Bracken County, Kentucky

I know- I hardly ever seem to be home anymore. I'm still visiting one county monthly, only this July and August I made up for the trips I missed in January and February. I'll be off again next week, because it's the only time I can go in September before the Holidays and my "Beach Boys- Light and Dark" class which starts mid-September.

The wisdom to how I do this became apparent on this trip when I was near Athens, Ohio at lunchtime and just halfway to Augusta, the big-using the term loosely- town in Bracken County. I was in Athens in March of 2014, and I remembered yesterday that the Union Street Diner was a good place to eat. I found it without going too far out of my way. It's all about pathways and making places familiar.

Augusta is famous for a few things: it was one of the first places to be settled in Kentucky immediately after the American Revolution, it sits on a beautiful spot on the Ohio River, which flooded up to sixty-five feet in 1997, there was a Civil War battle here in 1862, where Confederate troops fleeing from an unsuccessful attack on Cincinnati burned much of the town, tobacco is the main cash crop, Stephen Foster often visited an uncle here (hence "My Old Kentucky Home") and, at one point in the 1970s, Rosemary, Nick and a teenaged George Clooney lived here.

I found Augusta a bit scary. There is a downtown, which seems to be open on weekends for tourists. Lots of gift shops, antique/junk stores, little precious cafés, all closed on Monday when I arrived. You have to look to find the "real" town. I had a bowl of spaghetti for dinner at a local pizza and subs place.

There are no chain hotels in the county, so I picked the B&B that lets you make a reservation online. They have, I think, twelve rooms, decorated in cute styles. I picked the "railroad room" with a sign on the wall that says "Grand Central Station" and the television sitting atop a steamer trunk. They give you a menu for breakfast and you get to order a variety of things. Food in this area comes in three flavors: sugar, butter and pork.

I didn't want to stay in someone's house in the state where several county clerks are defying the Supreme Court  and not issuing marriage licenses and have to explain my life to the people who own the place over croissants and muffins at breakfast. That's why I generally prefer anonymous chain hotels.

The waterfront on the Ohio River is gorgeous, lined with big old houses and brick sidewalks. Behind that is a poor industrial town. Trailers, little nineteenth century cottages in bad shape, one IGA grocery store, one gas station. I'm sure I looked like the tourist I am in my bright yellow Ralph Lauren t-shirt today. I give the town a C+ for friendliness. I walked a lot (the weather was sunny and between 55 and 75 degrees) and said "Hi" to everyone. Some greeted me back, but some deliberately did not.

Last night, I was taking pictures of some big old houses back off the water, when a woman came out and greeted me. She was in her 70s, thin, wearing a bright orange blouse and messy blond hair. She asked where I was from, and when I complimented her blouse, she said "Well, I am a Leo." I could have guessed that she lived in Los Angeles for many years. I felt like I had run into someone from "back home." She's from Kentucky ( a few counties downstream) but insisted to her husband that they move back here after the Northridge earthquake in 1994. They have a beautiful Victorian house with a wrap-around porch in the middle of town. Not that there is much more than the middle - the town is ten blocks by five.

I traveled the road down the river to find a few historic places with little luck. I did encounter the tiny town of Foster, a huge limestone mine., and a hydro-electric plant under construction. Traveling due south for lunch, I found the county seat, Brooksville, much smaller than Augusta, and looking half-empty. Brooksville is surrounded by fields of bright yellow-green tobacco. I had lunch at Donna's, a diner across from the courthouse where everyone seemed to know everyone else. I was proud of myself for not eating at Subway, around the corner. As a reward (never reward yourself with food) I had a slice of home-made butterscotch meringue pie. Down the road from Brooksville is Germantown, on the county line, looking like some town in rural Pennsylvania.

Rosemary Clooney's old house on River Street is now a museum, and not doing well. I guess people under sixty don't remember her. Still, they had some George memorabilia as well. The woman who manages the hotel gave me and a couple, probably the only others staying overnight at our hotel, a tour this afternoon. Rosemary was stunning in her day, and still glamorous until her death in 2002. Her son is married to Debby Boone and George is her nephew. Interesting family.

