Luminaria Night is quickly approaching. Block Captains are receiving their packets this week. Look for letters stuffed in your mailbox starting on November 12th. Luminaria Night is a night where people put luminaria out on the sidewalk in front of their houses. Luminaria Night has been going on for 10 years. Last year there were 55,000 luminaries out on Bethlehem streets.

This year we are looking to make a splash with luminaria night in the North by Northwest Neighborhoods. If you don’t get a letter and want to participate or you are interested in being a block captain, contact Debbie Delgrosso at 610-865-3757 or ddelgrosso1@juno.com.

The kits are $10 bucks and have 10 luminaries. They are spaced every 3 feet on the sidewalk so one kit will cover 30 feet. If you need additional kits, they are $5 each. The kits have the candles and the sand to hold the bags as well.

So, talk to your neighbors, plan a social event, get those cameras ready and don’t forget to clean up the bags on the morning of the 14th! In case of rain/snow, the inclement weather date is the 14th. For more info visit www.newbethanyministries.org.

Today’s title is sort of a pun. I was feeling a bit frustrated this morning so I decided to do something physical today about something that has been bugging me for a while. At Friendship Park on the E. North Street side, there was ALOT of vegetation growing in the gutter and the grass was overhanging the curb enough to make the curb disappear. So, flat spade, broom, dustpan and rake in hand, I took action on the grass roots and had a little cleanup party.

The yield was pretty good. I’d say there is 2 or 3 big garbage cans full of sod/weeds taken out of the gutter area, grass strip area overhanging the curb AND several inches of overgrowth on both sides of the sidewalks on that stretch. I’d say I got about halfway from the alley to the other end of the park. More to go.

Also noticed significant bush growth through the fence by the building at the park. Mulberry bushes I think. Some are so tangled into the fence that probably the only way to remove them is with a drill and a piano wire saw. That will take another day!

 Anyone interested in getting involved in doing some plantings in the spring please let me know. I think we can enhance the areas around the entrances to the park on both sides, maybe plant something flowering (clematis) on the fence to hide the building and the various electrical supplies in the buildings yard? Any thoughts, fee free to comment!

How many linear feet of sidewalk does the average home have in our target area? Maybe 30ft? Maybe 60ft on a corner property? How long would it take for the average person to maintain the sidewalk and grass strip space around their home on a monthly basis? Maybe an hour? How much better would our North by Northwest Neighborhood look like without the following:

If we can all stop for a minute, go outside (after it cools down at night or early in the morning) and pull some weeds we would make a dramatic difference in the appearance of our neighborhoods. Why not make an event out of it. Pick a night and get together with your neighbors and do the whole block. If 5 people do 6ft each, they will cover a house in a few minutes. Work your way down the entire block that way and in an hour, the entire block has a whole new look. What’s the best time to pull weeds? Usually they come out easier just after a rain.

The next problem shown in some of these shots is the use of a material that is not grass in the grass strip. Macadam is not grass. It just makes it hotter out there, heating up all day long in the sun and radiating that heat till late in the evening. That’s called Heat Islanding. That’s the term for why it’s 10 degrees hotter in the city than it is in the suburbs. More concrete and macadam and less trees and shade etc. We can’t get rid of the streets but we can keep our grass strips and water our trees so they grow and produce SHADE. Shade on the sidewalk helps cool it off outside, shade on our house, helps the air conditioner run less. 

Have you heard of the Broken Window Theory? It goes that having a broken window in a neighborhood allowed to stay that way, leads to alot more broken windows. Well, let’s translate that to weeds and curbs. Let’s work on our own blocks and see what we can do to clean up our streets.

West Side residents and property owners are invited to a Public Meeting on Tuesday Night, July 8th at 7pm at West Side Moravian Church. That’s at the corner of 3rd Avenue and Prospect Avenue. The meeting will be in Fellowship Hall, use the side door.

The meeting is to discuss the enhancements to be made to West Broad Street between 1st Avenue and 3rd Avenue and down 3rd Avenue to the Route 378 interchange. There is a $250,000 PennDot Hometown Streets grant we will be using for the work.

The actual work will take place next spring/summer 2009.

Neighbors,

Scour your attics, shoeboxes and old photo albums for pictures of the North by Northwest Target District. We are looking for old photographs to borrow to scan for use in “then and now” kind of presentations. Do you have pictures of the house you grew up in? Did you know some of our streets were once dirt roads? Did you know some of the streets without a single tree were once tree lined and nicely shaded? We are looking for those old pictures.

We will have an event where you can bring these pictures and stand there while we scan them so they never leave your sight. (That way, we can’t loose them!) So, next time you are going through that closet or flipping through that old album, think of us if there are any good shots in there we might be able to use.

We had one show each so far in Fairview Park (4th Ave. & Market St.) and Friendship (Tank) Park (E. North & Penn Sts.). The weather was beautiful and about 150 people attended each event. We encourage everyone to come early, meet your neighbors, have a hot dog and drink to benefit the neighborhood blockwatches and maybe even join in with Tina from Spirithoops.

The next shows are July 9th at Friendship showing Madagascar and July 10th at Fairview showing Bee Movie. Tina will start around 7 with the hoops, she is really good at it and will help you get the hang of it!

We are looking to add more to the “More” part of Movies, Games & More. In July, the St. Luke’s Healthstar Van will be at both parks promoting health education and doing some screenings so come out and take advantage of that. We will be talking about Properties of Merit. POM is a program that gives awards to houses that stand out in the neighborhood. It doesn’t have to be a recent renovation or anything, just maintaining your house well can qualify your house for nominations. Another program we will be promoting in advance at MGM is Luminaria in December. It benefits New Bethany Ministries and it’s a great little project to place luminaria bags with sand and candles along the curb. We have done it along W. Broad Street and the project has grown every year. We would like to see the NbNW Target District filled with these luminaria bags showing our pride in where we live. It’s also a nice opportunity for neighbors to get out and mingle and maybe enjoy some light horsdeuvres at one another’s home.

In October for Ghostbusters and Young Frankenstein we want to have a costume contest (adults and children divisions!), have pumpkin carving and decorate the parks with corn stalks and hay bales etc. If anyone would like to volunteer with that please call the office at 610-997-5732. If you have any ideas for programming you would like to see, join our blog and post some comments!

The North by Northwest Task Force is currently bringing up this site to keep you posted on developments with the North by Northwest Neighborhood Initiative. We were formerly called the Elm Street Project but that is the state’s term for the program. In Bethlehem, our actual “Elm Street” is outside of the Elm Street area and that can be very confusing. Most cities don’t call their effort “Elm Street” locally so we decided on North by Northwest as the project encompasses part of West Bethlehem and part of the Northside east of the Monocacy so North by Northwest is a play on words.

See the map here for an exact boundary of the targeted area. The state set the final boundary.

Check back often for more info!

A.G. Pitsilos
Elm Street Manager