Next week, the term starts at West Virginia University's branch of Osher Life-Long Learning. Both Joe and I are teaching ambitious six-week classes. His is called "Old Testament Rituals: Don't Try These At Home." Mine is called "Great Hits of 1962." I've already taught four-week classes on the top 40 hits of 1960 and 1961. I've expanded to six-weeks to include the Country, R&B, Album and Adult Contemporary (formerly Easy Listening) charts.
Most of the people in my class were in high school in 1962, so this music will resonate with them. My classes have been popular and well-reviewed. I was in seventh and eighth grade in 1962. I had my bar mitzvah, my voice changed (after my bar mitzvah); I got braces. I was tiny, but just starting to grow, and new kids, annexed in seventh grade, joined us in eighth. I tried to be friends with them, and eventually succeeded, more in ninth grade than eighth. In eighth I tried and failed to be a clown, and the new kids had established friendships among themselves going back to elementary school.
I was in the top class in seventh grade, after not being in that class in fifth and sixth. I was a whiz at our thrice-weekly Hebrew school, winning "Best Student" in sixth grade. But in seventh, in the top class, deluged with homework, I found it hard to keep up. My seventh-grade classmates included Rodger Kamenetz, the author of "The Jew In The Lotus" and other books. He started a Jewish Studies Program at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and later at the New Orleans campus. In eighth grade, we were joined by Wendy Sherman, who became Assistant Secretary of State under Hillary Clinton. I often think that my class at Sudbrook Junior High in Pikesville, Maryland was the smartest class in the history of Baltimore County Junior High Schools. If I'm right about that, then I was the dumbest one in that class. Not to mention an undiagnosed ADD case.
Mrs. Crain, our seventh grade CORE teacher, had us keep a notebook of assignments, in order, to turn in after a few weeks. While others turned in perfectly well-ordered folders of material, all I had was a handful of half-finished assignments. Mrs. Crain asked for a conference with my parents. She didn't believe me when I told her they refused to come in. She had my mother write a letter explaining why she couldn't come in. In the letter, my mother promised to help me with my schoolwork, which she never did.
Outside of my own life, the big issue I remember from 1962 was civil rights. Baltimore was still fully segregated, down to the weekday afternoon teen dance show, The Buddy Dean Show, which had African-American kids on alternate Fridays as "special guests." People who have seen some iteration of "Hairspray," based on the Buddy Dean Show, think that was made up. Our synagogue had stopped sponsoring trips to Gwynn Oak Park, the amusement park near our house, featured in "Hairspray" (filmed elsewhere as Gwynn Oak was torn down before the original "Hairspray") because they wouldn't allow African-Americans to go there. Diplomats from newly-independent African countries were refused lunch at restaurants on US 40 between Baltimore and Wilmington, while on their way to the United Nations in New York, creating international incidents. President Kennedy pushed up the schedule to build Interstate 95 to bypass those towns. Maryland House Restaurant was planned to be in the median of the highway, designed to be integrated. The road, now called Kennedy Expressway, opened in November, 1963, just before Kennedy was assassinated.
I took dance lessons in the spring of 1962. I learned the waltz, fox trot, cha-cha and mambo, my mother's idea being that I could dance with my grandmother at my bar mitzvah party. As it was, because it was a luncheon on Saturday afternoon, my Orthodox grandmother vetoed live music. My bar mitzvah was on October 27, the day the Cuban missile crisis was resolved. This was the first time I bargained with God. "Okay," I said, "There will be a nuclear war and we will all die. But can I please have my bar mitzvah first?"
For those of us living in suburban America, with two parents working before that was the norm, life was good. My parents paid $75 a month on their mortgage, they had a beautiful 1961 Oldsmobile convertible, which cost about $1500. They were still young and attractive at thirty-four and forty; my father had his first toupée. Aside from the usual issues of being twelve and thirteen, my life was good.
In music, too, this was a peak year for American pop music, before the British Invasion. This was the music Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger were hearing in England. Lines were being crossed in popular music. African-American Ray Charles' album "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" hit all the charts. Chubby Checker, Dee Dee Sharp, and The Orlons, all from Philadelphia, crossed over to the Top 40 charts with dance hits "The Twist," "Mashed Potato Time" and "The Watusi." African-American owned record company Motown had hits by The Marvelettes, The Countours, The Miracles and Mary Wells. Jewish Artists like Neil Sedaka scored with "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do," and Jewish composers like Carole King and Gerry Goffin had hits with "Up On The Roof" for The Drifters and "The Locomotion" for their babysitter, Little Eva, Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote "Only Love Can Break A Heart" for Gene Pitney, and Phil Spector produced Pitney's "He's A Rebel" for The Crystals.
Italian-Americans also did well, with the hot new group of the year The Four Seasons, hits by Connie Francis, and Tony Bennett's famous "I Left My Heart In San Francisco."
