My favorite movie for many many years is Stand By Me. It’s a story of four friends, about 12 years old, who go off an overnight venture to find a dead body they hear is lying in the woods, many miles away. It’s a great coming of age movie. It reminds me of a much smaller adventure I took with two ten year old friends, Bryon Eroh and Jeff Sayers. We didn’t just find one dead body, we found at least thirty dead bodies! Let me explain.

We were hanging out at Slatington’s West End Playground. Our town’s forgotten playground is nestled behind the west end of Washington Street and in the backyard of our Catholic Church, Assumption BVM. At the back of the playground is a very steep, wooded hill. We weren’t sure what was on the other side of that hill. That is how our adventure began.

We trudged up that hill and got to the top and looked down at a beautiful meadow. Just past the meadow was Seventh Street and Union Cemetery. Don’t worry, that’s not the dead body find I am talking about! To the left of the meadow, was a little grove of trees with what looked like pieces of marble among the trees. We went to the tree grove to it check out. Wow! We found many graves, some halfway opened, some sunken into the ground, and some grown over by bushes. Tombstones were everywhere. Most were broken and worn enough to be unreadable. Many seemed to be in German.

We thought we made the discovery of the century! For some reason we called it the Indian Cemetery. We couldn’t wait to tell everyone we knew about our unique find. No one that we told knew about it. Even our parents were surprised. I still know it as the Indian Cemetery.

Fast forward to 2022. Those graves are still there with their stones. You can see them from Seventh Street as you drive by. They are still in a grove of trees, but they are now accompanied there by junk trucks. It’s sad to see the disregard for these bodies that has lasted over one hundred years. I wonder how many ten-year-old boys since then have wandered into that grove of trees and made the discovery of the century. To this day, it remains one of my fondest memories in a Slatington boyhood filled with so many.

WARNING: Readers who suffer from seasonal allergies, and those of you who are winter geeks, should probably stop reading now. I am about to extol the virtues of that wonderful month of May.

First and foremost, it is my birthday month. Everyone knows that May babies are the best! Even though this year’s birthday is not one I am looking forward to (70) I still love the month of May.

The glorious colors! The pinks, the purples, the yellows, the reds and, of course, bright green all around. The smells of tree blossoms and ground flowers fill up your senses, like a night in a forest. Yes, I stole that last line from John Denver. I bet John Denver loved May. How could anyone not?

For me, May is the month for beginnings. Others might claim January, with its resolutions. Others, the first day of spring. Still others, September and the start of school. No, for me May is when winter is finally put to bed and it is time to see new things, do new things, and learn new things. Amazing May!

I can remember, in my twenties, working in a dirty and old, dark and dingy pigments plant. In May you could slide open those old wooden doors on their rusty tracks and, until September, be almost working outside. In high school I went out for track two of those years. There was something about the spring sports. A little more laid back than the fall and winter sports. No cold football practices. No wrestling mat burns. Just amazing sunshine and warmth.

In May, school children and their teachers start to notice, and to coast into, the end of the school year. College students and their professors wrap things up in May.

Did I mention the lengthening days? Sure, June gets the call for the longest days of sunlight. But in May, you really start to notice that it stays light until 8:30 or longer. In May I can start my hikes at 5:30 AM and watch the woods wake up. I know John Denver would love that!

My favorite Classics author, Thomas Hardy, said it best “And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings!” Old Tom gets it! Be happy, it’s May!

If you still aren’t convinced that May is the best month of all, how about this? When Smokey Robinson sang “My Girl” and wanted to describe the beauty and warmth of his lover, did he compare her to October? No. Did he compare her to February? I think not! He’s got the month of May. Indeed! And, we all have the month of May, so get out there and enjoy and explore our beautiful May world.

That title may surprise you coming from me. I’m not the most patriotic person in the world. But I do love this country. It is beautiful. Its people are beautiful as well. I am less than a month from my 70th birthday. I’ve been doing some reminiscing. This morning I was reminiscing about one of the most interesting jobs I ever had. For eight years I got to travel the world doing Human Resources functions for a major corporation. Three areas of the United States were especially memorable to me. I spent a lot of time in each of them. It’s been twenty-five years, so I can’t guarantee these places are still like I remember them.

What I remember most about the South was the friendliness of the people and the slower pace of business. Driving around the small towns of the south in the evening, smelling the jasmine and magnolias. There seemed to be a church on every corner. The food across the south was fantastic from prawns with the heads on in Mobile, Alabama to Jambalaya in Baton Rouge. One night, driving around rural Virgina I came across a field on fire surrounded by men on all sides. My northern brain was thinking KKK, but it was just the burning of a tobacco field because the price of tobacco was so low it was cheaper to destroy it. Speaking of the KKK, I had the privilege of driving across the Edmund Pettis Bridge, famed from Civil Rights Days. Edentown, NC was such a beautiful town that I considered it as a retirement destination. Ahhh, the South.

