What is the worst thing a national and state party can do in the days before a local primary election? To my mind, it’s to subvert the local process by endorsing a candidate, especially a candidate who isn’t very well known. That’s insanity, right? And it’s precisely what the national and state Democratic Party did this week to the Lehigh Valley.

The Hellertown-based writer Steve Wiggins (“obscure private intellectual, unfluencer, and recovering academic,” as he sardonically describes himself) writes widely about a variety of topics—religious studies and horror, among others—and his writing is fascinating.

Like anyone else in Hellertown and Lower Saucon, I’ve been this last week feeling the west wind churn through our neighborhoods, scattering bright leaves every which way. Don’t you love all that? I feels so good somehow. I don’t understand why, exactly. It seems to reflect some deep need in the soul.

So I received this, the very morning after Tuesday’s change-mandate election. Nice timing!

This one’s almost too easy.

I’ve known Hunter Gress (mostly through others) since he was a kid, and to nutgraf it: Hunter is a brilliant and brave young person who will bring a subtle intelligence, a “crazy good work ethic” (as a mutual friend of ours puts it), independence and pragmatism to Saucon Valley’s largest and most troubled municipality.

I’m not sure when it started, but a few years ago, I noticed little tacky solar lights going up everywhere in Hellertown. 

I wasn’t immune from the craze, and neither was the rest of small-town America. I bought a string set of solar paper lanterns from Ikea, a set of walkway lights from Home Depot or somewhere, and a more expensive and serious (and ultimately, less cheerful) set of string bulbs. I think they’re all more or less broken or discarded now.

My cheap lights phase is over.