The Art Of Jessica Lenard

Jessica started painting in a class at the Museum School in Boston while at Emerson College, and continued until her passing in 2016.  In addition to painting,  she also expressed herself through print making, and even pottery. 

Over the years she was represented in numerous shows in NYC. Locally, her work was last seen in a retro show at Muhlenberg and Baum in 2017.

I have been charged with finding representation for the collection of her remaining work. I'm seeking an agent and/or gallery motivated by her unique art.

Jessica Lenard website

Jessica Lenard art facebook

shown above Thelonious Monk's Funeral, mixed media

Molovinsky vs. Parking Authority

Although the Morning Call went out of their way to under-report it, there was a third candidate in the 2005 mayoral election,  independent Michael Molovinsky.  During the campaign I held three press conferences... One about subsidized housing, and the other two about the Parking Authority. The paper only reported on one,  and for that one they invited the Authority's director at the time, Linda Kauffman, to refute my allegations.  Of course the paper never revealed their connections to the Authority. 

The Authority had bailed Park & Shop out of the dwindling downtown parking business by buying their lots.  The malls on McArther Road were going full tilt, and Hamilton Street was dying a quick death.  Morning Call owner Miller owned most of Park & Shop, along with Jack Leh and Harvey Farr. 

Both the Morning Call and the Parking Authority would continue to serve the establishment and each other for the next three decades. This would include the Parking Authority purchasing Morning Call shed property, such as their parking deck. The Morning Call never reported that the Authority fabricated merchant surveys to justify meter increases to Allentown City Council, as documented by this blogger. More recently, not clarifying the nexus between the Authority, the Morning Call and the NIZ.  The Morning Call was included in the NIZ map, although it was across Linden Street from the district. Authority surface lots sold to selected developers at taxpayer inconvenience, was also not clarified.  

Wednesday's Morning Call article about ticketing parents waiting to pick up their children from school, was the first article critical of the Authority in memory. Of course the Morning Call no longer has assets to protect,  they're no longer even a tenant in their own previous building. While the recent article was a welcome development, don't expect too many revelations from them...Their editor and culture is still very much establishment oriented.

I'm shown above in 2005 at a press conference on housing that the Morning Call attended, but didn't report on. I documented that the property was already remodeled and sold three times at taxpayer expense, and that the most recent subsidized "owner" had also defaulted.

above reprinted from November of 2021 

ADDENDUM MARCH 1, 2023: Recently, Betty Cauler urged me to write about abuses by the Parking Authority. I in turn urged her to organize and publicize on Allentown Chronicles, a facebook group...She did so with vigor. Enough noise was generated that both the local media and Authority Board have responded. Cauler and company may succeed in taming the beast.

Both this blog and Allentown Chronicles remain available to those confronting abuses of power.

The Morning Call Can't Spell Molovinsky

Out of frustration, J.B. and Kathleen Reilly have stopped reading the political blogs that snidely refer to downtown Allentown as Reillyville or Reillytown, so writes Scott Kraus and Matt Assad in today's feature story. Although a large portion of the article defends against criticism from this blog, including the phrases Reillyville and Reillytown, reporters and editors have once again chosen to not give attribution to molovinsky on allentown. Although perhaps J.B. has stopped reading this blog, I know that Kraus and Assad are reading these words: So boys, here's the biggie you missed today. You forgot to mention that the City gave Reilly $20 million (loaned from National Penn) in seed money, with no specifications, which he used to buy those 32 properties for $15.1 million. I say the City, because the loan was made even before the NIZ Authority was formed. You forgot to mention that some of the owners displaced by Reilly's buying spree felt intimidated, supposedly even including the possibility of eminent domain. Although you keep parroting Pawlowski's premise of risk on Reilly's part, the only real risk was ours. Although you have presented a defense against all the apparent connections, the fact remains that we now have Reillyville.