 Tonight, I had the buffet dinner at the hotel. They had chili, vegetable soup, pork roast, beef with noodles, meat balls, roasted boneless chicken, a salad bar, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stewed tomatoes (not seen since elementary school) and green beans, thankfully without bacon. I was joined by two busloads of visitors from First Baptist Church in Cold Spring, Kentucky. We were entertained by a small band playing show tunes and a singer reminiscent of Bill Murray on Saturday Night Live forty years ago. I didn't sit with the church people, as they had taken every seat in the main room. I got to be off in another room by myself. Meals are the times when I miss having Joe with me on these jaunts.

As usual, I felt guilty about leaving Joe and Tappuz, spending money I don't have and putting too many miles on our once-new car. But I've never had a bad time on these little trips, and I enjooyed both the long drive (and back tomorrow) and getting to know a new place.

Here are the pics:

The ferry that connects Augusta to Ohio

Water Street Historic District, Augusta

Main Street, Augusta, with a train coming through

Monument to nameless Confederate soldiers killed in Augusta in 1862

Vacant building in Foster

Me with Rosematy Clooney memorabilia

George Clooney memorabilia at Aunt Rosemary's house, Augusta

Rosemary Clooney House, Augusta

Germantown

House on Elizabeth Street, Augusta

Alfonso McKibben House, Augusta

Downtown Brooksville

Bracken County Courthouse, Brooksville

Dan Fogelberg

When I travel, I take our newer car, the 2012 Suzuki, because it has a CD player. Our older Honda Civic has a cassette player, but it eats cassettes instead of playing them. I usually bring ten or 12 CDs with me to play while I'm driving.

Two of the CDs I take often are by Dan Fogelberg: "Greatest Hits' from 1982, and "Twin Sons of Different Mothers" with Tim Weisberg, from 1978. I have other albums of his on vinyl.

Normally, I detest cheap sentiment. But I still cry at "Same Old Lang Syne" about running into an old girlfriend at a convenience store on New Year's Eve (and the scandal that he said "Met my old lover at the grocery store.." when gay men at the time called their partners their "lover."). And "Longer," probably the most unabashed love song in history, makes me sigh and get teary. For Rosh Hashana 2008, Pam and Mindy, a couple at BCC, the temple where I met Joe, made a wedding video, showing all the people married and engaged from our temple (including themselves) and set to Fogelberg and Weisberg's cover of Judy Collins' "Since You Asked." Joe and I were engaged at the time and appear in the video. I watch that at least monthly. I can't get a link up that works (darn technology!) but if you go to YouTube and look up "BCC Wedding Montage- No on 8" you can see it.

Maybe it's because I sing high tenor like him, and taught myself to play "Longer" on the piano and sing along. Working on that made me appreciate Fogelberg's talent.

Then there is the sleazy story of how, after a bad week trying to teach a class in Tallahassee for Social Security in 1980, a handsome young man at the gay bar in town took me home because, with my full dark beard , he thought I looked like Dan Fogelberg.

Dan Fogelberg was born in 1951, almost two years after I was born. He died of prostate cancer in December 2007, at the age of fifty-six. Another lesson in not envying people because you perceive them to be more talented, more successful or better looking.

Probably better not to think about why Dan Fogelberg's music moves me. I wouldn't want to think I'm a romantic at heart.

Boyd County, Kentucky

I know. For someone who writes about Morgantown, it seems like I'm never there. Tonight (August 11) I'm in Ashland, Kentucky, which, according to the "2015 Kentucky Travel Guide" is the "...major urban area of eastern Kentucky, the area where coal meets iron." Catlettsburg, the county seat of Boyd County, is just across a bridge from Kenova, West Virginia, and downtown Ashland is on the Ohio River across from Ohio a few miles downstream. The proximity of coal, iron ore and limestone, the ease of transportation on the Ohio River, and later, the coming of the railroad, were the economic drivers of the region. Oil and gas are major industries.

It seems somehow different from both West Virginia and Ohio-more Southern, more laid back, friendlier. The first thing you notice crossing from West Virginia to Ohio on I-64 is the huge Marathon oil refinery sitting on the hill, looking like Elizabeth New Jersey's Exxon plant. I was worried. But Ashland, while not a large town, has all the amenities. There is a mall, occasional live theater, movies, a museum. The rich people live near downtown and there is a Central Park. Lots of people were out jogging when I went by this morning.