Country music had Leroy Van Dyke's "Walk On By" and several hits by pint-sized teenager Brenda Lee.
1962 was the year the soundtrack of "West Side Story" topped the charts from May through June 1963, the year of "My Son, The Folk Singer" by Allan Sherman, and the iconic first Peter, Paul and Mary album.
There was American music by and for everyone, in a way presaging the coming of age of the civil rights movement the following year, as kids across America were listening to music by Jews and African-Americans without prejudice.
I'm stoked for this class. 1962 was an era of hope, an era when we thought change might be for the good and our country would be more inclusive and more free.
My class is for six Thursdays from one to three P.M. (followed by Joe's class at three) at Mountaineer Mall, Morgantown, starting September 29. Go to www.olliatwvu.org to sign up.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Johnstown, Cambria County, and the Flight 93 Memorial for 9/11
This past weekend there was a free Brad Paisley concert on the hill at WVU's law school Friday night and a football game Saturday afternoon. It seemed a good time to get out of Morgantown.
My next county to visit was Cambria County, Pennsylvania. Although Johnstown is the largest city, the county seat is at Ebensburg, twenty-three miles northeast of there and one hundred twenty-one miles from Morgantown. It's one of the larger counties I'm visiting, and far enough away to merit an overnight stay. I took a toll-free way to get to Johnstown, winding through southern Pennsylvania's countryside. It took two and a half hours to go eighty-five miles. I didn't stop on the way.
I stayed with a cheaper branch of my customary motel chain, located, for once, near the center of the city. Johnstown has a central square with a fountain and a gazebo, just a few blocks from the hotel. There was also a small farmers' market at the square. The weather was warm and overcast, much the same as in Morgantown. I found a little café on the square, and had a salad for lunch.
According to the U.S. Census, Cambria County is estimated to have 136, 411 people in 2015, down from a peak of 213,459 in 1940. In 2000, the population was ninety-five percent Caucasian. Part of the decline was from heavy industry leaving the area, and part from disastrous floods in 1889, 1936 and 1977. The 1889 flood, the most famous, killed thousands of people when an earthen dam, built to create an artificial lake upstream, failed and sent water crashing into the town. Most of the city had to be completely rebuilt after that flood. The walls along the river were built after the 1936 flood, and were supposed to prevent further flooding. Still, the town flooded again in 1977.
I saw many Catholic churches in the county. There were Trump signs on lawns; not one Hillary sign. and also signs saying "Push The Pushers Out" with a number to call to report drug transactions. Apparently, this is a big problem. There were blue ribbons on many trees. It is part of a "Teal Campaign" for ovarian cancer.
I had marked out ten of the thirty places on the National Register to visit. As usual, I didn't stick to that, because there were many of them a short walk away in central Johnstown. Here are the places I saw in Johnstown Friday afternoon:
I attended synagogue Friday night at Beth Shalom, the only remaining congregation in the area. There was an exhibit in the lobby about the Jewish history of the town, and it is like small-town Jewish stories everywhere. At one time, many of the merchants were Jews, and there were three active synagogues, two of which built new buildings around 1950 in the suburbs west of town, above the incline railroad. With a declining Jewish population, the synagogues merged into one in the 1970s, keeping the newest building and letting the others go.
I headed out to that suburb at six, looking for a restaurant I found on line, and Westmont Historic District, directly atop the Incline. I couldn't find the restaurant and settled for a sandwich at a chain sub shop before heading to services. There were thirteen of us in attendance, counting the rabbi. We used a Reform siddur. Most of the people were elderly. I spoke to a few of them.
Saturday was to be a short day, heading out to the places in the county away from Johnstown, then leaving for home about one. I left my hotel at 8:15 on a beautiful sunny morning. I started at the Johnstown Flood Memorial, east of the city. There was a lake, surrounded by resort home, created from the damming of the Little Conemaugh River. After a heavy rain on May 31, 1889, the dam broke and the flooding downstream destroyed most of Johnstown. The valley below the house in the picture was the lake.
I headed north through small towns along State Road 53.
Another National Park Service site is Allegheny Portage National Historic Site. The eastern border of Cambria County is at the peak of the Appalachians. There were steam-powered engines that pulled trains and boats over the mountains on rail lines. At the visitor center, I met a couple from Georgia. We commiserated about the election, and she told me about a senior visitors' pass for only ten dollars that gets one into National Park Service sites for free. The ranger, a young man whose last name is Rager, didn't think I was 62, bless his heart. We talked some about parks. He likes Shenandoah, which Joe and I visited. I said I liked it, but I was spoiled by Yosemite, the most beautiful place I have ever been. He said he wanted to go there, but San Francisco was high on his list because he wants to go to Amoeba Records. Small world. I asked him what artists he likes, and I, to my embarrassment, didn't recognize any of the names.
Ebensburg, the county seat, is much smaller than Johnstown, and appears to be more prosperous.