UPDATE: Kraus and Assad write; records show he(Reilly) didn't buy his first new property until March 2011 — three months after the new downtown NIZ map was adopted, and a week after the city publicly announced it was shifting the arena downtown. Public records refer to deed transfers, but when were the Agreements of Sale signed? Reilly wonders why other developers are not taking advantage of the NIZ.  Perhaps because Reilly has already purchased all the adjoining blocks? Perhaps because they are not assured that their project will be granted the same NIZ Authority approval, necessary for  the tax debt funding, being enjoyed by Reilly?  

above reprinted from February of 2013

ADDENDUM FEBRUARY 28, 2023: A decade has passed and not much has changed about the Morning Call's reportage on Reilly and the NIZ.  Ironically, Reilly now owns the former Morning Call building, and the city is now covered by reporters who never heard of Allentown in 2013. Of course Allentown is much more Reillytown now than it was ten years ago. This past weekend even fellow blogger Bernie O'Hare seemed to pitch Reilly a soft ball. He wondered if the town seems dead, it could be because residents are at home, like most of us. Needless to say, young professionals don't move to center city, tolerate parking in deck a block away, to stay in at night.  O'Hare goes on to explain... The NIZ is controversial, but this post [O'Hare's post]  is NOT about the wisdom of this redevelopment tool, It's here. It's whether Reilly's vision can be seen as putting Allentown in a better position than other downtowns. 

O'Hare and I agree that Hamilton Street is almost 100% Reilly.  IMO, that alone demonstrates the moral dilemma of the NIZ. I have little doubt that it was a boutique legislation for a friend, a quintessential insider deal. Reilly can keep building without corresponding occupancy, because diverted state taxes are paying his debt service. While this arrangement may be legal by the boutique NIZ state law, it is a profound conflict of interest against the taxpayers. 

Scrutiny of the NIZ  remains limited to this blog, and for my reward I remain a persona non grata.

Better From The Pagoda

When I was a kid growing up in Allentown, we would visit my cousins in Reading. Allentown and Reading seemed very similar, row houses and corner stores. My aunt owned a corner soda fountain. Those Sunday trips were special, because I could sit at the soda counter, eat ice cream and read comic books, to my content. Outside the store, you could look up and see the Pagoda, seemed sorta  magical. This weekend I returned to visit the Pagoda and the neighborhood. While the Pagoda pretty much hasn't changed, downtown Reading is devastated. Block after block is run down, with no revitalization in sight.

While this blog misses the Allentown center city of years ago,  Reading doesn't even resemble its former self.  If you visit, I suggest viewing it only from the pagoda. From that height the city looks as it always did, up close it gets very rough.

molovinsky on allentown is produced every weekday, year-round.

above reprinted from December of 2019

ADDENDUM FEBRUARY 27, 2023: What brought on this reprint was weekend shootings, in both Reading and Easton. So far, there have been no shootings reported in A-town this weekend. 

There are those apologists who credit Reilly(town) with making Allentown at least look better than Reading. I prefer the organic growth of Easton, or the historic charm of Bethlehem. Hopefully, Allentown will grow culturally into its new buildings. However, that sort of change is much slower and more complicated than the current pace of demolition and cookie cutter construction taking place.

Allentown Picks Winner, Then Announces Contest Rules

In what could only happen in Allentown, the City announced the contest rules, after the winner was picked. The Morning Call dutifully reported on the murky guidelines the City will use to allow property owners use of NIZ tax funds for development. The rules come after developer J.B. Reilly had his plans approved, and even before anybody else knew such a tax incentive was available to private owners. If that wasn't enough favoritism, the City loaned Reilly $20million to do the project. As the kids now say, everything about the deal is sketchy. First of all, what I call the City is called ACIDA. This is handpicked Pawlowski Authority, used as handmaiden of convenience. The Morning Call article kindly refers to the guidelines as flexible, having wiggle room and not cast in stone. Missing from the article is that the CocaCola Park promoters complained that they never were given a chance to bid on arena management. The displaced merchants, despite two meetings with the City, were never informed that the NIZ could be used by private property owners, and the unions have already protested initial renovations by Reilly. Most glaringly missing from the article is no mention of these Bizarro sequence of events; The City will now allow public input after all the decisions were made. The City will now explain how to enter the contest, after the brass ring has been won. The article does mention that The Morning Call building is in the NIZ zone.

above reprinted from October of 2011

ADDENDUM FEBRUARY 24, 2023:Back when J.B. Reilly was gobbling up the NIZ parcels, this blog and this blog alone, was reporting that one person was going to own the former mercantile district. The Morning Call, part and parcel of the NIZ deal, reported everything as progress. Over a decade later, nothing has changed about the local reportage. Pat Browne, NIZ frontman, was recently given a hero's sendoff at his state senator retirement banquet. He even has been rewarded by a clueless new governor. 