Catlettsburg is much smaller than Ashland, pretty, but with a nearly vacant downtown. It is on Big Sandy River where it flows into the Ohio.

I found most of the places in Boyd County on the National Register of Historic Places. All are in or near Ashland and Catlettsburg.

The weather was cool this morning, getting muggy later and up to about 85 F. this afternoon. I explored this morning, planned to eat lunch at Sbarro in the mall, and hit a movie later. I checked this morning and found that "Mr. Holmes," a movie about Sherlock Holmes in retirement in 1947, featuring Ian McKellen and Laura Linney, was playing in at the Kyova Mall, west on US 60 from town. (Kyova, like Kenova, has to do with the names of the three states in the area, although somehow "West" gets left out). The mall is off I-64 and is mostly dead. There is one department store, a branch library, the movies, and lots of abandoned stores. I wouldn't have been in that area except for the movie. I don't think "Mr. Holmes" did well. It looks beautiful, but there is no sex, no car chases, guns or monsters. The lead actor is 76; the leading lady is 51. I enjoyed it, but I imagine young people stayed away in droves.

I'll be back in Morgantown tomorrow in time for the baby-naming for Parker Finn Solomon. Boyd County was my July County. To really catch up, I have to get to Bracken County, Kentucky later this month, along the Ohio farther west, featuring Augusta, hometown of Rosemary, Nick and George Clooney. Stay tuned. Here are some pictures from Boyd County.

The green and blue bridges across the Ohio river to Ohio from Riverside Park, Ashland

Former Crump and Field Grocery, Ashland

AMTRAK station, Ashland

House in the Bath Street Historic District, Ashland

Central Park, Ashland

First Presbyterian Church, Ashland

CSX Train at 47th Street, Ashland

Boyd County Court House, Catlettsburg

Train station, now a museum, Catlettsburg

Culbertson House, Ashland

Fields House, Ashland

St. James AME Church, Ashland

Modern law office in the Commercial Historic District, probably now old enough to qualify as historic, Ashland

Former Chesapeake and Ohio railroad Depot, now a bank, Ashland

Coal, The Iran Deal, and The Republican Debate

Part One: Coal

There was an opinion piece yesterday, August 5, in The Gazette-Mail, Charleston's daily newspaper from Kevin Crutchfield, CEO of Alpha Natural Resources, a coal-mining company, crying about how the bankrupt company can't be sold to a company in Kentucky unless it stops paying pensions and providing health insurance to retirees. According to Chris Regan's blog (homeyesterday.com), in a post from August 3, Crutchfield received a two million dollar bonus this year, and six million total in 2011 and 2012.

Meanwhile, President Obama came out this week with new guidelines for carbon pollution to combat global warming, air pollution and the high incidence of asthma, particularly among young people who live near coal-burning facilities.

According to our local politicians, particularly our Republican Congressman David McKinley and our newly-elected Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito, but also our Democratic Senator Joe Manchin III, Obama is the villain. The health of people in the United States, and particularly in West Virginia, comes second to the lining the pockets of coal company executives. Meanwhile the bankrupt companies want to back out of their contracts to provide for retirees, and want to sell out their union workforce to non-union companies. This year, they convinced our Republican-dominated legislature to ease safety regulations for the mines.

Educated people and anyone wanting a chance for a real life have been leaving West Virginia for decades. Whole neighborhoods in northwest Baltimore, near where I grew up, were inhabited by "hillbillies," as we called them in our ignorance when I was a teen. In the 2010 census, forty of our fifty-five counties had lost population over the previous ten years. And yet coal millionaires ask for tax cuts and buy Republican officeholders (and many Democrats) to make sure the health of the planet, and the well-being of workers and their communities are not considered. Everything is the fault of Obama and the EPA.

President Obama has offered to help retrain workers and bring new industry to the coalfields. He has been so demonized here that no one will listen. When we came here in 2012, there were signs everywhere that said "Stop Obama's War On Coal." I understand fear of change and economic insecurity. I wish someone could reach out to people who are pro-coal - and I see lots of "Friend of Coal" decals on cars- and explain to them how they are being used, in a way they might understand. Once in a while I see a sticker that says "Friend of Coal Miners," and I think that is something that needs to be emphasized.