The Northwest, in my case Washington, Oregon, and northern California, was so physically beautiful that I loved every trip there. Driving through the Columbia River Gorge and getting to see the destruction from the eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s are two places I will never forget. Seeing those majestic snow peaked mountains, Mt. Hood and Mt. Shasta, every day was exhilarating to say the least. Maybe this is just coming from a northeast mindset, but the people in the Northwest also seemed a little more laid back.

Lastly, the Upper Midwest and the Great Lakes. If it wasn’t so damned cold in the winter, I would definitely want to retire there. International Falls, MN, the Icebox of the Nation was right by beautiful Rainy Lake. Duluth, MN, its terraces wrapped around the harbor of Lake Superior remains one of my favorite cities. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and its Yoopers, was a wonderful place to explore. Park Falls, Minnesota, is the Ruffed Grouse Capital of America. It is also in a county that had, in 1997, no stoplights. I remember the people of this region being very hard working, but also hard playing. They were proud of their harsh weather and loved to be outdoors.

What a lucky man I was to have had the chance to see so much of our great country. My recommendation to my younger readers is to get out there and explore! If you find yourself exploring in the area of Franklin, Virginia, be sure to stop at Phillips Restaurant and get the peanut butter pie. Best dessert I ever tasted!

It’s Palm Sunday. My memories are taking me back to confirmation class at St. John’s UCC in Slatington. I grew up in that church. Baptism, Sunday school, Confirmation, Youth Groups, and First Communion. When I say I miss it, I am talking about the church building itself. Not the sermon. Not the offering. Not the ancient hymns that often made no sense. I miss the church building. In confirmation classes we learned all about the narthex and the nave and the altar. I loved the stained-glass windows. I loved the quiet and the polished wood and the maroon seat cushions, and the candles, and the gold and the robes. I loved the high ceilings and the little glasses for communion. I loved the balcony and the choir lofts. I loved the tintinnabulation of the bells. Thank you, Edgar Allen Poe for that great word.

I could go back, right? The problem is that somewhere along the line I lost my Christian beliefs. I was always a questioner. My daughter’s death, at seventeen, made me search for answers. My answers came in a study of Buddhism. So, to go to church now, would make me somewhat hypocritical. The Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed (see I paid attention in confirmation class) mean little to me now. I am certain I would be welcomed back, but I would feel like a phony. So, I need to be content with my memories. I can do that. As my consistent readers know, I spend a lot of time in my memories.

So, to all my Christian friends, Happy Palm Sunday and Happy Easter! If you find yourself in the narthex on either of those days, take a look around and savor that place of peace. It is truly a blessing. Just a reminder, Sunday May 8, is Buddha Day!

Many years ago, I worked with a guy whose son ran cross country for Wilson High School. He asked me why Northern Lehigh always had such great cross-country teams. I didn’t know how to answer him at the time. Now I think it may have been because Slatington is built on hills, and we develop strong leg muscles. Yeah, that’s probably not it. But Slatington is certainly built on hills.

Whether you are coming into Slatington from the north or the south, you are coming downhill into town. Main Street Hill goes the entire length of town, from the south. It is an old Native American route, Old Warrior’s Path. The north end of town, was Kuehner Hill, going up to the high school. When I was a kid in town, we always thought of that as the rich part of town. In actuality, it is mostly ranches and Cape Cods. But Slatington has never been a wealthy town, at least not since the slate boom days.

We like to give our hills names in Slatington. We have a famous hill, that is affectionately known as The Danny. Its real name is The Daniel Jones Hill, after an early slate pioneer. Its official name is Church Street, one of the few streets in Slatington without a church on it! Underneath the Danny is our infamous Bedbug Cave, home to underground slate quarries from back in the day.

Another famous hill in town is a bit ambiguous. I’m hoping some of my fellow Slatingtonians will put this ambiguity to rest. The south end of Walnut Street is known as either Hungary Hill (because it was a Hungarian settlement) or Hungry Hill (because poor people lived there). Help me out Slaters/Bulldogs!

Obviously, today’s post is one of my nostalgia themes. How I loved growing up in Slatington! I walked those hills throughout my childhood. I made the long walk up Main Street Hill every day in the summer to go to the pool. Until I learned to drive in late sophomore year, I walked up very steep Kuehner Hill to high school every school day. Yes, even through drifting snow and literally uphill both ways!

