Earlier this year, a Bucks County developer that had built large subdivisions with single-family homes in Upper Macungie switched gears. The Heritage Homes Group got approval from the township to change a 2007 proposal for the Dunbar Tract III of its Breinigsville development from a majority of single-family homes to mostly townhouses on Twin Ponds Road. If Mitchell Silver, president of the American Planning Association, is right, the Lehigh Valley is going to be seeing a lot more of these changes as our population ages and younger people opt for lifestyles that don’t include a big home in …

In a commercial for the Toyota Venza, a young woman sitting at a computer says, “I read an article, well I read the majority of an article online, about how older people are becoming more and more anti-social. So I was really aggressive with my parents about joining Facebook.” She adds sarcastically: “My parents are up to 19 friends now." The commercial cuts to her smiling parents driving with their bikes mounted on the top of the car and then shows scenes of them mountain biking with friends. The camera flashes back to the daughter sitting alone with her computer. She says: “I have 687 …

When someone close to you dies, you become a member of a club you’d rather not join.   My initiation five years ago when my father passed away was both a revelation and a lesson in etiquette. Before that, I had no idea what to say to people in that situation; I was sure that any mention of their loss would cause more pain. Turns out “I’m so sorry” is usually enough; philosophizing on how God must have needed another angel is way too much.  Before performing a funeral, a clergyman I know typically asks the deceased’s loved ones what was the dumbest thing anyone has said to them about their …

To say I was a weak math student is a little like saying Hitler was a bad guy. Math teachers worked with me after class, my parents tutored me and I’d think I understood how to use the Point-Slope Formula to calculate something or other. Then I’d take a test and find out otherwise. I never flunked a class but that was only because back in the 70s my math teachers must have assured themselves I was never going to design bridges – at least none they would drive on – and they held their noses to pass me. Had I needed to earn a proficient rating in math to graduate, I’d currently be the oldest …

In researching social movements of the 1950s and '60s, historian Stephanie Coontz found a report on a study of 37 battered women published by the American Medical Association in 1964. The women typically had not called the police until years into the physical abuse and then only after a teenage child had stepped in. The report’s authors explained that the child’s intervention disturbed “a marital equilibrium which had been working more or less satisfactorily.” Can you imagine anyone in authority saying that today? That mindset is the kind of inconvenient truth for nostalgia buffs that Coontz …

It was about halfway through her lecture on the downside of nostalgia that social historian Stephanie Coontz committed heresy. Coontz, author of “The Way We Never Were” and “Marriage: A History,” spoke last week to a packed hall at Muhlenberg College about how nostalgia for the Good Old Days can skew debates over important issues like the role of government. In doing so she took on the vaunted pioneer times and the 1950s – both eras often cited by presidential candidates as the epitome of what was once good about this country.   “Pioneer families and 1950s families are in a neck-and-neck tie…

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 their …

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 A's 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 …

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 …

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 …

In the movie “Pretty Woman,” the beautiful hooker with a heart, played by Julia Roberts, tells the rich business tycoon embodied by Richard Gere about her childhood fantasy of being locked in a tower only to be rescued by a prince on a white horse, charging the tower with his sword drawn. In the film’s final scene, Gere, armed with an umbrella, rides in on a white limo, climbs up a fire escape to reach her and says, “So what happened after he climbed the tower and rescued her?” Roberts responds: “She rescues him right back.” So, you ask, what does that have to do with adoption? Somehow her …

I had been discussing school vouchers with Saucon Valley School Board member Ralph Puerta for half an hour before he hesitantly mentioned that he had a doctorate in education finance. In journalists’ parlance, that’s what is called burying the lead. By profession, Puerta is a metallurgical engineer but about a decade ago he decided to take a year off from work and get his doctorate in school finance at Lehigh University. He wasn’t planning to change careers, mind you. Rather, he’d been following the annual budget struggles of school districts and thought applying conservative accounting and …