The Morgantowner: 2015 and 2016

We had an exciting year here in Morgantown. Most importantly, we bought a house. This was my biggest goal for the year, and we did it with a little help from my late mother, Deborah Polk Wendell, because I had not spent all of the money she left me at her death. She wanted me to have a home in Beverly Hills. Suncrest, Morgantown is as close as I could get.

Medicare was important this year. My legs were swollen and the dermatologist checked for blood clots which weren't there. The cardiologist thought maybe my heart wasn't working properly, and I had that fixed with three new stents at the end of September. My legs are no longer swollen.
Joe and I traveled to Philadelphia for the CCAR (Reform Rabbis) convention. We stayed in an architectural landmark, a former bank headquarters in The International Style. We stopped in to see Joe's cousins out in the suburbs. We visited our friends Spencer Gill and Rabbi Ellen Jaffe-Gill in Virginia Beach over July 4. Neither of us had ever been in the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area. Ellen and I go way back-to my early days as a substitute teacher, when she taught at Le Conte Junior High in Hollywood. We stopped to see my sister Robin in Greenbelt, Maryland on the road (exactly half way) and picked her up on the way back for a visit with us here in Morgantown. My friend Roann visited us on the way to and from a conference in Baltimore. We met at Israeli dancing in LA in 1984. She lives near Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In my quest to visit one county within three hundred miles of here each month, I visited the cities of Martinsburg, Madison, Sutton and Wellsburg in West Virginia, Reading, Altoona and Sayre in Pennsylvania, Ashland and Augusta in Kentucky, Bland and Fincastle in Virginia, and Georgetown, Ohio. Joe went to Sutton for the day with me, about a hundred miles south of here, in Braxton County. My friend Dee went to Wellsburg, in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, where we spent an atypical warm sunny November day.

One thing I don't like in Morgantown is the political life here. The Democrats in 2014 lost control of the House of Delegates, and the five delegates in our district went from three Democrats and two Republicans to four Republicans and one Democrat. Our Republicans pushed to overturn safety regulations in the coal mines, start charter schools, and pass a voter ID bill. They are all anti-choice and pro-gun. I took personal offense that one of our Republicans filed a resolution to ask the US Congress to have a convention to pass a Constitutional Amendment to ban any recognition of same-gender relationships. It didn't go anywhere, but she and one other Republican in our district voted for it.

Given the lackluster campaigns run by Democrats in 2014, I decided to run for state delegate. The primary campaign may have as many as nine candidates for five slots in the general election. I'm still getting organized, and the date to actually file (I pre-filed) is later this month. I have a treasurer, a bank account and a website, http://www.barryinthehouse.com . I'm on my way.

Most importantly in 2015 and going forward, I have my strong relationship with Joe. He's been there holding my hand in the hospital, encouraging my candidacy for office, bragging to friends about me and keeping me physically and emotionally warm.

There are pics that I am unable to post because I took them on my Android phone, used an app (Kies) to transfer them to my Mac, yet I am unable to post them on the blog, copy and paste them, or even send them back to my phone. Technology can be frustrating.

Here are some pics I can post from 2015: