Eric Whitacre

Eric Whitacre is a superstar among composer-conductors for choir. He's tall and thin, with shoulder-length blond hair and a trendy beard. Handsome in a contemporary way. He's famous for running a "virtual choir," where people can access the music from all over the world, and send him a YouTube video of themselves singing their part. He then puts everyone together in a video.
The music feels other-worldly, with many odd chords, sustained notes, and not always a lot of melody. We sang one of his pieces in the choir I joined in Crescent City. I found it hard to sing, and I didn't like it until it started to come together, and then it was sublime.

My friend Faith is a vocal student at West Virginia University, and she posted on Facebook that Eric Whitaker was coming to conduct a concert Saturday afternoon at 3:30 at WVU's Creative Arts Center. The timing wasn't great because Joe and I were leaving the house at 4 A.M. Sunday to fly to Israel and I hadn't packed.

Still, I decided to go and walked 1.5 miles to the CAC in windy 66 ○ weather. Lucky I did, because there was a basketball game at two at the Colosseum across the street and traffic and parking were impossible.

Whitacre attended University of Nevada Las Vegas, and the choir director there at the time (probably twenty years ago) is now the director of the CDC. That was the connection. In an interview at the start of the concert, Whitacre said he couldn't read music when he started college, although he played several instruments. He said he joined the choir because there was a pretty girl who sang in it. It took him seven years to graduate.

He answered some questions. John Lennon is his favorite male pop vocalist. He said that to be successful in music, one needs to be "honest" and "vulnerable" and "show up on time." He said he decided to do music because he couldn't imagine working in an office.

As to the music, there were eight short pieces, one with WVU's Chamber Choir, five with high school choirs, and two with everyone, including random kids from school choirs that didn't perform.

All of the pieces were gorgeous, and not easy. The singing was great, much better than I expected. I thought about the kids in these choirs, from little towns in the middle of nowhere, in places where football and basketball players are celebrities and boys who sing are bullied. Even in Morgantown, thousands of people were at the
WVU-Nebraska basketball game, while this concert audience was mostly choir members, their families and friends. I thought about what a high school choir director makes in salary compared to the WVU basketball coach.

I loved being at this concert. Witacre was charming and modest, and conducted the high school choirs with compassion and grace. I cried for the kids and their teachers, who create and understand great art, even as it isolates them from their peers.

At the end, I felt emotional from being in the presence of great art and young artists just coming into their own lives. I walked home by six, as it was getting dark. Joe and I had dinner out, then came home and packed. We slept a few hours, drove in the dark to Pittsburgh Airport, and we are now at Newark Airport, waiting for our flight to Israel.

The Greatest Hits of 1960

I've been teaching at West Virginia University's branch of Osher  Life-Long Learning since the fall of 2013, usually one class in the fall session. I started with a two-part class about The Brill Building, based on the book Always Magic In The Air, The Bomp and Brilliance of The Brill Building, by Ken Emerson. He features seven sets of songwriters who worked in New York in the late fifties and early sixties, including Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, Carole King and Jerry Goffin, and Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield.

I've taught six-week classes about the history of Motown and the British invasion in the late sixties. My last class, this past fall, was called "The Beach Boys: Light and Dark." That one made me an emotional wreck. Even I didn't know how much "Dark" there was in their story. All of my classes have been well-received and reviewed. I have something of a following.

I normally don't teach in the winter, partly because classes are postponed if public schools are closed, which last winter was eighteen days out of thirty scheduled. This year they made the term four weeks instead of six so there could be time to make up missed classes before spring session starts. I decided to teach so I could be present during my election campaign. Today is the fourth week, and we have held every class on time. We lost classes early in the week last week and two weeks before that because of snow storms. They are being made up.

I have a book that lists the top 40 songs of every year from 1900 to 1999. The author, Joel Whitburn, has an obsession with pop music, which I suppose I can relate to. I picked 1960, and decided to cover Whitburn's biggest hits at a rate of ten each week. This has been great fun for me.