The former Hamilton Street mercantile district is now an office park. The former undesirable merchants and their undesirable merchandize have been segregated, subsidized and dressed up, over on N. 7th St.  Anybody looking for an evening out, now travels to Bethlehem. Anybody looking for any insight how this all occurred, still visits this blog.

The Historical Record

During the City Council Eminent Domain Hearing, Louie Belletieri came in about halfway during the meeting. I encouraged him to stay and say a few words. Louie stood up at the meeting's end and told City Council that they should pay the shopowners straight up. Although Louie wasn't involved with the issue before, during or after that meeting, his Godfather presentation resonated with the local newspaper reporter. In addition to quoting Louie for the coverage about eminent domain, the paper used it as the Quote Of The Week, in the weekend edition. Fortunately, for the historical record, a local documentary videophotographer was covering the meeting. Sydney "Imantrek" McKenzie captured the soul of the shareowners, the storeowners, whose lives were being bashed by the hockey puck. In addition to making documentaries, Imantrek also produces music and Grounzero, an internet magazine. He is now lending his talent to the fight to preserve Allentown's WPA icons. Like many true artists before him, he remains an outsider to the newspaper and local art establishment. 

above reprinted from October of 2011
 

ADDENDUM FEBRUARY 23, 2023:We lost Louie Belletieri last week. The Morning Call and other venues have given Louie proper due for his contributions to Allentown over the decades. After Pawlowski was elected in 2005, he handed out numerous patronage jobs, including one to Louie. Louie was titled a Business Liason, and worked freelance. Although Louie probably could have had taken the check for many years, he resigned in less than two.

Making Lemonade At CNN

Don Lemon is returning to the air after a six minute training session at CNN. Needless to say the training is a joke, and the joke is on their audience. Although woke sells on CNN, Lemon's marketability apparently trumps his misogyny.  He checks so many boxes at CNN... Black, pleasant looking, pleasant talking, and gay to boot...Such newscasters don't grow on trees.

As an image makeover, don't be surprised to see him doing some special on older women. The real lesson is for CNN, not Lemon... They shouldn't allow him to talk off script...He was hired as a pretty face, not a deep thinker. Putting him in a pair of black frame glasses didn't make him any smarter, even if it worked for Anderson.

A Woman Of Letters

Barba-Del Campbell was in the hallway at the overflow Council meeting this past July on Cedar Creek Park. She handed me a handwritten letter which I put into my pocket. I met Barba-Del a few years earlier at the first meeting for the Lanta merchants. There were at least two passions in her life, activism and art; Apparently, she had a long relationship with both. This past summer, The Morning Call had a feature story about her role in commemorating Paul Robeson with a postage stamp.

I typed and printed Barba-Del's letter and faxed it along with my own to the Morning Call. Both our editorials appeared side by side in the paper. My effort resulted in a handwritten thank you note. Barba-Del didn't have a computer. I would print out pieces I wrote on the merchants or on the parks, and leave them at her "office", that would be the first table to the left at The House of Chen.

There will be a gathering this Saturday in her memory at the restaurant. Barba-Del is on the far right in photo above, which was taken after that Lanta meeting by participant Bernie O'Hare. Ann Elizabeth Schlegel and Heather Sincavage also remember this remarkable woman.

ADDENDUM:  I STOPPED INTO THE HOUSE OF CHEN TRIBUTE TO BARBA-DEL TO PAY MY RESPECTS,  THERE WERE HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE IN ATTENDANCE.
Heather Sincavage reflects on the memorial service

above reprinted from March of 2010

ADDENDUM FEBRUARY 21, 2023: The above tribute to activist Barba-Del Campbell's memory is almost thirteen years old. Her memorial gathering was in a restaurant which no longer exists. Even Jenny Lim's replacement eatery in South Bethlehem recently closed.

Downtown's transition to Reillytown didn't happen without protest. This blogger and others, especially those displaced by the new sterile bland towers, spoke up here and on other alternative media. Town by then was perhaps funky, but it was organic, and real. What there is today is a news release by Reilly Real Estate, echoed by the Morning Call.

Although not all of my current readers may know who and what I'm remembering here today, nevertheless, it is my honor to reprint this post.