At this point in this post, I probably only have Slatington readers left! Let me close with one of my favorite hills. This one may only be remembered by the Dowell Street /North Street/ Willow Avenue gang of kids I grew up with. Sledding down Shooky’s Path on a snowy day and hoping you would make it all the way over the railroad tracks. I’m glad a grew up in a town with hills. I can’t even imagine a childhood in Kansas!

Did you ever wonder why you do the things you do, say the things you say, and think the things you think? As a therapist, I help clients figure that stuff out every day. It’s a lot harder when it comes to yourself. I had a friend recently tell me that she is “finally comfortable in my own skin”. I wish I could say that about myself. There are some things that I can’t contribute to my childhood. There are things that I can’t blame on past relationships. There are things I can’t pass off as genetics. Yesterday, the simple act of watching a bright pink flip-flop float over the rapids of Jordan Creek gave me a stroke of insight. An epiphany.

I think I wrote before about how I like watching things float downstream. I was walking about as fast as the flip-flop was going. I was able to figure out, approximately, when it would enter the Lehigh River. I also had a good guess about when the flip-flop would enter the Delaware River and eventually Delaware Bay. The adventures it would have along the way made me think of the word potential. That was my insight! I love potential.

That made some things clearer to me. It explains why I can get tears in my eyes listening to a middle school orchestra. I think about the potential of each of those kids. It became clearer to me why my favorite genre of book or movie is “coming of age”. I love to read about, or watch, a teen become an adult. The challenge they faced sets them up for their next fifty or more years. Lastly, it explains my love of nostalgia. It’s why I am drawn to the places of my childhood. It’s why I write about Slatington and my high school days. It’s because it was then that I had potential. A life to live, things to experience, careers to choose, and relationships to create.

I’ll be seventy in about two months. I’m struggling with that. I’ve been wondering why, because turning 30, 40, 50, and 60 wasn’t all that bad. But that bright pink flip-flop explains it all. It’s about potential. I am entering my last decades of life. Potential is pretty much gone. I know I can still have a lot of good experiences. But my life is not ahead of me. It’s mostly behind me. My “coming of age” is over fifty years ago. I’d best make the best of these last years.

That is what we should all be doing. Make the best of each and every day. Every single hour is a gift.

That may sound a little like a Supreme Court Case, like Roe v Wade. It’s not. It may sound like this will be a story about the fabled Thanksgiving football rivalry from days gone by. It’s not. It may sound like, since you know my love for Slatington, a rant against my town’s closest neighbor to the north. No, it’s not that either. So, what is it? Let me explain.

Most of my consistent followers know that I am a Licensed Professional Counselor and that I recently opened my own solo practice in my Slatington hometown. You also may remember my concerns about getting this population to endorse counseling and seek out help. It’s a little over six months and the results are in. They have not. Not one from the Northern Lehigh area. But there is a glimmer of hope from the little town of Palmerton, just three miles to the north. A friend recently suggested that maybe the residents of Slatington are just more well-adjusted. Okay. Let’s go with that.

That got me thinking about the differences between these towns on either side of Lehigh Gap. These may not be historically accurate as they come from observations over the past 69 years. Their populations are very similar, just under 5000. Palmerton is a planned community, planned to support the New Jersey Zinc Smelter on either end of town. The big homes on the hill, the row homes closer to their main street, and a beautiful park centrally located. Slatington’s growth was much more haphazard. It was a small farming community that grew rapidly with the discovery of slate.

Slatington was mostly Pennsylvania German and Welsh. Palmerton was mostly eastern European. The Welsh drawn to Slatington for its slate quarry work and the eastern Europeans coming to work in the zinc smelter. Slatington, after slate died, became a bedroom community of Allentown. Palmerton remained a self-contained town much longer. There is still a zinc facility on one end of the town. Palmerton’s movie theater, The Palm, lasted about two decades longer than Slatington’s Arcadia.

What does all that have to do with my counseling practice? Absolutely nothing. I think I am grasping at straws to explain the ambivalence to counseling by my Slatington peeps! Please don’t worry about my practice though. It is thriving. Clients make the drive to Slatington from Allentown, Easton, Coopersburg, and Nazareth. Others settle for video sessions (not my favorite). I guess we’ll see what happens in the second six months of my lease. Slatington wasn’t built in a day!

There is this thing in Buddhism called Loving Kindness Meditation. In it, you start with yourself and wish yourself happiness, health, safety, and contentment. Next you wish the same for close family and best friends. You move outward with your wishful thoughts to friends who are not as close and to acquaintances. Then comes the big leap. You wish happiness, health, safety, and contentment to your enemies and to others who have hurt you. In Christianity, this equals the plea to love your enemy.