In 1960, I was in fifth and sixth grade. We had "Pre-teen Center" dances at Campfield Elementary School every Friday night during the school year. It started out being square dancing for kids, but   the kids preferred pop music, so we did some square dancing and then danced to pop music. I usually danced with Margo King, who I think of as my first girlfriend, or Nanette Birmingham, who sat next to me in sixth grade.  Two of the songs I remember were chart hits for Jimmy Jones, now nearly forgotten, in 1960. They were "Handy Man" (later covered by James Taylor) and "Good Timin.'" I also remember the fuss over Elvis returning from the Army. People in the class have their memories, too. One woman, originally from Philadelphia, had posters of local heroes Bobby Rydell and Fabian up in her room as a teenager.

One difference from my past classes is that I am only using YouTube to play music. It seems my vast collection of recorded music on vinyl, cassette and CD is officially obsolete. I don't download music or subscribe to streaming services, but everything you want to hear is on YouTube. (As I'm writing this,  I'm listening to Radiohead's "In Rainbows" from 2008) on headphones attached to an antique portable CD player).

My students are mostly a bit older than I, and we all get a kick out of clips of artists, some looking terrified, lip-synching to their own records in front of a bunch of giggly girls and pompaded boys on Dick Clark's Beech-Nut Hour. The kids are all chewing Beech-Nut gum and wearing buttons that say "IFIC, short for  "flavorific," how the gum is described.

Some of these artists look impossibly young, but Brenda Lee and Kathy Young were fifteen, Brian Hyland sixteen. Some of the artists were already famous, like Elvis Presley, some, like Brenda Lee, Connie Francis, Paul Anka, Chubby Checker and Roy Orbison were just getting started, some, like Dion, changed styles completely after 1960, others like Percy Faith, who had the biggest hit of the year with "Theme From A Summer Place" seemed old-fashioned for the times, yet kept going, doing the same thing, for many years.

I've learned about "The Nashville Sound," having a string orchestra and chorus behind a country music vocalist, a more "urban" sound than one would expect. I've also seen how the separate chart for "R&B" music was about to become obsolete, with crossover artists like Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and Ray Charles.

It's sad sometimes to watch videos of these young artists, knowing that some of them died in drug overdoses, or car accidents, or that, like all of us, are not the brash young people they were. This class has given us all a chance to go back to "those thrilling days of yesteryear" and remember who we were then, who we idolized, who we danced with, who was our crush, or even how our (mostly late) parents screamed "Turn that noise down!" at us.

I'm teaching a four-week class in April and May on the top hits of 1961.

Depression

On my chart at Kaiser in L.A., it said I had chronic moderate depression. I don't really take it seriously. I think of it as part of life. Yesterday I saw my cardiologist for a second followup to my new stents from the end of September. The numbers looked good, but the doctor asked about doing a new echocardiogram. If the echo isn't better than the one before the stents went in, he may want to put in a defibrillator. Monday, I had a basal cell carcinoma removed on my face. Medical issues could be a lot worse. I don't like to be reminded that I am no longer young.

The doctor asked how I felt and I said "Lousy." Part of that was that my face was still swollen from Monday, but what I said was "I'm a sixty-six year old gay man. How could I not be depressed?" The doctor thought that things are better than they were, but at thirty-eight, and not gay (as far as I know) he hasn't been through what those of us who are older have dealt with.

And of course, in West Virginia, we have our elected officials, who just today (February 11) are scheduled to vote on "The Religious Freedom Restoration Act." This bill would allow people to object to the state for making them do something they object to because of their religion. Rupie Phillips, a delegate from a rural place in southern West Virginia, and a Democrat, admitted that this bill, which he supports, is a response to the Supreme Court making same-gender marriage legal in all states. The bill would allow denial of public accommodations to gays, particularly in couples, because of religious principle. It will probably pass, despite opposition from Chambers of Commerce in Charleston and Morgantown, West Virginia University Faculty and Student Senates, and many national hotel chains.

