Cameron County, Pennsylvania

I didn't think I would get to visit a county this month as I usually do because of my six-week class on Thursday and the Jewish holidays throughout October. My county of choice was Camden, New Jersey, which is more than two hundred miles away, and requires two full days of exploration. An opening came up because Sukkot, which started Sunday night, is being observed at Tree of Life on Friday night. The traditional important parts of the eight day festival are the first and last days, this year Sunday night and Monday, two weeks in a row. I thought I couldn't get away. The county after Camden is Cameron County, Pennsylvania, in the north central part of the state. The county population is less than 6,000 and the distance is just under two hundred miles, so, by my own rules, I could go one day and come back the next.

My expectation was a place where people were poor, depressed and angry, with Trump signs on every lawn. I was pleasantly surprised. Not that there weren't some Trump signs, but there were also Clinton signs. The leaves were in full color in this mountain region, unlike in Morgantown, where most of the leaves are still green in this unseasonably warm October. The people I met were all upbeat and friendly. The Pennsylvania tourism people call this area "Wild Pennsylvania." The brochure talks about crafts and restaurants and pretty little towns. Cameron County is in the center of this district, less populous and touristy than the surrounding counties.

From Morgantown, I drove northeast on US 119, avoiding the Pennsylvania toll roads, and merging into US 219, which ultimately heads north to Buffalo, New York, not as far as one might imagine. I turned onto  PA 120 in Ridgway to head east to Emporium, the county seat of Cameron County. I had sent an e-mail to a motel on the edge of town requesting a room. When I got there the clerk said that the e-mail system had been set up by a previous employee, and no one knew how to use it. She had a ledger where she wrote down my information. The motel looked like 1959, two rows of rooms facing a driveway. The room was small, and shabby, the internet iffy, the TV old.  Still, it was clean and the hot water worked just fine. I haven't paid so little for a room in a long time.

PA-120 is Fourth Street, the main route in Emporium. The town is about a mile long and six blocks wide. North of town is a mountain; the railroad and another hill is south. There is a trail through town marked "snowmobiles." The temperature was still in the 70s October 16 and 17.

I visited the Chamber of Commerce / Artisan Store on 4th St. The docent was a woman in her sixties wearing a Boston Pops sweatshirt. I told her that seemed incongruous for a small town in Pennsylvania. She told me she was a retired teacher who used to take her honors history classes to Boston one year and Washington the next. She thought her kids should see what is possible in the world. She likes living in a small town. For culture they drive an hour and a half to Penn State in State College. She suggested I go see the herds of elk south and east of town and gave me directions. It turned out to be far, and the Elk Visitor Center was in the next county. There is a park on the way, set up so the elk will like it, with meadow and forest and fallen trees. Plants the elk like were planted there. Visitors can see the elk from a blind. I learned that the elk were  imported from out West, since the local herds were exterminated early on. I didn't see any elk.

The enter of town boasts a Sheetz gas and convenience store, the one place open all night in the county. I bought a sandwich there for lunch. I found the courthouse, the library and the post office and walked much of Fourth St before heading out for the elk. I met a woman named Connie who saw me taking pictures on the street. She was with a friend, and also had a camera. She asked to take my picture, and I agreed, if I could take hers. Connie and her friend laughed when I asked if there was a mall in town. They shop at Wal-Mart in St. Mary's, 25 miles away.

Across from Sheetz is an ice cream stand, still open with outdoor seating. I got a chocolate cone from a pretty, smiling young woman.

After the invisible elk, I went back to the hotel, and slept deeply. I have not been well since Yom Kippur (Wednesday, October 12) and I had a flu shot on the fourteenth, which made things worse. I  awoke just after six and felt awful. I got myself up and found a restaurant called The Cabin on Fourth St. I had a salad with chicken, hold the cheese and fries. I felt better after that.

I was back in the room by 7:30. There is nothing going on after dark, especially on a Sunday. We don't have a television that works (it's analog), so I watched "Once Upon A Time" a time-traveling show with Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde and Snow White living, apparently, in modern times as well as the past. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I was asleep by 10.

