5 Things to Know Today

Good morning, Bethlehem.

1. Today is May 26, 2011, the 311th birthday of Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. For those of you who do not know, Zinzendorf was a German nobleman and Moravian bishop who funded the establishment of missionary communities around the world, including one in the frontier of Pennsylvania on the banks of the Monocacy Creek. On Christmas Eve in 1741, Zinzendorf visited this fledgling community and named it Bethlehem.
2. The Bethlehem Planning Commission meets today at 4 p.m. in Town Hall. On the agenda is the proposed new and a potential recommendation to City Council to adopt. Another significant part of the agenda is an apparent move toward reinvigorating the city’s efforts at removing blight in the few pockets where it exists.
3. The largest graduating class in the history of – with about 825 students – is expected to receive diplomas at 6:30 p.m. tonight at the Spartan Center on the college’s main campus. The featured guest speaker will be , the founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, the first African-American woman to be admitted to the Mississippi bar, a colleague of the late Martin Luther King Jr., a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, we could go on and on. It promises to be a special, if somewhat overshadowed, evening.
4. One more time: Route 22 will have lane restrictions in both directions during the evening and overnight hours. A project to install raised pavement markers along the highway’s stretch from the Lehigh County to the New Jersey state line is scheduled to wrap up tonight.
5. The Freddy Awards, the Lehigh Valley’s annual tribute to excellence in high school theater, will take place at 7 p.m. at the State Theatre in Easton and will be broadcast live on WFMZ-TV, Channel 69, and broadcast live on the Web at www.wfmz.com. Freedom High School’s received 15 nominations, including one for best overall production. There were also six nominations for , five for , two for and one for .

Bethlehem Patch will be all about the Freddys tonight. If you don’t care to sit in front of your television to watch, you can follow the results of your favorite school through our Twitter and Facebook feeds. What? You say you aren’t following us?Perhaps it’s time you changed that: Click on the links on the upper right of our home page.