Free Press – June 22, 2006

Quakertown Sesquicentennial Book Plus Misc

Dear Friends,

Good morning. Quakertown’s Sesquicentennial album hit the streets last week. Before I get to it, there are several items to cover…some good, some not. First the good.

Saturday, I had a chat with a Quakertonian who has a great story to tell. Unfortunately, he’s so shy that I promised I would identify him only by his initials, “F. D.” Anyway, F. D. told me that after 60 years of smoking, he’d kicked the habit. Bravo! He’ll be 75 in September and will probably reach 100.

Here’s how it happened. F.D. was to have a cataract removed last March. The day before the operation, Dr. Charles Campbell’s nurse, Alice, was preparing F. D. for the surgery. “You need to stop smoking today,” she warned. F. D. said OK…he hasn’t had the dirty weed since.

“I quit Tuesday, March 14,” F. D. remembered. “I’d been smoking since I was 15. My wife quit in 1989…she smoked two packs each day.”

The morale of the story is obvious. It’s never too late to quit. Anyone can do it with will power. And at prices up to $4 per pack, if F. D.’s wife were still puffing two packs each day, she’d be spending $56 per week, $2,912 yearly…no small change.

Item.

The second positive notion is the four way stop. Last week, I mentioned that Quakertown had installed a four way stop at the busy intersection of 4^th and Mill Streets. It’s been a resounding success. I neglected to mention that the borough should have an encore at 9^th and Mill. That, plus the speed bumps on Mill Street have transformed the raceway to safer speeds.

And now for a few negative items.

I was sorry to notice that only one of the area newspapers covered the complete story of the Quakertown school board meeting on June 19. Yes, the papers wrote about the board passing the ’06-’07 budget leaving the three year teacher’s contract unchanged. And they noted the significant news that school board director Dr. Julie Fagan was quitting in disgust.

But with the exception of Friday’s Morning Call, not one word was printed about an important happening. Five recent graduates of QHS made a personal appeal to drop Integrated Math (IT) from the curriculum. Matt and Heather Renshaw plus Joe Garrity, Galen Hall, and Amber Jones argued that Integrated Math, which is based on problem solving rather than by rote learning, left them unprepared for college math.

Superintendent Jim Scanlon has acknowledged that IT has not made an improvement to math scores in the senior high. As Quakertown heads into the seventh year of Integrated Math, Scanlon is surveying the math and science teachers to see if they are as critical as the students. Scanlon told me that he’d have the results by the end of June. Stay tuned…but most of the newspapers missed an important story in the making, and it took four days for the Call to finally report it.

Item.

Two local members of congress, Mike Fitzpatrick and Allyson Schwartz, convinced their colleagues to include $2 million in the transportation bill to upgrade signage, and install traffic cameras on Route 309. “It will improve safety and enhance productivity of the roadways,” Fitzpatrick said.

Fitzpatrick and Schwartz believe the busy road will see congestion relief. Personally, I think that investing the money into the restoration of commuter rail service between Quakertown and Lansdale would have been a better investment. The sooner congress and the state legislature make mass transit a higher priority, the better.

Item.

Did you notice that State House Speaker John Perzel (R-Phila.) was belly aching about the inadequate salaries, which Pennsylvania lawmakers receive? “Perzel defended last year’s ill-fated pay-raise legislation, saying that some lawmakers have debt issues and noting that there’s at least one Philadelphia tattoo artist who makes more than a state lawmaker’s $72,187 salary,” Julie Shaw wrote in the Inquirer (June 17).

Isn’t that too bad?

A person like John Perzel is exactly what is wrong with the Pennsylvania legislature. The GOP leadership won’t permit independent thinking by its Republican members. The Democrats are no better. What needs to happen to John Perzel is a resounding defeat in November. Perzel should have a tattoo printed on his backside saying, “Villain.”

Unfortunately, without term limits, we citizens are doomed to endure the excesses of an arrogant bunch of representatives and senators. And, we won’t get term limits anytime soon because the legislature has to approve the notion…that’s not likely. So we have no other option but to vote against every incumbent, every chance we get.

And now, back to the good news.

I received this Email from David Woglom, Quakertown’s Borough manager:

“At long last, the Quakertown Celebration committee has finished our much anticipated album commemorating the year-long celebration of the Borough’s 150^th Anniversary. This beautiful, 96 page album is full of colored photographs of each of the events of the Borough’s celebration, as well as a “Now and Then” section, which gives personal thoughts and stories about the comparison of life in the Borough now and many years ago. This album will be a keepsake for many years to come as well as a coffee table book for many people to enjoy.

“The album cost is only $20, and is available at: Quakertown Borough Hall, Sine's Five and Ten, Friendly bookstore and Lion Around Books,” Woglom’s Email concluded.

I poured through the book and give it an A +. I’ll have more to say about it next week.

Sincerely,

Charles Meredith