Prince Gallitzin Park, according to Wikipedia, "is named for Demetrius Gallitzin, a Russian nobleman turned Catholic priest who was instrumental in the settlement of Cambria County." The park is at the northern end of the county.
By 1 P.M. Saturday, I was just finishing up in Ebensburg. I still wanted to see the mall east of Johnstown, and the campus of University of Pittsburgh in Johnstown. And there was a car show at a church near the college campus and a "town center" development, all on the way home.
I went to the mall, called "The Galleria." It's like Morgantown's mall, only many of the stores have closed. I had a dish of chicken teriyaki served by a Vietnamese women who called me "darling" and "sweetie." I took a few minutes to check out the college campus, and, yes, the car show. The car owners, as at other shows, are all crazy men my age.
I had read in the paper in Johnstown about ceremonies at the site where Flight 93 crashed on 9/11 near Shanksville, in Somerset County, just south of Cambria County. It was almost on the way home. The paper said there would be a candle ceremony Saturday. That, as it turns out, was private, and after dark. Still there were many people there that day to remember and commemorate.
The field where the plane crashed was a surface coal mine, "reclaimed," meaning covered with dirt. Nothing was growing there. The monument, by architecture firm Paul Murdoch Architects, sits at the top of a low hill. The landscape design, a field of wildflowers on the old mining site and forty groves of forty trees (still incomplete) is by Nelson Byrd Woltz. There is parking at the bottom of the hill, then a walkway leading to a white wall, with marble slabs commemorating each of the forty people on the plane. There is a low wall left of the walkway, with only a boulder marking where the plane crashed, creating a fifteen foot deep crater, now covered. The visitor center is up the hill, on a winding path from the memorial.
My next county to visit was Cambria County, Pennsylvania. Although Johnstown is the largest city, the county seat is at Ebensburg, twenty-three miles northeast of there and one hundred twenty-one miles from Morgantown. It's one of the larger counties I'm visiting, and far enough away to merit an overnight stay. I took a toll-free way to get to Johnstown, winding through southern Pennsylvania's countryside. It took two and a half hours to go eighty-five miles. I didn't stop on the way.
I stayed with a cheaper branch of my customary motel chain, located, for once, near the center of the city. Johnstown has a central square with a fountain and a gazebo, just a few blocks from the hotel. There was also a small farmers' market at the square. The weather was warm and overcast, much the same as in Morgantown. I found a little café on the square, and had a salad for lunch.
According to the U.S. Census, Cambria County is estimated to have 136, 411 people in 2015, down from a peak of 213,459 in 1940. In 2000, the population was ninety-five percent Caucasian. Part of the decline was from heavy industry leaving the area, and part from disastrous floods in 1889, 1936 and 1977. The 1889 flood, the most famous, killed thousands of people when an earthen dam, built to create an artificial lake upstream, failed and sent water crashing into the town. Most of the city had to be completely rebuilt after that flood. The walls along the river were built after the 1936 flood, and were supposed to prevent further flooding. Still, the town flooded again in 1977.
I saw many Catholic churches in the county. There were Trump signs on lawns; not one Hillary sign. and also signs saying "Push The Pushers Out" with a number to call to report drug transactions. Apparently, this is a big problem. There were blue ribbons on many trees. It is part of a "Teal Campaign" for ovarian cancer.
I had marked out ten of the thirty places on the National Register to visit. As usual, I didn't stick to that, because there were many of them a short walk away in central Johnstown. Here are the places I saw in Johnstown Friday afternoon:
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| The fountain in Central Square |
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| The former Nathan's Department Store |
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| A food truck at the farmers' market at Central Square |
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| Grand Army of the Republic Hall, built for Union Civil War Veterans |
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| Across the Conemaugh River, |
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| The 1891 Carnegie Library, now the Johnstown Flood Museum |
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| Community building, originally used by Cambria Iron Company |
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| Cambria Iron Company former offices |
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| Cambria Iron Company factory, now abandoned |
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| Johnstown City Hall |
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| one of the rare streets where the houses appear to be pre-1889 |
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| View from the top of the Johnstown Incline Railroad |
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| Johnstown Incline Railroad |
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| The bridge leading to Johnstown's Incline Railroad |
I headed out to that suburb at six, looking for a restaurant I found on line, and Westmont Historic District, directly atop the Incline. I couldn't find the restaurant and settled for a sandwich at a chain sub shop before heading to services. There were thirteen of us in attendance, counting the rabbi. We used a Reform siddur. Most of the people were elderly. I spoke to a few of them.
