Celebrating Bethlehem's Southside Culture
As part of their digital events series during the Covid-19 period, Touchstone Theatre is offering “deep listeners of the Lehigh Valley and beyond” an absurd, hilarious, and suspenseful radio play called “Iso/Nation Presents.” The radio play is part of Touchstone’s “Fresh Voices” program and is made by Sean Patrick Cassidy and Adam Ercolani, Touchstone Theatre’s…
This featured photo, “Southside Public Library,” by Ryder Griffith at Southside Proud, is licensed by CC. BY-NC 2.0. Bethlehem Area Public Library (BAPL) is taking action on the call by the Black Lives Matter movement and The Fight 4 Black Lives to have difficult conversations about race and racism in our communities and across America….
On June 25th, Artsquest and Steelstacks hosted another “Levitt in Your Living Room” free concert to share the “sultry sound, clear tone, [and] funky groove” of Gina Chavez. The concert, shared on a live stream from Gina Chavez’s living room, featured Chavez playing as a one-woman band, and interacting with listeners through chat on Facebook….
This featured photo, “Roxanne Gay – Montreal – 2015” by Eva Blue is licensed by CC. BY 2.0. On Tuesday, June 16th, Bethlehem community members worked through the brutally honest reflections in Roxane Gay’s memoir Hunger. The Queer Memoir Reading Group discussion was hosted by Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center, and supported by Lehigh University Humanities…
Despite my fear of sharing personal stories, Waxler created a space where vulnerability was not something to be feared, but something to be explored with kindness toward one’s self and other participants…
By the end of Barack Obama’s term as the President of the United States, former chief official White House photographer Pete Souza had captured those eight years in a collection of two million photos. Three hundred of these photos make up his best-selling photography book, Obama: An Intimate Portrait, and it was that visual narrative…
I never expected to be finishing my last year at Lehigh from my house in New Hampshire, which is just over three hundred miles away from Bethlehem. And yet, here we are. I’ve spent the better part of the last twenty one years of my life in my hometown. Its sights, smells, and sounds are…
Hippo Campus invigorated the SteelStacks crowd on November 5th at the Musikfest Café. The band performed a dynamic line-up of alternative rock pieces with jazz inspired roots after a rousing opening by indie rock band The Greeting Committee. The concert brought a nice mix of Bethlehem locals and students together to enjoy a high energy…
“When the war began, Whitman was despondent, but the violence of those years seemed to strengthen and clarify his faith in democracy, a faith that would take on a transcendent dimension.” I read this passage from Jet Black Sunrise’s playbill, quoted from Ed Simon’s New York Times article “Why We Will Need Walt Whitman in…
It was a dark, wet, and cold Wednesday night. The sun had long ago said its goodbyes, leaving the slickened streets to be illuminated by nothing but orange and purple string lights. Front lawns were home to eerie ghouls and rattling skeletons and grimacing jack-o-lanterns that matched the chill seeping into your bones. Bethlehem was…