It was reported in the Charleston Gazette-Mail today that two women applied for a  marriage license in Gilmer County yesterday and were screamed at by Deputy County Clerk Debbie Allen. "Abomination!" she said. I'm waiting to hear if this clerk is fired, but I doubt it. There's lots of hand-wringing about why young people leave this state in droves, but who wants to live in a place like this? Gilmer County has a state college and a population of less than 10,000 people. It is about eighty-five miles from Morgantown to Glenville, the town in Gilmer County.

Our four Republican delegates in our district pretty much think like this. We have one liberal Democrat, much beloved. Had she lost in the last election, I would have insisted to Joe that we move to Pennsylvania, only ten miles from downtown Morgantown. Her reelection, and all the people we have met from temple who hired Joe in the first place, and have been kind to us, give me some hope that there is an element of really good people here. That's who I wish to represent as delegate.

The election campaign is going slowly for me. I have not raised much money. I answered questionnaires from the teachers' union, the statewide AFL-CIO and the local carpenters' union , and also a state-wide anti-abortion group. I didn't agree with the anti-abortion group's agenda, but I sent them a note with their form suggesting that "pro-life" should mean restricting guns, making maternity and parental leave mandatory, increasing SNAP benefits, favoring comprehensive sex ed including birth control, and talking about th responsibility of men in causing a pregnancy. I've been to a number of Democratic Party events and Bernie Sanders events as well. Tonight, I'll be at the watch party for the Democratic debate sponsored by Morgantown for Bernie Sanders. There will be time for people to ask questions of the eight candidates running for five slots in the Democratic primary May 10.

We are headed to Israel at the end of the month for the CCAR (Reform rabbis) convention in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. When I was last in Israel, in 2007, I was with a congregational tour from our temple in L.A. I wished that I could have been with Joe on the tour, as he spent a year in Jerusalem as part of his rabbinic training. I worry some about terrorism, but more about my health, the logistics of getting there and back, and my role, since I won't be attending the conference.

I've been reading opinion pieces from Israeli Jews, stating that the West Bank occupation has turned into an annexation, and an apartheid state. There is not even a pretense that there might be an Arab state in the West Bank, or that Arabs in that area, who are not citizens, have any rights at all. Arabs in Israel proper have citizenship, but there is no official acknowledgement that they are part of Israeli society, not  even an "Arab History Month." Yes, I understand that they could have had a state in 1948, 1990, and 2000, but wouldn't accept peace, that Gaza was given back, and Hamas has created a terrorist state. I understand Israel shares a border with Syria, where a Holocaust of sorts is going on. Still, it's hard for me to defend everything Israel does. Of course, I shouldn't have to. I've always loved the United States, even if the George W.Bush administration embarrassed me. I stii love Israel, just not the current government. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of being in Israel at this moment.

Meanwhile, we've had more snow most of this week, and temperatures in the teens the last few days. The sun came out today for the first time in a long time, even as the temperature dropped. I am a sun-lover, even as a ne skin cancer survivor.

The Omer period is one of semi-mourning in Judaism. I have my own Omer period, February 6- to March 27. It commemorates that period in 2003, when I was living in Los Angeles. I flew to Baltimore February 6 for my mother's seventy-fifth birthday. I suffered a heart attack on the 9th and stayed with my mother after five days in the hospital, for a week. I came back to L.A. on the 22nd and went to work on the 24th. I came back to Baltimore March 16th. My mother was in hospice care. She died March 18th and the funeral was the 20th. I returned to L.A. after observing shiva, the week of mourning, on March 28.

It helped me to get this off my chest. I will feel better. I always do. I have to remember to look at how far I have come, continue to struggle with today, and be hopeful about the future.

