Back in the early '90s, my husband and I watched his niece perform in her high school’s endless production of “Li’l Abner.” The 3¾-hour show strained familial bonds to the point where during intermission -- at the 2½-hour mark – Rick told me that he’d give his niece $50 if she promised to never be in another high school musical. Fast forward to 2008, when friends got us tickets to Emmaus High School’s version of “Les Misérables.” The musical was riveting. The production, set, voices, choreography and acting were way beyond what I’d expect from a high school. While credit for the quality of …

  As a softball player in high school, I had a competitive streak a mile wide and took to making deals with God during close games.  I’d tell God that if only we could win THIS game, he could have my bicycle, my guitar and -- during one county championship – my brother. My mother, who knew about these deals, said she was afraid if we ever made it to a state final, she and my father would – poof – disappear from the stands.  That competitive drive receded a bit after college but resurfaces at times like last Friday when the Salisbury Falcons played the Bangor Slaters for the Colonial League …

One summer night in the late 1970s I sat in a small living room in western Pennsylvania reading a social history of America in the 1960s. With me were my mother, my paternal grandmother – a staunch Lutheran  -- and her daughter, the church secretary. Sitting aside me was my maternal grandmother – a devout and very feisty, pre-Vatican II Catholic. She asked me if the book I was reading was “for America or against her?” When I tried to say that it was more complex than that, she went off on a tirade about how this country was going to hell because of the lack of morality. She finished by …

When it comes to sex, America’s culture is like a perpetual adolescent. Our sitcoms offer a steady diet of jokes about threesomes, strippers and penises, we use sex to sell beer, and we have restaurants themed around women’s breasts.  Yet many of us are loathe to have serious, honest conversations about sexuality with our kids or our parents. A 2009 study published in the journal “Pediatrics” found that 40 percent of teens have sex before their parents get around to talking to them about safe sex practices, birth control or sexually transmitted diseases.  Luckily, there are some grownups who …

“If in the last few years you haven’t discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.” – Gelett Burgess  Or else – as in my case, Mister Burgess – you were right about everything in the first place.  Seriously, I’ve moderated my views on some issues, rounding off the sharp edges as it were. But there are very few topics on which I’ve done a near 180-degree turn.  One of those is hunting. I used to be completely opposed. I wasn’t a PETA-phile, mind you, but I thought hunters were basically cruel people who loved to kill defenseless creatures.  Then I made …

These are some of things I forget: phone numbers, faces, names and how to get somewhere unless I’ve been there at least three times.  Here’s what I remember: stories and quotes. When I graduated from high school, my parents gave me a copy of  “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” – the bible of quotation books. But it seemed to me there was nothing familiar about most of its quotes – they appeared to come from writers or dignitaries who were about a million years old – and spoke that way.  After that I flirted with other books of quotations but never really fell for one until my kids got “Uncle …

Bethlehem candy manufacturer Just Born Inc. realizes that man does not live by Peeps alone. Sometimes he needs art. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Last week, the Lehigh Valley Arts Council held a rally for the arts and I’m pretty sure it was the first rally I’ve ever attended that opened with an organ recital. The music was courtesy of Allen Organ Co. in Macungie, host of the event at which artists and arts groups from around the region received small state grants. The grants – some as little as $437 – are for local groups and individuals who bring music, dance, theater and artwork to …

There are movies – such as “Schindler’s List” – that you know you should see but don’t want to go through the experience of actually watching that kind of human horror.  Knowing that the terror, cruelty and pain inflicted are based on true events from the Holocaust makes it all the more agonizing. So you steel yourself because sometimes your job as a human being is to not look away.  I couldn’t bring myself to watch “United 93” when it first came out because when I rent movies, escapism usually wins out over “painful but important.”  But with the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 upon us, it …

What a week. In the middle of interviewing someone by phone last week, I feel the house start to shake. I’m ready to light into my teenage sons for jumping in the living room and they say, "Really mom, it wasn’t us, it was an earthquake." They turn on CNN to prove it.   Three days later, on the eve of Tropical Storm Irene, the Giant supermarket on Emaus Avenue in Allentown looks like a plague of locusts had hit the produce section. The only bananas left were a couple of  black spotted ones. The red seedless grapes were decimated and the handful of Gala apples were looking like escapees.  I …

There’s a concept in social psychology that goes something like this: When other people err, we attribute it to flaws in their character; when we screw up, we blame it on circumstances – the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.    So when someone else runs up credit card debt, we think “spendthrift.”  When we do it, it’s because of a medical emergency and necessary student loans.   Alan Jennings, executive director of the Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley, says he has seen this type of thinking amplified since the economy tanked. Instead of sympathizing with those who lost …