The motel has a restaurant open for breakfast and lunch, where  groups of older people congregate. The menu offered different-sized portions. I had one sweet potato pancake, something I hadn't eaten before. I had tea, knowing enough to not ask for green tea. The bill was $4.50. I left a nice tip.

I thought I would leave town at 10, as Joe and I had been invited to dinner by the rabbi at Chabad, the Orthodox Jewish group in Morgantown. I walked the snowmobile trail through most of town, and found the abandoned factory, which apparently once made Sylvania light bulbs. There was an operational factory nearby- I could smell the fumes. It rained overnight and the clouds were entangled in the colorful mountains.

I drove home a much longer way, taking 120 east to Lock Haven, then I-99 and US 220 to I-68 near Cumberland, MD. PA-120 is a beautiful road along tributaries of the Susquehanna River, rocky cliffs, mountains of colored leaves, small towns, all in a valley shared with a railroad and the river. I stopped for lunch at Nittanny Mall, dying, near State College, and arrived home by four, in time for another nap before dinner in Chabad's sukkah.

Cameron County Courthouse, Fifth St.

Fourth St. The central building was a McCrory's

My new friend Connie on Fourth St.

US Post Office, Fourth St.

Public Library, Fourth St.

House on Fourth St., mid -19th century?

looking west on the west side of Fourth St.

House on Fifth St.

Veterans Museum, Fourth St.

Newspaper, possible evidence of Jewish life?

Elk viewing site, Cameron County

I have more pics I will post, maybe later today.
These wee pics from Monday- cooler (at least in the morning) and overcast.

Looking south from the center of Emporium

trail through the middle of Emporium

green grass and colored leaves in the backyards along the trails

Abandoned factory in Emporium

along the trail

another view of the abandoned factory

Yom Kippur

I'm generally a little scattered in my ways. No, really. This week, I've had to find a way to be organized- to study my Torah chanting for Wednesday, put together my class for Thursday, straighten up the house so the cleaning woman can come, post questions to the League of Women Voters to ask candidates at their event tonight. And I haven't been feeling that well. On and off fever, coughing, feeling tired. When I last lived in this part of the world, in January 1978, I had been sick on probably my last ten October 21 birthdays in Baltimore. A doctor finally suggested it was a seasonal allergy. After four years in the East, the allergies are coming back.

These are the things I was thinking about as we started Yom Kippur. The evening service, when Kol Nidre is sung, is easy, unless you're the cantor. Traditionally, Kol Nidre is sung three times. At Tree of Life we had a pianist and  celloist play Bruch's Kol Nidre, a concert piece based on a traditional melody, then the cantor sang it once. The prayer asks that we be excused from vows we were forced to make. It was written when Jews were forced to convert to other religions to save their lives. Modern Judaism has tried to take it out of the service, but regardless of its meaning, it is what people expect to open Yom Kippur.

I worked as a cantorial soloist for High Holy Days from 1997 to 2003, at four different synagogues in seven years. When the rabbi said "And now the cantor will chant Kol Nidre," I realized what an awe-inspiring task I had taken on. Not about the words in the prayer, but that Jews in many countries had heard this prayer for hundreds of years, and that I was part of a great tradition. I felt ancestral cantors looking over my shoulder. When someone dies in the Bible it is said they "are gathered to their ancestors." When I sang Kol Nidre, I felt that the ancestors had gathered with us, that they had come to listen to this prayer with their descendants.

I guess I was jealous of our cantor, Daniel Hazan ("Chazzan" is the Hebrew word for cantor). He is a French Jew from Morocco, who escaped back to France with his family, then emigrated to Israel, and now, with a Doctorate in Music, teaches at a college in Mexico. He sings both Sephardi (Spanish) and Ashkenazic (German) melodies. He's learned a few more modern pieces, mostly because Joe asked him to and got him sheet music. He improvises a lot. It works well and the congregation loves him. There is no accompanist and he gets through pages of material quickly by not stopping to do fancy melodies.