Part Two: The Iran Deal

There has been a split in the Jewish community about the Iran deal. Again, Obama is blamed by many traditional Jewish organizations, and certainly by Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel, of caving in to Iran and not stopping a deal. Of course, the deal is not just the United States and Iran, but includes Britain, France, Germany, the European Union, Russia and China. People opposed to the deal want the United States to take unilateral action, maybe even to go to war against the regime in Iran. President Obama warned that these are the same people who pushed for war in Iraq.

I get that Iran has a terrible government. But I also understand that the United States does not, at this time, have the power to effectively engage Iran in war, even if we wanted to. Our allies in Europe would not support us. It is time to acknowledge that we must work with other countries, our allies particularly, but even Iran. Killing off a bunch of people we think are different from us is an American tradition, going back to Colonial days, but I've known people from Iran- yes, mostly Jews who fled, but others, too- and I don't see them as different from us. As we approach the anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, I know that war should be absolutely off the table. Is everything 100% verifiable in this treaty? I don't know. But I have to trust that a consortium of nations came up with a workable deal.

Part Three: The Republican Debate

So the Republicans are debating tonight. We don't have a television, but if we did, I wouldn't watch Fox. Not one Republican of the Top Ten has had anything positive to say about the rights of LGBT people or is in favor of my marriage. That alone is reason enough to not watch them. As far as threatening to shut down the government for funding Planned Parenthood, they should be tried for treason.

I cleaned up my political act for my spouse, Rabbi Joe, when he was applying for pulpit positions in 2012. He doesn't take a public stand on political issues, although some wish he would. He and I don't agree about everything political. If you look at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, you will find that my positions follow those of our religious movement. I'm less diplomatic in my verbiage.

The Boy Scouts and the Newspaper

I read our local paper, the Dominion-Post, every day. When my husband Joe and I first moved here in the summer of 2012, I applied to be on the Community Advisory Board for the paper. We attended monthly meetings where we were able to discuss the paper and give advice. I don't think our advice was ever taken. More importantly, each of us wrote a column for the editorial page every twelve weeks. I wrote five or six in my time on this board, and I valued that, because I leaned how to write something interesting and keep the length down.

I often write letters answering other letters, or sometimes about a particular event. Typically my letters are about same-gender marriage. I wrote about how happy Joe and I were when the Fourth Circuit ruled that West Virginia had to honor our marriage, and I have answered religious conservatives who love to write about how sex between men is an "Abomination." Like eating pork.

The editorials in the paper, typically written by Randy Vealey, the Opinion Page Editor, have favored same-gender marriage and gay rights. My issue today is with some of the other things that get published.

I once responded directly to Christine M. Flowers, who is a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News. Her columns sometimes appear in the Dominion-Post. She is openly antipathetic to gay rights. She wrote back (which surprised me, as other columnists have not done that), and compared me to the Taliban and someone who did not believe in the First Amendment.

Her latest diatribe is about the Boy Scouts' decision to allow LGBT people to be adult leaders. She is against it. Her column appeared in The Dominion-Post on Friday, July 31.

"Up until now, gay and lesbian employees of the Scouts were welcome to participate in all activities and at all levels, just so long as they didn't talk about who they were sleeping with," she says. I don't believe this was true, and if it was, that meant that a gay or lesbian person could never mention that they were in a relationship. She points out that her mother, a former Cub Scout den leader, never talked about her sex life. I'm sure she didn't, but the kids knew she had a husband, didn't they?

Gay people who want to be Scout leaders don't go into that to broadcast about their sex life. That's an obvious lie meant to denigrate gay and lesbian people, especially those of us in relationships and those who work with kids.

I don't really care about Christine M. Flowers. As she pointed out to me in early 2014, she has the right to say whatever she wants, even if she demonizes a large class of citizens with blatant falsehoods.

What I need to know is who placed her in my hometown newspaper and why? This is not just a "difference of opinion" but slander. And the consequence could be that I stop reading the paper altogether, or that I continue to work to make sure this kind of crap doesn't get published. She can say whatever she wants, but she doesn't have a right to be published.