My idea of sweet decadence is reading a good book over a cup of strong coffee in a beautiful place. Clearly, if all Americans got their kicks this way, Las Vegas would still be a desert.     So there I was last week on the porch of a cabin on a shimmering lake in the Adirondacks, binging on Edith Wharton novels. Wharton, a searingly honest social observer, trained her laser vision on America’s upper crust society in the late 1800s, exposing the rigid social mores that kept women in gilded cages. My husband doesn’t understand my fascination with writers like Wharton and Jane Austen, who wrote …

There are some movies my family is so drawn to that when they come on television we watch them, commercials and all, even though we OWN them. How goofy is that? All we have to do is slip in the DVD and we can view them commercial-free, but no. They’re the celluloid equivalent of catnip or comfort food. In last week’s column about memorable movies, I gave short shrift to comedies because I wanted to zero in on films with good messages for kids. I’m not sure what the message is in the classic “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” unless it’s “Your mother is a hamster and your father smells of …

The average child costs $500,000 to raise to age 18 and the process takes great patience and energy. But, on the flip side, you get to foist your favorite movies on a captive audience. Seems like a fair trade to me. When our kids were small we started a list of the films we most wanted them to see before they went off on their own. These weren’t necessarily our all-time-favorite flicks but they were memorable movies with messages we hoped they’d absorb.   My list starts with films I’d show to kids as young as 6 and progresses to movies for older teens. Most are about doing the right thing, …

I’m not sure you really know what true fear is until you’ve merged onto a highway with a 16-year-old driver whose learner’s permit is fresher than some condiments in your fridge.My son, Tommy, had driven on Cedar Crest and Hamilton boulevards, as well as back roads, but he had only tackled Interstate 78 in one session with Dan Weaver, his driving instructor through Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit 21.Tommy assured me Sunday he was ready; I wasn’t sure I’d ever be.“Look for a gap in traffic,” I said as he pulled onto the entrance ramp. “If the gap is next to you, speed up and merge, if it’s …

In a story in the April 25 edition of The New Yorker magazine, Nancy Lieberman talked about what it was like to coach basketball in the NBA’s Development League or D-League. The 53-year-old former Olympian and pro basketball player had to find ways to connect with young, mostly African-American men who played for her on the Texas Legends. Lieberman said, “I tell these guys we have more in common than you think. Young black men don’t want to be profiled, and old white women don’t want to be profiled.” Amen to that. Young black men get profiled as dangerous and middle-aged and older white women…

The old saw “success has many parents but failure is an orphan” is never truer than when you’re dealing with actual kids. When your child brings home straight As or helps a little old lady carry her bags, it’s tempting to think “he gets that from my side of the family” or “I taught him that.”  When that same kid throws a tantrum or refuses to clean his room, we think, “Where did THAT behavior come from?” We solve the “nature vs. nurture” question of child raising by assuming if it’s a fault, he was born with it; the virtues come from us.  As the parent of teenagers, I know it’s a bit early to…

Sea Isle City on the Jersey Shore is a lot of things, but it is most certainly the Park Bench Capital of America. Its slogan should be “Sit your butt down here.” On the town’s promenade -- which is essentially a boardwalk without all the rides and games -- there’s a bench just about every 10 feet. Each has an inscription dedicating it to someone, often accompanied by a quote about the person’s love for Sea Isle City. The benches are an amenity for tired pedestrians, a place to stop and talk, and a classy way of reminding people that the town is a great place to be. It’s just one of the facets…

With a memory clouded by age and Alzheimer’s, my mother-in-law had a tough time placing my husband during his most recent visit. Then all of a sudden it came to her: “Do you still live in that messy house?” Bingo. Nailed it. My husband and I had a good laugh but it’s sobering to realize that our poor housekeeping is what sticks with people – even those who love us. We are not yet candidates for the show “Hoarders” but that’s only because we’re HAPPY to get rid of stuff. We just can’t keep up with the influx of newspapers, magazines, junk mail, school papers and errant socks that my kids’ …

Journalists are right down there with lawyers and used car salesmen in the dungeon of public opinion but here’s a small example of what can happen when we’re not on the job: On December 10, 2009 Salisbury Township commissioners adopted an ordinance restricting the use of all-terrain vehicles in the township. They had followed the law, discussed the proposed ordinance at a public meeting, and advertised it in newspaper legal ads before approving it. But because the area’s main daily newspaper, The Morning Call, hadn’t covered the issue, there were no complaints about the new restrictions until…

My teenagers went through a brief stint in rehab this past weekend. It wasn’t long enough to cure their addiction to text messaging but it did show them they could survive without a keypad for short spurts. The place was called Whitewater Challengers because it’s primarily an outfitters that runs rafting trips through the Lehigh River Gorge near White Haven. It turns out you can’t text while paddling a raft through rapids, and a cell phone would be ruined if you get wet – which is inevitable. So the texting rehabilitation – while not listed on their brochure – was a side benefit. I wasn’t on …