said that the farce is dead?
The history of Allentown in the last hundred years has the material for dozens of post-graduate dissertations across multiple disciplines and at least several novels. Present day Allentown contains the stuff of a fantastic sitcom.
ReplyDeleteThe way that the Morning Call, the Lehigh Valley’s newspaper of record, has covered Allentown since the crash and burn of Mayor Roy Afflerbach, the last Pennsylvania German mayor, is utterly fascinating. Institutional memory is fading fast. In a few years it may be impossible to track anything remotely resembling the recent past in the formerly Queen City.
ReplyDeleteScanning the last couple of decades in the Morning Call’s s archives, if such a thing still exists, won’t shed any light on what has actually led the city to its current status.
DeleteHope and Change, small change, or is it loose change. I have to laugh to keep from crying.
ReplyDeleteThe city downtown looks like a dump... more litter and trash plus our once beautiful hallmark light post gardens are a disgrace... once off the main drag they are nothing but weeds... and newsflash... the ones they do take care of look like the dickens!!! Our parks, downtown and lamp post gardens were once our calling cards. BTW, the West End is starting to look a tad seedy, too. I believe after they bulldozed the greenhouse at Trexler Park, that that was the downfall of that Allentown feature. You recently posted a post card highlighting those very gardens... they were a sight to behold. Our once proud city just doesn't give two $hits anymore... about anything but REVENUE to waste on nonsense. Rant over.
ReplyDeleteIf there were a year and two hundred pages, I’d enjoy following up on the seven comments above (between 30 Dec 8:19 AM and 4:56 PM). They are so on mark for helping to assess this City. But, as this year closes, I’ll reflect on Mr. Molovinsky’s post with this recollection: When I was at a trade school in Maryland, one of that region’s leading newspapers published an article that stayed in my mind for life. In the fire hose of information we had to absorb, clipping and saving that early 1980’s story never crossed my mind. It was a review of U.S. policy in the Vietnam War ended just over five years prior [purist’s note: lots of soldiers and civilians died for years on end. War.]. The overall conclusion was something like, that the policy and how the war was fought reflected the will of the American people. The five presidents (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford) had varied and evolving approaches to the conduct of the war. The study authors observed that all policy was constrained and/or pushed by what the public knew about the events taking place, and what the public expressed about how the war should be waged (or ended). Without getting into more excruciating detail, I recall that it boiled down to: no president could push or pull policy past what the American people, as a whole, would tolerate, without experiencing a backlash that would cost elections, and thus, cripple or end their administrations. What I carried from that is expressed elsewhere in a leadership dictum, loosely restated here: Someone who tells people to walk in the woods, goes into the woods, turns around, and sees no one behind, is not a leader. They are just someone alone in the wilderness. However, completing the picture, that does not mean that going into the woods was the wrong thing to do, and perhaps was essential. History* has many examples of the few, or the one, with a vision being the only remainder to go on. From Noah to Lot to SS Poseidon, it doesn’t always pay to go with the flow. Most times going with the wrong flow costs you a few minutes in the checkout line or at a traffic light. Sometimes, it costs lives, or communities’ welfare. At the most serious, it costs wars and civilizations. No Allentonian can pull the city where it stubbornly does not want to go. -Another wildlife metaphor from a featherweight overly sensitive to airborne contaminants.
ReplyDeleteRegarding dam policy: I accept Mr. Molovinsky’s observation (earlier post) on beaver hats. It was notably Franklinesque.
* Is Herodotus truly history? Is Pravda truly history? Were Hearst newspapers of 1898? How about local “storytellers?”