 I wrote this Thursday (it's Monday now). I do feel less depressed, although the weather has been worse. Other delegates have said even more bigoted things than Delegate Phillips, but it has only made me more determined to win this election. I've been inspired by the one Jewish delegate in our legislature, Mike Pushkin, from Charleston, who pointed out that baking a cake for someone you don't like is an inconvenience. I won't share the rest of his thought. And Steven Skinner, our only openly gay delegate, from Jefferson County in the Eastern Panhandle, having to tell the troglodyte legislators that he didn't choose to be gay.

I feel better about going to Israel, although both Joe and I are concerned about stamina and logistics. We will be active voices for change in Israel, as we are here.

Buckingham County, Virginia

I wasn't sure about doing this trip. This is my forty-fourth county in this series, and I sometimes think "Enough already." Then, I'm trying to run a political campaign for state delegate, and Joe and I are going to Israel for the CCAR (Reform Rabbis) convention at the end of the month.

Buckingham County is between Lynchburg and Richmond and an hour south of Charlottesville. It's the geographic center of Virginia. To get to eastern Virginia from Morgantown means going over the high point of the Appalachians in winter. I learned when Joe went to Charlottesville with me in December 2012, that the weather can be fine in Morgantown and deep into Virginia, but it can be snowing, windy and cold in the mountains on the way. I don't know how people ever got from Morgantown to Richmond before the Civil War. Maybe there were passenger trains at one time, but before that?

The 2010 census reported 17,000 people in the county at a density of twenty-six per square mile. I found two motels in the county online. Both had terrible reviews. I broke a rule I made about staying in the county I visit, and booked my usual chain motel in Farmville, in Prince Edward County, twenty miles south of Dillwyn, the only town in Buckingham County. I had eleven places to find from the National Register of Historic Places. I came on the weekend because the weekdays are filled up with meetings about the election.

I followed Google maps to get here. They took me on back roads in Garrett County, Maryland to get to US 48 (Corridor H in West Virginia), a lovely four lane divided highway that at this point goes nowhere. It was in the low 20s F. with blowing snow. I stopped at a gas station just before 48 and got a bottle of iced tea and a pre-made turkey and American cheese sandwich on white bread. Local cuisine.

Farmville is a college town, like Morgantown. Longwood University is there and Hampden-Sydney College is nearby. I found a little coffee place and had a trendy salad for dinner.

Today was my day in Buckingham County. The National Register lists "Buckingham Court House" as a historic spot on "both sides" of U.S. 60. Buckingham Court House is the name of the village where the courthouse is located. There are a handful of homes and offices, some dating back to the eighteenth century. The original courthouse, designed by Thomas Jefferson, burned in 1869. The "new" courthouse dates from 1873. There is an Egyptian-style obelisk on US 60 with an inscription praising Confederate soldiers who "...fought for a just cause."

Buckingham County Courthouse, 1873

Buckingham Court House village, across US 60 from the courthouse

an inn, now used as a bed-and-breakfast and event center, west of Buckingham County courthouse

an 18th century house (porch and roof later?) just east of Buckingham County courthouse

The monument to Confederate soldiers and cannon across US 60 from Buckingham County courthouse

The James River forms the northern border of the county. I drove up State Road 56 looking for a house named Perry Hill. I found a sign saying "Perry Hill" and followed a long driveway up to the house- a privately-owned home. I turned around in the drive at the back of the house, and had started back. I thought I would take a picture from down the road and not disturb the owners.  A man came out and shouted at me from the house. He wanted to know why I was there. I told him I was looking for historic houses. He asked where I was from and I said "Morgantown" which seemed to work, because he asked me to come back. His name is Mark. He is in his early sixties, I guess, and was wearing sweats. He apologized for the shabby clothes, but said he was fixing up the basement. He told me the house was from 1851, built for a man who had fought with Admiral Perry in the War of 1812, hence the name. Mark lives in Richmond; this is his country home. He has a grown son who tried organic farming on the land for a time, but couldn't make it financially worthwhile. We talked for a half-hour or so.

Perry Hill.1851, Saint Joy

The view from the front of Perry Hill. That's lavender planted in rows.

