My Family's New Summer Tradition - The Great Allentown Fair

The slogan "The Great Allentown Fair, Don't Leave Summer Without It" has never rung more true than these past two years. With my two daughters now 13 and 10, we have taken advantage of the Grandstand concerts the past two Labor Day weekends to also visit the fair and festival portion of the fair. In 2011 we saw the boy band Big Time Rush, and this year @victoriajustice and Max Schneider. Although neither are household names they both put on a great show last night and better yet my kids had a great time. I actually planned ahead (I seem to do this more often in my 40's than I ever did in my 20's and 30's), and bought my tickets at the box office in March (no fees) and bought ride passes for the kids at an advance price discount. Affordable enough I was even able to buy an extra ticket for my 13 yr. old so she could bring a friend.
Since we planned to spend the day, we got to the fair around 2pm and gave the Allentown Civic Theater $5 for great parking across from the main entrance. Although I have not scene a show at The Civic Theater, this makes me feel good about supporting their efforts. Next the rides. We saw a 24" horse and signs to preview the world's largest horse, on our way to a wide selection of spinning, tossing and musical rides. Glad my youngest can go on all the rides and me and my wife settled in for a day of people watching.
Tried to dunk the clown, 12 pitches and a quick reminder why the IronPigs have not called me up this season. After a light rain shower pushed us into the exhibition hall, we got to enjoy cooking demonstrations by local Sodexho chefs, plus see the blue ribbon vegetables, cakes and traditional fair contests.
After the concert we finished off the night with Fried Oreos and Ice Cream, before heading home and saying so long to Summer. Wonder who will be playing the Great Allentown Fair next year?

A subsciber's advice to the Morning Call newspaper

I have been a subscriber/reader of the Morning Call since taking my first job in the Lehigh Valley in 1989 at the old George Washington Lodge on McArthur Rd. The paper does a better job than anyone turning over leads for sales professionals in the tourism business. They get all the news and PR releases before anyone else and their stories in the morning paper are a great source. Often the fact that I have read the paper by 7AM allows my first sales call at 8:30AM to be the one early bird that catches the worm.. With that said, one of my recent pet peeves with the paper is their decision not to send a reporter on the road with the Phillies Major League Baseball team. As much as I am sure there are fiscal concerns, I also understand that every decision has a financial impact and one is chosen over another for many reasons. I must say, reading an AP report on the Phillies is painful. Odds are if someone is reading the paper in this day and age, they are looking for insight and content not how the runs were scored. Mandy Housenick has done an exceptional job in her short couple of years covering the team and making the hard task of getting something out of the players and coaches that we didn't learn on tv or on the internet. Having Mandy at only the home games, probably makes the Morning Call a second class citizen when it comes to getting the behind the scenes news. I hope you will give some thought to this idea of sending Mandy on the road. Also, I have a few thoughts on the real estate section, but will leave that for another day....

Zoos belong in Stimulus Package

Stacey Johnson, Executive Director Lehigh Valley Zoo, forwarded me an editorial from Jim Maddy, President and CEO of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, in regards to Zoos being excluded from the stimulus package. I am sure there is some political partisan reason behind this, but why Zoos. I am off to Washington DC, National Zoo the weekend of March 20th, I will be sure to look up President Obama, and ask him personally, why did you pick on Zoos.

Smokey and the Bandit & Social Media

Was the CB radio the start of Social Media? I had the pleasure of catching Smokey and The Bandit with Burt Reynolds and Sally Field on TNT HD or one of the 150 channels this weekend and could not stop thinking that we had social media decades ago, and it died! Why did it fade away? Was it a fad, will Facebook, Twitter and all my other widgets at the bottom of the page fade away like the CB radio? I would like to hear what you think, before I buy the next generation of SMART phones only to have them sitting at someone's yard sale in 10 years.