Don’t worry. I am not a good enough Buddhist to be able to wish happiness for Vladmir Putin. But the war in Ukraine got me thinking about the opposite of Loving Kindness. Can you, personally, hate someone enough to kill them? Of course, if your life or the lives of loved ones is threatened, you would probably say yes. But in that moment, could you? Michael Dukakis famously lost his chance at the presidency partly because of his answer to the question would he want the death penalty for someone who killed his wife. He said no. He was supposed to say yes, I would like to rip his heart out personally.

Could you kill someone to defend strangers and fellow citizens? People in the military are asked to do that all the time. That’s why people in the military deserve our respect and admiration. It takes a special kind of person to do this for his fellow citizens. Could I do that? I don’t know. I had a high enough draft lottery number in 1971, that kept me out of Vietnam. I have a client who is a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. He believes we all have the capability of unspeakable acts of violence. What do you believe?

War makes you think. In the Civil War, General Sherman, after burning southern cities to the ground, famously said “War is hell”. My Loving Kindness Mediation goes out to all who are suffering in Ukraine and especially to all children in war zones. It is always the children who suffer most. Maybe today I will take the time to reread “The Red Badge of Courage”. Maybe it is something we all should read.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I have lived in many houses in my life. My last count was over thirty. One of my favorites was a stone Cape Cod on South 24th Street in Allentown.

One of the many reasons I liked it was because it had many interesting features. It starts with a winding sidewalk up to the front door. Inside there was a beautiful fireplace with built in bookcases on either side. It had a beautiful slate floored sunroom with Jalousie windows that overlooked a quiet, secluded back yard. Upstairs, one of the bedrooms had built in drawers and bookcases. There was an outdoor deck above the sunroom with a delightful view of the backyard and the neighbors’ backyards. Sounds like a lovely home, right?

It was a lovely home. Indeed! But it had one feature that my wife and I both found particularly hideous. The back panels of the bookcases that bounded the fireplace were made of translucent glass. So far so good. There was a light switch nearby that illuminated those glass panels with the bright colors of the rainbow! Imagine a nice quiet, romantic evening at home, on the sofa, with bright rainbow lights staring back at you. Nah, a definite mood killer.

We did some updating to that home. The first thing we did was remove the switch and the back panels of the bookcase. We took out the translucent glass and replaced it with good old drywall and painted it a muted white. That was more our style. The rainbow lights are still there behind the drywall. No one would be the wiser.

I drive by that house on occasion. I know there is a lovely lesbian couple living there now. They proudly fly the rainbow flag off the front porch of the house. If only they knew what was behind their fireplace bookcases! I’ve often thought of stopping off and telling them the story, assuming they would get a good laugh out of it. But I think the story of the rainbow bookcases will remain a secret between me, my ex-wife, and, of course, all of you.

If we come across that word, it is usually referring to the migration of Jews from their original home in the Middle East to probably every nation on earth. Another common reference is when we talk about African-American movements from slave plantations to every state in the United States and beyond. But it doesn’t have to be great cultural masses that have a diaspora. Our little families have it as well. As I was carefully maneuvering around icy trails this morning, I was thinking of the George Diaspora. I was probably thinking about why our ancestors would settle in this cold part of North America!

My mom’s family moved from Mahanoy City, PA to Slatington, PA so my grandfather could work in the slate quarries. My dad’s family moved north from Quakertown, PA to Slatington, also for work. This little town of Slatington is where my diaspora begins. You know how much I love my town. My part of family migration is small. The farthest I have lived from my hometown is 15 miles away in Allentown. Even though I had a job that allowed me to see most parts of the United States, here I remained. My kids lived as far away as Tamaqua, about twenty miles to the northwest.

My oldest brother lived in California, after a stint in the Marines. He and his wife moved to Oklahoma. His kids live in Oklahoma and Georgia. Diaspora indeed!

My sister married into Lehighton, PA. Her kids now live in Cleveland, Ohio, and Slatedale, PA. But their kids live in Colorado and Erie, PA. My other two brothers only got a few miles from Slatington, one in Washington Township, the other in Walnutport. Their kids have spread out a little more in places like Germansville, Orefield, Slatedale, Kutztown, Upper Perkiomen area, and Lehigh Furnace, all in eastern PA.

The George family is big, even though it started with the seven of us, mom, dad and the five kids in a little twin home on Franklin Street in Slatington. The next generation is probably more spread out, but I have, unfortunately, lost track. Here are the places I do know. Boston, Philly, Poughkeepsie, Colorado, New Tripoli.

Reading over this post I am amazed at how mobile my family is. Reading over this post I also realize how boring it may be to my non-family readers! Let me try to make a connection. Think about your own families and how far and wide they may be. It makes it harder to keep a family close, when they are spread out all over the map. But here is a positive spin. When a child is born, and they become old enough to understand, show them your family diaspora. I am reminded of Dr, Suess. “Oh, the Places You’ll Go”.