Pawlowski $Invests In Allentown School Board

Recently, a comment on this blog stated that both the Allentown City Council and Allentown School Board do Pawlowski's bidding. Although city council, with one full time exception, certainly stamps things for Pawlowski, the same cannot be said for the school board. For example, the board refused to give a proposal to remodel the Phoenix Mill into apartments the KOZ status pushed by the administration. Because school board candidates can cross register, there are several Republicans on the board, including two staunch conservatives. Mayor For Life has now established a PAC to financially support candidates with his vision. So far, the PAC is supporting Charlie Thiel and Elizabeth Martinez for re-election to the board. When this blogger interviewed Thiel last year, he indicated that he wouldn't hesitate to oppose Pawlowski for mayor. The PAC support doesn't bode well for that declared independence. Bi-lingual Martinez has been hired by dutchman Peter Schweyer, elected to represent Allentown's hispanics in the state house.

A Park Protestor From The Past

`Green' Curtain Blocks Sledding And The View
January 09, 1992|The Morning Call
To the Editor:
Hold your sleds girls and boys! Others, too, on the alert! With the planting of a dense cluster of 60 evergreen trees and the erection of a "No Sledding" sign, creating a veritable iron curtain, the park and watershed people have once again undertaken their repetitive effort of the past 45 years to eliminate a most popular sledding slope in Lehigh Parkway. The motive -- crass self-interest in defiance of public good. The effect -- an impassable barrier and concealment of a magnificent vista of "one of the finest valleys in Eastern Pennsylvania."
Children and adults from the 400 homes with longtime and easy access to the slope and others arriving in cars have enjoyed sledding here after school and into the night and throughout the day and night on weekends. Yet sledding is but one of the attractions of this enduring slope. In summer children and teachers from Lehigh Parkway Elementary School have enjoyed a walk down the slope and into the park for a break from book and blackboard. Birders, joggers, hikers and others on a leisurely stroll engrossed in their particular interest have found the slope irresistible.
For a host of others, this opening into the park after a long stretch of woods presents a charming vista and urge to descend. Interest is immediately evoked by the sight of a mid-19th century log house (now tenanted by a city employee whose privacy is further enhanced by the closure of the slope) and a historic wagon trail leading past the site of a lime kiln to tillable lands of earlier times.
The view takes in an expanse of meadowlands, now groomed, to the Little Lehigh River and up the western slope to Lehigh Parkway North. Indeed, a pleasant view to be esteemed and preserved for generations to come. It was distressing on New Year's Day to see a family and their guests intent upon a walk down the slope suddenly stop in amazement and shock as the closure became evident.
The cost in dollars through the years of the park peoples' fixation on destroying the Parkway slope must be staggering indeed without dwelling on other deliberate depletions. Typically, the placement of the 1991 "No Sledding" sign employed a team of four men with three vehicles -- a backhoe, a panel truck, and a super cab pickup truck, the latter furnishing radio music.
BERT A. LUCKENBACH
ALLENTOWN The Morning Call, January 9, 1992
reprinted from January 2012

I grew up in the same neighborhood and spent my childhood winters sledding on the same hill. Mr. Luckenbach would also be saddened that the historic Wagon Trail is now also blocked off, near it's exit halfway on the hill. I suppose children, mittens and sledding is too passive a recreation for this Administration's taste.

Allentown's Make Believe Economy

In a recent article on the Lehigh Valley economy, credit Tony Iannelli for a glimpse of reality; "There has been tremendous growth on a particular Main Street in Allentown, but that doesn't always translate to what's going on in outlying towns." On the other hand, Don Cunningham, as usual, had much more smile than insight; "We have no reason to be anything but encouraged." Of course, the most deluded is mayor for life Pawlowski;"Not sure where they got their data, but they obviously have not been to Allentown lately." In the real world of Lehigh Valley, things are not as they appear. While Cunningham boasts of the bottling companies which have come to drain our water resources and burden our sewage treatment capacity, a 97 year old local bottler closed. While Pawlowski cuts ribbons on businesses which have been induced into Allentown, other cities in our state hang For Rent signs on the space those same businesses vacated. While the enormous tax incentives may provide ribbon cuttings and photo opportunities for the Cunningham's and Pawlowski's of Pennsylvania, we are in reality just playing musical chairs. Without real additional net gains in employment, we will all eventually pay for these delusions.

A Russian Orthodox Corner In Allentown

While the pulpit section of the Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary Orthodox Church is adorned with murals and icons of Mary, parishioners may notice that there is no such imagery on the beautiful stained glass windows. More careful inspection reveals that while there are no graven images in the glass, Stars of David and scrolls can be seen. As the ancestors of the current members came from eastern Europe and the Czarist Russian Empire, so did the building's original congregation. The gothic edifice was built as a synagogue in 1909 by Allentown's Russian Jews. The Orthodox Jewish congregation, Sons Of Israel, utilized the structure for 50 years before it was repurposed by the current American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox congregation.

The Mad Men of Allentown

Back in the day, the titans of Allentown would fill the five barberchairs of the Colonial Barbershop, 538 Hamilton Street. That was when the town had three department stores. That was when Wetherhold and Metzger had two shoe stores on Hamilton Street. That was when Harvey Farr would meet Donald Miller and John Leh at the Livingston Club for lunch, and discuss acquiring more lots for Park & Shop. By 1995 all that was gone, but Frank Gallucci, 82, would still give some old timers a trim. The Colonial Barbershop property, closed for many years, has been purchased by J.B. Reilly. It is my pleasure to present this previously unseen portrait of Gallucci, toward the end of his career.

 photocredit:molovinsky
reprinted from May 2013

A Road Runs Through It

Once, there was a time when gasoline was twenty five cents a gallon, there was no internet, and a family would go for a drive on Sunday. There was no traffic congestion or road rage. The cars were large, and they all came from Detroit. You could drive through a park, even an amusement park. There was no rush to get back to the television; It was very small, with only a few channels. Life now seems to revolve around small silicon chips, I preferred when it was large engines.

photograph shows the road through Dorney Park
reprinted from June 2012