I loved those fancy melodies. Lots of new tunes were written in the post World War II era by composers following Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. At the cantor conferences I used to attend, new pieces were introduced, some of them just gorgeous. Many of them called for a keyboard and choir.  The last four years I worked, I was a good enough singer to pull them off. I had a full choir and accompaniment two of my seven years, and a pianist most of the other years. While Cantor Hazan was singing, I often imagined the beautiful piece I would have sung at that point. Of course, I won't ever do that again.

We had a break in services at 12:30, and Joe and I came home. He left to go back for his teaching session at 2:30. I stayed home, slept about 45 minutes, had a peanut butter and banana sandwich, fed the cat, and left the house at 3:30 to be back for the 4:30 afternoon service, where Joe had asked me to sing "Zog Nit Keymil" a Yiddush song sung by Polish-Jewish partisans in World War II. I walked a half-mile to the PRT, our driverless mass-transit system here in Morgantown, then walked another half-mile to the temple from the end of the line in the center of town. It was 75 F. and sunny out, so there were no weather issues. I was so tired, I didn't think I would make it. Why? Well, in addition to my seasonal "cold," I had chanted nineteen lines of Hebrew in the morning, memorizing the tune, the vowels and the punctuation. That alone was exhausting. I know I could not stand through an entire Yom Kippur service, even if I didn't fast. Daniel Hazan, who is at least ten years younger than I am, and thin, was in strong voice until the end.

It's no good longing for what you can no longer do. People don't want a cantor like me, and in places where there are many alternatives, i.e. not Morgantown, people often like peppy tunes played on guitar, where the congregation can sing along easily. Daniel Hazan and I both do a few things that people can sing with us, but we don't play guitar, and peppy melodies are not our style. Jewish liturgical music has moved on.

I try to live in the times I live in, and act age appropriately. It's not cool for someone married and my age to tell a younger person they look "hot." I still work out at a gym, carefully, and ride a bicycle, also carefully. I don't wear clothing that reveals my numerous tattoos, like some of the young men and women at the gym, and I don't lift 100 pounds. I try to be asleep by eleven. I can't physically do what a High Holy Day cantor does anymore. I get that.

Rabbi Joe was brilliant. I don't know if people realize how hard it is to script every word you say that is not in the book, to write two lengthy sermons and then have to do more for the following weekend. He's not afraid to talk about God as a believer, and yet to admit that the whole concept can be hard to swallow.

Our prayer book is the 1976 Reform  version. Lots of it is readings about social justice, in English. While it is non-partisan, it's clearly not in favor of the selfishness we hear today in conservative circles. The emphasis is on sharing what we have, helping those in need, especially refugees fleeing for their lives. It speaks of showing compassion for others, about treating "the strangers in our midst" as our equals, about understanding that all people are created in the image of God.

For me, it means not calling people "troglodytes"(what Joe makes me say instead of "assholes"), and sticking to issues when talking about politicians who have been bought off, or don't see things as I do.

There is a memorial service late in the day. We publish a book of names people want remembered. Joe and I both list our parents and grandparents on the page we buy, and I add my Uncle Steve and his boyfriend of many years, and my grandparents' brothers and sisters, who were kind to me, but had no children. They are my mother's Aunt Grace and Uncle Bernie, and my father's Aunt Yetta and Uncle Jake. I thought about them during the yizkor service. People were called on to read pieces about loss and about love after someone dies. The readers, softened up by fasting and a long service, often cried.

At Yom Kippur, we wish to be renewed for another year of life. With most of the congregation over sixty, that wish takes on a more literal meaning. I thought about myself, and about Joe, and the future of our congregation here in Morgantown.

It was, for me, and I think most of the congregation, a meaningful Yom Kippur. I will think about what I saw, heard and felt this year for a long time. Meanwhile, our next holiday starts Monday night. And I'm teaching the hits of 1962 in an hour and a half! Someone just asked me about adding Bob Dylan to the mix.