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| Westmont Historic District |
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| Beth Shalom, Southmont |
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| This is from the visitor's center at the Johnstown Flood National Memorial, run by The National Park Service. |
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| This was the clubhouse that once sat on South Fork Lake. It is being restored |
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| Historic District in the borough of Portage |
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| Portage |
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| At Appalachian Portage National Historic site. This is an engine house. |
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| Cambria County Jail, Ebensburg |
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| A.W. Buck House, now Cambria County Historical Society, Ebensburg, 1889 and 1903 |
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| Cambria County Courthouse, Ebensburg |
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| Beach at Prince Gallitzin State Park |
By 1 P.M. Saturday, I was just finishing up in Ebensburg. I still wanted to see the mall east of Johnstown, and the campus of University of Pittsburgh in Johnstown. And there was a car show at a church near the college campus and a "town center" development, all on the way home.
I went to the mall, called "The Galleria." It's like Morgantown's mall, only many of the stores have closed. I had a dish of chicken teriyaki served by a Vietnamese women who called me "darling" and "sweetie." I took a few minutes to check out the college campus, and, yes, the car show. The car owners, as at other shows, are all crazy men my age.
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| On the campus of The University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown |
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| 1961 Plymouth painted in honor of those killed on Flight 93 on 9/11 |
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| 1968 Plymouth Fury |
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| 1965 Plymouth convertible |
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| 1959 Ford Skyliner Hardtop-Convertible |
The field where the plane crashed was a surface coal mine, "reclaimed," meaning covered with dirt. Nothing was growing there. The monument, by architecture firm Paul Murdoch Architects, sits at the top of a low hill. The landscape design, a field of wildflowers on the old mining site and forty groves of forty trees (still incomplete) is by Nelson Byrd Woltz. There is parking at the bottom of the hill, then a walkway leading to a white wall, with marble slabs commemorating each of the forty people on the plane. There is a low wall left of the walkway, with only a boulder marking where the plane crashed, creating a fifteen foot deep crater, now covered. The visitor center is up the hill, on a winding path from the memorial.
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| The visitor center across the field of wildflowers |
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| The memorial wall |
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| Mark Bingham was the gay rugby player from San Francisco who helped organize the passengers to fight the terrorists |
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| A closer look at the visitor center |
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| The walkway to the visitor's center |
I didn't stay long at the top. It was hot out, and I wanted to get home. I looked at some of the exhibits. Much of it was old television news shows with the planes flying into the World Trade Center and the newscasters obvious horror. It was hard enough to watch fifteen years ago; I didn't really want to see it again. 9/11 is not something I dwell on, and had I not been so close, I might never have gone to that memorial. I left there at 5 P.M. and was home, eighty-two miles away by 7. Traffic in Morgantown was still backed up from the football game.
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Mallard Fillmore and Why My "Red Is Up."
It's hard enough to read Morgantown's Dominion-Post these days, now that they have added Michelle Malkin as a columnist, in addition to Cal Thomas, both flame-throwing fascists, calling themselves "conservatives." They also run Bruce Tinsley's "Mallard Fillmore" on their editorial page every day. It just "gets my red up" as my new hero, Trae Crowder, likes to say. Last week, I had enough of Tinsley and wrote a letter to the paper. They haven't published it yet, and I was going to wait until Sunday to see if they found room. They usually do publish my letters, eventually.
There was a letter today from Pastor Terry Hagedorn, of Calvary Baptist Church in Reedsville, West Virginia. Reedsville is located fifteen miles southeast of Morgantown, in Preston County. It had a population of 593 as of 2010, and is 98.5% white according to the census. Pastor Hagedorn's letter is about the football player who won't stand for the Star-Spangled Banner.. He claims racism is in the past. He would know, living in a virtually all-white community in a rural area.
I'm so angry about what goes on politically, especially here in West Virginia, but nationally as well. I protested last week at Mylan Pharmaceuticals' factory a few blocks from our house,After lobbying to have Epi-Pens in all the schools, they raised the price from under $100 for a pack of two to $600. The CEO raised her own pay from five million to sixteen million. I also marched with WVU's Black Students' Union and NAACP to protest targeting of African-American males by some policemen.
Yesterday, both the Morgantown and Charleston newspapers ran a two-page ad from the CEO of Dominion Gas about why workers were locked out in a labor dispute. The dispute is because the company, highly profitable, wants to eliminate retirement and pension benefits for new hires.
The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce invited the Democratic and Republican candidates for Governor to their annual conference. The Chamber has previously lauded the Republicans in our state for cutting business taxes, eliminating prevailing wage, and implementing "right-to-work" which means no one has to pay union dues, even though the union is still obligated to represent all workers. This is the kind of thing Republicans like, but our Democratic candidate, Jim Justice, attended this conference and said he is with the Chamber of Commerce. And our Democratic candidate for Attorney General, Doug Reynolds, voted for a "religious freedom" bill in the Legislature this year, which would have allowed discrimination against LGBT people. He also voted for a twenty-week abortion ban, which passed, and wants to continue to defy Federal guidelines allowing transgender people to use the restroom that fits their identity. He introduced a bill in the Legislature to demand that West Virginia colleges and universities allow concealed weapons on campus. Justice and Reynolds are the Democrats. The Republicans are worse.
