My First Blog Post For Levittown Patch

My name is Alan Raisman, and I am very excited to be blogging for Levittown Patch.  I graduated Lafayette College in May 2010 where I studied government and international relations. While a student at Lafayette College, I was engaged in community building, town-gown relations, government relations and international affairs.

My blog posts will cover a variety of topics including getting to know your community, engaging in your local government and making the most out of traveling somewhere new. 

I have two mottos that I live by:

1) It is not merely about the places you visit; it is about the people you meet while you are there.     

2) When you travel somewhere new, enter as a tourist but leave as a local.

I hope that you enjoy my initial blog posts, and I hope you engage with me to make this experience better for me, for you and for the Levittown Patch website.  My first blog post will cover a project I worked on in my sophomore year in college called the One Word – One City project.

When I started at Lafayette College, I wanted to get to know the area where I went to school. Lafayette College is located in Easton, Pennsylvania, a city of 27,000. Easton would be my home for four years, and I wanted to become more than a student; I wanted to become a neighbor. In September of my sophomore year, I conducted a project called One Word – One City. I asked the people of Easton and the Lehigh Valley how they would describe Easton in one word, and by November of 2007, I received 350 responses.    

The responses I received invited me into a community I barely knew.  It introduced me to business owners, artists, government employees, college students, college administrators and residents. I learned what people thought about the city I was going to call home. I wanted to share with you some of the responses I received as well as the reasons for their word choices.  I ask my readers what word you would choose to describe your community. As my blog posts continue, please remember my two mottos above and how they relate to each entry. Thank you for reading, and I look forward to our conversations ahead.

“Well your asking the one question that is almost impossible to answer, but I’ll try. Home.  Because Home is where the heart is. I'm currently in San Antonio in the US Army and I’m truly missing home right now. I miss my family, my godson, everything. That is where my heart lies now…and I’m not there. Take care of my town for me while I’m gone. Keep it lookin good.”

“My one word for Easton is ‘Community’. Easton is a community in the truest sense of the word. People coming together, getting to know each other, caring about each other and the town we live in and work in as well as working together to improve that town and the lives of the people in it. I only have my business in Easton right now but hope to move here as well.”