Up James River Road, there is a sign for a state park ten miles west. That would be James River Park, and much of the road was crushed gravel and not paved. At the Visitor Center, exhibits explain the importance of James River to commerce in early Virginia, how it runs from the mountain peaks in Alleghany County (visited February 2013), through the town of Buchanan (Botetort County, last summer), past Charlottesville (December 2012) to Richmond, where it becomes a tidal estuary heading out to the ocean by way of historic Williamsburg and Jamestown to present-day Norfolk. 

View across James River from the state park

Green Hill Pond, James River State Park

It was already after noon, and I was hungry. I thought I would head to Dillwyn, the only incorporated town in Buckingham County, just north on US 15 from US 60, east of Buckingham Court House. The census gives the town population as 447. I looked for a place where cars were parked, and that was Pino's Italian Restaurant. I almost didn't go in, because there was a car in the lot covered with stickers expressing how much the driver hated President Obama. There was also a sign in the window advertising some big church revival meeting. I went in anyway, and the place was homey-looking, the waitress friendly and upbeat. A big guy at the next table shot me a look. I smiled and said "Hi!" and that was the end of that. I had a mini-pizza with mushrooms and a salad. It was good, but I'm supposed to be watching my salt and fat content.

I visited the library in Dillwyn and asked the two librarians where they would go in Buckingham County if they had a day here and had never visited before. The two of them, a pretty young African-American woman and an older stylish European-American woman looked at each other and laughed. They couldn't think of anything. I told them I had been to Buckingham Court House and James River Park and the younger one said"You've pretty much seen it." They said they go to Appomattox (30 miles), Charlottesville (also 30 miles)  or to Lynchburg or Richmond (each at least an hour) to do anything. I asked about the antique trains across the street, and they thought they might run on Saturdays, just not today.

Dillwyn Town Hall

Buckingham Branch Railroad Station, Dillwyn

old passenger car, Dillwyn

I tried to find some of the other historic places in the county, but they were hard to find- country houses on confusing back roads. I found Guerrant House, now with another name, north off US 15 near the hamlet of Arvonia, and the Buckingham Female Collegiate Institute Historic District, in Gravel Hill, northeast of Dillwyn. The school there operated from 1837-1863. There was also a plaque honoring Carter G. Woodson, who was once a coal miner in West Virginia, and was the first African-American to earn an advanced degree from Harvard. Woodson founded African-American History Week (now month). He was born in Buckingham County.

Guerrant House, probably early 19th century, Arvonia

In the Buckingham Female Collegiate District, Gravel Hill

In Buckingham Female Collegiate District

I had seen a local drive-in in Dillwyn and stopped for an ice cream cone before heading back to Farmville. I purchased no-fat, low-salt, low-sugar, vegan stuff for dinner in my room. It was enough.

A friend said on Facebook today "Come back from racist Virginia." I did see some Confederate flags around, and there are monuments to Confederate soldiers in Farmville and Buckingham Court House. Some of the desk clerks and guests at my motel are African-American, as were some of the people eating at Pino's Restaurant and shopping in the grocery store. It looks more integrated than Baltimore when I was growing up. I remember watching on the news around 1960, about how Prince Edward County closed all its public schools in defiance of Federal orders to integrate. Not that long ago.

I also noted that the major industry here is forest products. There were factories along US 15 north of Dillwyn that processed wood into chips. I saw them loaded into trucks and rail cars. There are many acres of devastated land where every growing thing was ripped out to provide wood, and there were trucks carrying logs along the highways. In places, there are replanted trees, almost always white pine, although the natural forest is hardwood and a different pine mix. Like West Virginia, the land loses where there is money to be made from extraction.

I'm back home tomorrow, probably via I-64 over the mountains to avoid possible bad weather. Today the temperature ranged from 21 F. in the morning to 46 in the late afternoon. Average, according to weather.com, is 26 and 50, noticeably warmer than Morgantown (21-40) at this time of year.