Back to Mallard Fillmore. In last Thursday's cartoon, August 31, Tinsley shows Hillary Clinton saying "...And if you think being gay is a crime... or that women are chattel... or that Jews are vermin... Donald Trump is such a bigot... (new balloon) ... that he doesn't want you to come to his country.!" There is a pic of Trump.
Here's my response:
"Bruce Tinsley, in his cartoon "Mallard Fillmore," is often offensive. His cartoon published Wednesday, August 31, hits a new low. As a Jew, a gay man, and the son and brother of women, I feel compelled to speak about this. Although Tinsley does not explicitly say it is Muslims Trump plans to keep out of the United States, the meaning is obvious from the context and from Trump's own statements.
The Republican Party has never been any kind of friend to gay people. At the National Religious Liberties Conference in Des Moines last November,Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal, all contenders for the Republican nomination for President, appeared with Kevin Swanson, a pastor who has called for the death penalty for gay people. just not yet, but when America embraces the "one true religion." It's not Muslims I'm afraid of. Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, claim they will overturn same-gender marriage.. They have opposed every kind of law proposed to give LGBT people equal rights in employment and housing.
Locally, Republican legislators have supported "Religious freedom" bills that allow discrimination against LGBT people for allegedly religious reasons. It is not the Islamic community that has asked for these laws. The Dominion-Post often publishes hate-filled letters aimed at LGBT people, sometimes signed "Pastor."
Jewish journalists who have covered the Trump campaign have been bombarded with anti-Jewish memes and threatened with death by Trump supporters. Trump's comments to and about women have been ugly and stupid.
I have attended interfaith meetings which have included Islamic, Christian and Jewish leaders. One of these, called to support resettling Syrian refugees in the United States, attracted several hundred people, of many religious faiths, right here in Morgantown. After the shootings at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the Islamic Association of West Virginia issued a statement in support of the gay community,
Maybe your newspaper hasn't noticed, but there is a large Islamic community here in Morgantown, and to allow someone to smear that entire community is despicable. As the only local daily paper in town, you should know better. "
I ran for office to change the political culture of West Virginia. Between Donald Trump's wide-support here, the greed-based oil, gas and pharmaceutical industries located here, and the Chamber of Commerce that they support, and a Democratic Party that lost control of the state by not standing for anything substantive, and whose leadership continues to block progressives from power, I'm not sure their is hope for this state.
It may be hopeless, but I support Charlotte Pritt and Michael Sharley of The Mountain Party for Governor and Attorney General respectively in the upcoming election. And I will continue to protest greed-based corporations in favor of workers and the environment. And yes, I support Colin Kaepernick's right to protest by not standing for "The Star-Spangled Banner."
There was a letter today from Pastor Terry Hagedorn, of Calvary Baptist Church in Reedsville, West Virginia. Reedsville is located fifteen miles southeast of Morgantown, in Preston County. It had a population of 593 as of 2010, and is 98.5% white according to the census. Pastor Hagedorn's letter is about the football player who won't stand for the Star-Spangled Banner.. He claims racism is in the past. He would know, living in a virtually all-white community in a rural area.
I'm so angry about what goes on politically, especially here in West Virginia, but nationally as well. I protested last week at Mylan Pharmaceuticals' factory a few blocks from our house,After lobbying to have Epi-Pens in all the schools, they raised the price from under $100 for a pack of two to $600. The CEO raised her own pay from five million to sixteen million. I also marched with WVU's Black Students' Union and NAACP to protest targeting of African-American males by some policemen.
Yesterday, both the Morgantown and Charleston newspapers ran a two-page ad from the CEO of Dominion Gas about why workers were locked out in a labor dispute. The dispute is because the company, highly profitable, wants to eliminate retirement and pension benefits for new hires.
The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce invited the Democratic and Republican candidates for Governor to their annual conference. The Chamber has previously lauded the Republicans in our state for cutting business taxes, eliminating prevailing wage, and implementing "right-to-work" which means no one has to pay union dues, even though the union is still obligated to represent all workers. This is the kind of thing Republicans like, but our Democratic candidate, Jim Justice, attended this conference and said he is with the Chamber of Commerce. And our Democratic candidate for Attorney General, Doug Reynolds, voted for a "religious freedom" bill in the Legislature this year, which would have allowed discrimination against LGBT people. He also voted for a twenty-week abortion ban, which passed, and wants to continue to defy Federal guidelines allowing transgender people to use the restroom that fits their identity. He introduced a bill in the Legislature to demand that West Virginia colleges and universities allow concealed weapons on campus. Justice and Reynolds are the Democrats. The Republicans are worse.
Back to Mallard Fillmore. In last Thursday's cartoon, August 31, Tinsley shows Hillary Clinton saying "...And if you think being gay is a crime... or that women are chattel... or that Jews are vermin... Donald Trump is such a bigot... (new balloon) ... that he doesn't want you to come to his country.!" There is a pic of Trump.