5777

If the Jewish calendar were more correct, Rosh Hashana would have been September 4 and 5, instead of October 3 and 4. That would have nixed our early August trip to California, but it would mean all the holidays would have been in September, and already over. Meanwhile, Osher Life-Long Learning, where both Joe and I are teaching six-week classes, started September 26. And I've been involved in some election campaigns, trying to attend an almost daily run of candidate events. I am on the Morgantown Library Commission, which meets October 19. I've been to one meeting, where they handed me a 96-page handbook, which I should have read by now.  I won't make my monthly trek to another county this month- no time. For Rosh Hashana, I agreed to chant haftarah, about three pages, in Hebrew. I'm chanting Torah at Yom Kippur, using a special holiday melody, 19 verses, mostly from memory, as the text has no notes, no vowels and no punctuation.

This year, I looked at Rosh Hashana as more of a burden, an inconvenience, getting in the way of my preparation for my class, called "The Great Hits of 1962," interfering with my social life and my desire to be something of a political player. I feel like this last year has been a separation from the temple and Rabbi Joe's shadow, making my own friends outside that circle, finding other things to do and places to go. Still, I agreed to read on the holidays, because no one else can do this, except Joe, and he is already overwhelmed.

Monday and Tuesday were Rosh Hashana day. I was prepared in my one good suit. I helped Joe with the early childrens' service before the regular one. The day was sunny and warm. Joe spoke beautifully, as he always does, I chanted well, the sanctuary was full of friendly faces. We threw our sins, in the form of bread, off the rail-trail bridge over Deckers Creek, then twenty of us went out for pizza.

Something happened during services. I saw the faces of my parents and grandparents greet me, and, as if I were dying, my whole life flashed by. I was comforted, not threatened in any way. I felt the ancestors were stopping by for a visit, and I saw good things from the past.

 I will be sixty-seven later this month. When I read the paper, I look at the obituaries. It's rare for me to know someone in Morgantown, but I count how many of the people listed are younger than I am. A lot. Sometimes I feel that I can look back at my life from a high mountain I've been climbing for the last sixty-seven years. I worry about falling off the mountain if I look back for too long. Better to look ahead to the fog-covered peak in front of me and keep going.

As we were leaving Los Angeles, in mid-August, I found out about the death two years ago of Danny Kolker, one of my first friends there in 1984. My high-school-and-after friend Darryl Ruder died from cancer earlier this year. I hadn't seen him in decades, but he friended me on Facebook, where he rarely posted. His children "tagged" him in a Facebook post after he died, which is how I found out. They told me he had spoken to  them about me.

In my class today (October 6) I will show a clip from "West Side Story," which won Best Picture and lots of other awards at The Academy Awards in 1962. I remember, maybe not accurately, how that movie affected me my overly sensitive twelve year old self.  I had never seen such sexuality, beautiful dancing, handsome men, some as dark as I was. This week, I cried watching George Chakiris and Rita Moreno dancing to "America," overwhelmed by the beauty of it, and by the passage of more than fifty years.I think about my spiritual ancestors, Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins and Stephen Sondheim, all furiously creative gay Jews. Chakiris, Moreno and Sondheim are still with us, now in their eighties. I wonder how they feel looking back down the mountain they have climbed.

I've cried a lot lately, not just for my friends who have died, or for my advancing age and rapidly decaying body. Not to worry: my tests are good, and I'm in better shape than many men my age. I can see how things are going generally, and I understand the rules about end of life. I'm more likely to cry for art than real life: watching a scene from "West Side Story," reading from Vikram Seth's now thirty-year old novel in verse "The Golden Gate," hearing a perfect sermon from my husband,The Rabbi, or even listening to the new Radiohead album, "A Moon-Shaped Pool," as I am while writing this.

I guess I did what I was supposed to on Rosh Hashana, after all, examining my life, expressing gratitude to God for what I have and what I've accomplished, and vowing to keep going and do better in the future.

I wish my few readers a happy and healthy 5777