Defending The Park

This evening at 6:00 p.m., City Council's Park and Recreation Committee will hold a discussion on the dams in Lehigh Parkway. I will be there to defend the dam at the Robin Hood Bridge. Wildlands Conservancy and assorted environmental types will be there to promote their agendas. The magnificent park has been vandalized by special interests for several decades. Three WPA structures have been buried rather than maintained. Christmas lights have been strung to monetize the park during the holiday season. The steel bridge was allowed to rust away, ending 70 years of a beautiful ride through the park. Because of the park's abundantly designed beauty, it still manages to bestow tranquility onto it's visitors, but it deserves more respect than now being a workshop for assorted special interests.

photocredit:molovinsky

A Place Of Beauty

The above photograph is right up there with my better park pictures, but of course I had a little help from the WPA. The Wildlands Conservancy and I disagree over the date of the dam. I place it with the bridge in 1941, they think it was built by the Corp of Engineers in 1945, as part of the water level monitoring station. In a communication between ecological types, they say that it's essential that it be removed. They talk about obsolete dams and macro-invertebrates. Whether the dam is 72 years old, or only 68 years old, it's hard to imagine that it's now essential that it be removed. It's not that I'm insensitive toward macro-invertebrates, but Harry Trexler had the park designed for people.

photocredit:molovinsky

One Of The Most Beautiful

Although I often reproduce the front of picture postcards to illustrate our park system, I have never before copied the back, as shown below. This card, from the mid 1950's, states that the parks and gardens in Allentown help make it one of the most beautiful cities in America. The Rose and Old Fashion Gardens no longer look like they did in the picture above. The water lilies are gone from the ponds, and the gardens are reduced in size, no longer reaching the ponds. Our parks are still beautiful, but we must guard and fight against the continuous reductions. This coming Wednesday evening the Wildlands Conservancy will try to convince City Council that removing the beautiful dam will improve the quality of the stream. Although there are certain factors which will reduce the validity of their argument, I will defend the dam on the abstraction called beauty.

Picture postcards are made because of beauty. Beauty is what we show off to relatives and friends when they visit Allentown. Help me keep at least our park system a postcard.

A Walk In The Parkway

Yesterday, the above photo by Morning Call photographer Denise Sanchez appeared under the heading, A Walk In The Parkway. If her assignment had anything to do with my editorial the previous Saturday on the riparian buffer, remains to be seen. I can tell you that I received a lot of feedback on the piece. The more important battle will be this coming Wednesday evening at 6:00p.m., when City Council discusses the proposed removal of the Robin Hood Dam. Although the unsightly riparian barriers can be cut down to restore the public's view and access to the creek, a destroyed dam cannot be restored.

Lehigh Valley Black History

 Colored Voters Association was the predecessor to the Bethlehem NAACP. The matchbook dates to the mid 1940's.

Always The Teacher

Joanne Jackson has always been a teacher, even after she retired. According to The Morning Call, her resignation last night from the Allentown School Board caught everybody off guard. It didn't catch me off guard, but only because Joanne and I are friends on Facebook. From her posts there, I know that her name is no longer Jackson, because she recently married. Also from her posts, I know that she sold her home in Allentown, and that they are living in her husband's home. Because of moving out of the Allentown district, her resignation was inevitable, but, being always the teacher, Joanne chose to make a lesson out of it. From my knowledge, the reasons that she gave for her resignation were indeed long term frustrations that she had with some fellow board members. My Facebook interaction is different than most. I limit my Friends to people I actually know, and have worked with on one project or another. I also happen to be friends with two fellow board members with whom she had issues, Scott Armstrong and David Zimmerman. Although I can understand the clash in style and tension Joanne felt with these two gentleman, I believe that Allentown was well served by all three of them. Joanne's resignation, for whatever reason, is indeed a loss to the school district.