Here's my response:
"Bruce Tinsley, in his cartoon "Mallard Fillmore," is often offensive. His cartoon published Wednesday, August 31, hits a new low. As a Jew, a gay man, and the son and brother of women, I feel compelled to speak about this. Although Tinsley does not explicitly say it is Muslims Trump plans to keep out of the United States, the meaning is obvious from the context and from Trump's own statements.
The Republican Party has never been any kind of friend to gay people. At the National Religious Liberties Conference in Des Moines last November,Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal, all contenders for the Republican nomination for President, appeared with Kevin Swanson, a pastor who has called for the death penalty for gay people. just not yet, but when America embraces the "one true religion." It's not Muslims I'm afraid of. Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, claim they will overturn same-gender marriage.. They have opposed every kind of law proposed to give LGBT people equal rights in employment and housing.
Locally, Republican legislators have supported "Religious freedom" bills that allow discrimination against LGBT people for allegedly religious reasons. It is not the Islamic community that has asked for these laws. The Dominion-Post often publishes hate-filled letters aimed at LGBT people, sometimes signed "Pastor."
Jewish journalists who have covered the Trump campaign have been bombarded with anti-Jewish memes and threatened with death by Trump supporters. Trump's comments to and about women have been ugly and stupid.
I have attended interfaith meetings which have included Islamic, Christian and Jewish leaders. One of these, called to support resettling Syrian refugees in the United States, attracted several hundred people, of many religious faiths, right here in Morgantown. After the shootings at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the Islamic Association of West Virginia issued a statement in support of the gay community,
Maybe your newspaper hasn't noticed, but there is a large Islamic community here in Morgantown, and to allow someone to smear that entire community is despicable. As the only local daily paper in town, you should know better. "
I ran for office to change the political culture of West Virginia. Between Donald Trump's wide-support here, the greed-based oil, gas and pharmaceutical industries located here, and the Chamber of Commerce that they support, and a Democratic Party that lost control of the state by not standing for anything substantive, and whose leadership continues to block progressives from power, I'm not sure their is hope for this state.
It may be hopeless, but I support Charlotte Pritt and Michael Sharley of The Mountain Party for Governor and Attorney General respectively in the upcoming election. And I will continue to protest greed-based corporations in favor of workers and the environment. And yes, I support Colin Kaepernick's right to protest by not standing for "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
My Sister, Calvert County and The Millennials.
This should be three posts, but it will be one.
My fiftieth monthly county is Calvert County, Maryland, south of Annapolis between Chesapeake Bay and the Patuxent River estuary. The county is adjacent to Prince Georges County, where my sister Robin has lived since attending the University of Maryland a few decades ago. My plan was to combine trips, as I try to see my sister over the summer.
Robin and I get along well generally. She is careful and meticulous, I am sloppy and more reckless. Since she has lived in her house, I've lived in three different cities and eight different homes. She is the only one who really understands what our parents were like and who remembers our grandparents. We both nap in the afternoon, take medication before we can eat breakfast, and watch our weight.
I try to visit the Garrison Forest Veteran's Cemetery in Owings Mills, where our parents are buried, every year before Rosh Hashana (this year in early October). Robin and I visited in the morning, then had lunch at Suburban House, an old-fashioned Jewish deli in Pikesville, near where we grew up, and a place we hung out in our younger years. The restaurant moved to a new shopping center a few years ago. We asked the waitress where she went to high school. She attended Milford Mill a few years after my sister. The manager (City College '68) came over to chat us up. He wants things to stop changing, and lamented that the 1960s in Jewish Baltimore are gone. There was a tight-knit community that no longer exists. Robin and I both fled for our lives when we had the chance. We thought we saw our parents' friends at the restaurant, but we soon realized the people we saw were our age.
I visited two millennial couples in the Washington area, my nephew Evan and his fiancée Kellie in Arlington, and my friend Neal, who I met here in Morgantown, and his new wife Natasha, in Silver Spring. I've read about how millennials are likely to be urban dwellers, use transit instead of driving, and worry about making a living. Evan and Kellie have a small apartment in a newer building with a fitness center and pool. They share a car, live a block from Arlington's courthouse, take the subway to work and use Uber when they need an extra car.
Neal and Natasha live in an older building, which means their apartment is slightly larger than Evan and Kellie's, but parking is outside the building and there are no amenities. They are near the center of Silver Spring, a location with shops and restaurants and the American Film Institute. The proximity to AFI alone makes me envious. Still, I would be uncomfortable in a cramped apartment like theirs.
Both couples are paying off student loans, and find money tight. I feel their frustration. I lived in central Baltimore in my 20s, had a small student loan from grad school, paid about 20% of my earnings for rent and didn't own a car. I didn't make a lot of money, but I was able to live comfortably on what I had. Young people today can't do that.
I brought a light jacket with me, because I remember that evenings are usually cool in Maryland the last week of August. Apparently, that is no longer true. Temperatures remained well above average the entire time I was there. Perhaps this is the "new normal."
Sunday was my day to visit Calvert County. Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington becomes State Road 4 in Maryland. It is joined by State Road 2 heading south from Baltimore and Annapolis. SR 2-4 is the main road in Calvert County.
I have a college friend who grew up in Calvert when it was a sleepy agricultural area. There are towns that were destroyed by the British in the War of 1812, and for a long time, Calvert County did not seem to recover, as Baltimore and Washington became major cities. Recently, the northern part of the county has become an expensive suburb, with faux colonial mansions on acres and half-acres. To the credit of the county, they have limited commercial development to "town centres" near Prince Frederick, the county seat, Huntingtown near the center of the county, Solomons, at the south end of the county, and a few other locations. The stores were the usual grocery stores, pharmacy chains, and mattress shops.
I picked ten of the twenty places listed on the National Register to visit. Some were houses from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I used to drive up long driveways to catch a glimpse of an old country house, but I'm over that now. I saw some of the houses from a distance and didn't photograph them. I found some old houses near the ones on the National Register. There were also old churches, generally Episcopal. Maryland was founded by Catholics, and was called The Free State, because any Christian was allowed to settle there.
There isn't a lot to Prince Frederick. More interesting were Solomons and Solomons Island, at the southern end of the county and on the waterfront at the Patuxent River estuary just before it flows into Chesapeake Bay. It's a resort area with restaurants and a Tiki bar. It was crowded on a warm sunny Sunday the weekend before Labor Day. The plant life is different in the southern end of the county- more crepe myrtle than the poplars and oaks to the north. There were even palm trees in Solomons Island, much to my surprise. I asked the two young women at The University of Maryland Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the tip of Solomons Island about the palm trees, and they said they are taken out in winter and replaced in the spring. No, palm trees cannot survive the winter, even in this relatively warm part of Maryland. The laboratory is investigating changes to Chesapeake Bay: stream runoff from mountaintop removal in West Virginia, pollution from agricultural runoff, and how to restore crab and oyster beds. They told me the water is not necessarily higher than in previous times, but it is warmer, and that affects the bay's ecology.
Isaac Solomon was a businessman from Baltimore who opened a cannery for oysters in the mid-19th century. I've looked for something that says he was Jewish, but I couldn't find any written account. I assume he was Jewish.
I hadn't been everywhere i wanted to be when I got to Solomons Island, separated by a barely noticeable creek from the mainland. I decided to take the rest of the day off, walk around and have a chocolate ice cream cone, in the way many men would have a beer. It was about 70 miles back to my sister's house from Solomons Island, with heavy traffic despite it being a late Sunday afternoon. I imagine rush hour is not pretty.
I came back to Morgantown Monday in time for Joe's birthday Tuesday, and had to explain my dark tan to my dermatologist, who has warned me about being out in the sun, Wednesday afternoon.
Here are the pictures:
My fiftieth monthly county is Calvert County, Maryland, south of Annapolis between Chesapeake Bay and the Patuxent River estuary. The county is adjacent to Prince Georges County, where my sister Robin has lived since attending the University of Maryland a few decades ago. My plan was to combine trips, as I try to see my sister over the summer.
Robin and I get along well generally. She is careful and meticulous, I am sloppy and more reckless. Since she has lived in her house, I've lived in three different cities and eight different homes. She is the only one who really understands what our parents were like and who remembers our grandparents. We both nap in the afternoon, take medication before we can eat breakfast, and watch our weight.
I try to visit the Garrison Forest Veteran's Cemetery in Owings Mills, where our parents are buried, every year before Rosh Hashana (this year in early October). Robin and I visited in the morning, then had lunch at Suburban House, an old-fashioned Jewish deli in Pikesville, near where we grew up, and a place we hung out in our younger years. The restaurant moved to a new shopping center a few years ago. We asked the waitress where she went to high school. She attended Milford Mill a few years after my sister. The manager (City College '68) came over to chat us up. He wants things to stop changing, and lamented that the 1960s in Jewish Baltimore are gone. There was a tight-knit community that no longer exists. Robin and I both fled for our lives when we had the chance. We thought we saw our parents' friends at the restaurant, but we soon realized the people we saw were our age.
I visited two millennial couples in the Washington area, my nephew Evan and his fiancée Kellie in Arlington, and my friend Neal, who I met here in Morgantown, and his new wife Natasha, in Silver Spring. I've read about how millennials are likely to be urban dwellers, use transit instead of driving, and worry about making a living. Evan and Kellie have a small apartment in a newer building with a fitness center and pool. They share a car, live a block from Arlington's courthouse, take the subway to work and use Uber when they need an extra car.
Neal and Natasha live in an older building, which means their apartment is slightly larger than Evan and Kellie's, but parking is outside the building and there are no amenities. They are near the center of Silver Spring, a location with shops and restaurants and the American Film Institute. The proximity to AFI alone makes me envious. Still, I would be uncomfortable in a cramped apartment like theirs.
Both couples are paying off student loans, and find money tight. I feel their frustration. I lived in central Baltimore in my 20s, had a small student loan from grad school, paid about 20% of my earnings for rent and didn't own a car. I didn't make a lot of money, but I was able to live comfortably on what I had. Young people today can't do that.
I brought a light jacket with me, because I remember that evenings are usually cool in Maryland the last week of August. Apparently, that is no longer true. Temperatures remained well above average the entire time I was there. Perhaps this is the "new normal."
Sunday was my day to visit Calvert County. Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington becomes State Road 4 in Maryland. It is joined by State Road 2 heading south from Baltimore and Annapolis. SR 2-4 is the main road in Calvert County.
I have a college friend who grew up in Calvert when it was a sleepy agricultural area. There are towns that were destroyed by the British in the War of 1812, and for a long time, Calvert County did not seem to recover, as Baltimore and Washington became major cities. Recently, the northern part of the county has become an expensive suburb, with faux colonial mansions on acres and half-acres. To the credit of the county, they have limited commercial development to "town centres" near Prince Frederick, the county seat, Huntingtown near the center of the county, Solomons, at the south end of the county, and a few other locations. The stores were the usual grocery stores, pharmacy chains, and mattress shops.
I picked ten of the twenty places listed on the National Register to visit. Some were houses from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I used to drive up long driveways to catch a glimpse of an old country house, but I'm over that now. I saw some of the houses from a distance and didn't photograph them. I found some old houses near the ones on the National Register. There were also old churches, generally Episcopal. Maryland was founded by Catholics, and was called The Free State, because any Christian was allowed to settle there.
There isn't a lot to Prince Frederick. More interesting were Solomons and Solomons Island, at the southern end of the county and on the waterfront at the Patuxent River estuary just before it flows into Chesapeake Bay. It's a resort area with restaurants and a Tiki bar. It was crowded on a warm sunny Sunday the weekend before Labor Day. The plant life is different in the southern end of the county- more crepe myrtle than the poplars and oaks to the north. There were even palm trees in Solomons Island, much to my surprise. I asked the two young women at The University of Maryland Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the tip of Solomons Island about the palm trees, and they said they are taken out in winter and replaced in the spring. No, palm trees cannot survive the winter, even in this relatively warm part of Maryland. The laboratory is investigating changes to Chesapeake Bay: stream runoff from mountaintop removal in West Virginia, pollution from agricultural runoff, and how to restore crab and oyster beds. They told me the water is not necessarily higher than in previous times, but it is warmer, and that affects the bay's ecology.
Isaac Solomon was a businessman from Baltimore who opened a cannery for oysters in the mid-19th century. I've looked for something that says he was Jewish, but I couldn't find any written account. I assume he was Jewish.
I hadn't been everywhere i wanted to be when I got to Solomons Island, separated by a barely noticeable creek from the mainland. I decided to take the rest of the day off, walk around and have a chocolate ice cream cone, in the way many men would have a beer. It was about 70 miles back to my sister's house from Solomons Island, with heavy traffic despite it being a late Sunday afternoon. I imagine rush hour is not pretty.
I came back to Morgantown Monday in time for Joe's birthday Tuesday, and had to explain my dark tan to my dermatologist, who has warned me about being out in the sun, Wednesday afternoon.
Here are the pictures:
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| All Saints' Church, Sunderland, founded in the 1600s. The present building is from 1774 |
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| Lower Marlboro ( along the Patuxent River (formerly Marlborough). Called "Lower" because Upper Marlboro is the county seat of Prince Georges County, to the north and west. |
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| "Harbormaster's House" Lower Marlboro |
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| Linden, Prince Frederick, 1868 with later additions, now Calvert County Historical Society |
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| Calvert County Court House, Prince Frederick. Probably early 20th century. The statue is a 1920s monument to World War I soldiers. |
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| Christ Church, Port Republic. 18th century, but remodeled in the 19th and early 20th centuries. |
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| Cove Point Lighthouse, near Lusby. The beach in Cove Point is private. |
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| Natural gas loading facility, Chesapeake Bay near Lusby. From Cove Point. Dominion wants a pipeline, people are fighting it. |
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| Calvert Cliffs. Many fossils have been found there. From Cove Point |
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| Solomon House, Solomons Island, 18th, 19th and 20th century.Visitor center for University of Maryland's Environmental Research Center |
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| Tiki Bar, Solomon's Island. The palm trees are taken out in winter |
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| Tourists with a perfect 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air convertible, Solomons Island |
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| Boating on the Patuxent River near Solomons |
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| Looking out from Solomons Island to Chesapeake Bay |
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