Carter and Bath Counties, Kentucky

You might think I was too exhausted from travel to Canada to leave again six days after our return for my sixty-second county within three hundred miles of Morgantown, in this case Carter County, Kentucky. You would be wrong.

This project has become more than an obsession, as Zack Hample, my (half) bother-in-law said recently about his catching baseballs. I have to do this, and I like it.

Carter County didn't seem promising. Grayson, the county seat, is small,  2.700 people, just really an exit off I-64 two counties west of West Virginia, and only thirty miles from Huntington. There aren't a lot of historic places, no Jewish community, no mall. It's 234 miles, downtown Morgantown to downtown Grayson, which means two nights.

Looking at the map, I realized that Bath County, two more counties to the west, was still within three hundred miles of Morgantown. Alphabetically, I should have been there in August, 2014, when I visited Bath County, Virginia. I figured I could spend an afternoon there. It had a few more historic places, at least.

I left later than I planned Sunday, not unusual, and arrived in Grayson about four. After a nap, I went out to buy a swimsuit at K-Mart, just down the road, and dined at one of those seemingly ubiquitous Chinese buffet restaurants.

The main street connecting I-64 to Main Street (U.S. 60), about a mile apart,  is Carol Malone Boulevard, a jumble of fast food restaurants, gas stations and motels. I had to research to find out that Carol Malone was an opera singer from Grayson. Kentucky Christian University is along Carol Malone Boulevard. Wikipedia says they had a great choral program, but deleted the music department to focus on athletics.  Ouch. I drove a bit of Main Street, and walked two blocks west of Carol Malone to find the 1907 County Court House.

Kentucky Christian University, just off Carol Malone Boulevard

Carter County Courthouse, 1907, West Main St. (U.S.60) They are reworking the landscaping.

Statue of a World War I soldier, Courthouse lawn, Grayson

West Main St., Grayson

Monday, I tried out my new swimsuit in the motel pool, then headed out to explore Olive Hill, the other town in Carter County, fifteen miles west of Grayson, and then I planned to visit Owingsville, the county seat of Bath County, fifty-three miles west of Grayson, across Daniel Boone National Forest.

Monday, August 21, was a red-letter day, the day of the solar eclipse, 93% in Grayson at 2:33 P.M. I figured to be at Grayson Lake State Park, south of town, to see the eclipse through the trees.

Olive Hill looked like more of a town than Grayson, only half vacant. There is a rail trail along a creek, and a historic railroad station, not used by the railroad.

"Downtown" Olive Hill

Historic train station, Olive Hill

Owingsville, two counties west, and the county seat of Bath County, was founded by Thomas Dye Owings. The plaque in front of his house states he came from Maryland, so possibly from Owings Mills, near where I grew up in Baltimore County. This is an older town than Grayson, and is more picturesque, even though it only has 1,500 or so people. It lies 43 miles east of Lexington.

Bath County Court House, Owingsville

The center of this block is the original Owings House, c.1800

Downtown Owingsville Historic District

Monument to Confederate soldiers from Kentucky, 1907, Owingsville

J.J. Nesbitt House, 1878, Owingsville

I ate lunch at a family-owned pizza place, just off I-64, and thought I found a shortcut to the lake to get me there in time for the peak eclipse. As I was driving, I thought something was wrong with my eyes, as the light dimmed on a bright sunny day.

My shortcut wasn't, typically, and I was about seven minutes late to the lake. The temperature had dropped from 89 to 81 F. in the middle of the afternoon and the light was still dim when I snapped a pic of the marina.

The marina at Grayson Lake. The light is slightly dimmed; this was seven or eight minutes after the peak of the eclipse

I drove back to my motel for a nap, then ate at Shoney's a not-favorite coffee shop place. There is a supermarket in town, and I thought I could get a plate there, but all they had was fried chicken, with two sides. The sides were mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, baked beans and green beans, the latter two both with pork in them. Shoney's has a salad bar at  least.

I was happy to get away, but it didn't seem like much of a place to visit. Before dark Monday, I walked from my motel across I-64, and the mile or so down to Main St. There is a little park with a playground, a new, old-looking log house, which is home to the tourist agency for the county, a covered space with picnic tables and benches under a few trees. The street behind Carol Malone Boulevard is lined with some older homes. There were kids on the playground, two women chatting and eating carry-out from styrofoam boxes at one picnic table, a woman looking at a cell phone at the other picnic table, a man stopped on a motorcycle talking to a friend on the street behind the park. It was still warm out, the temperature having gone back up after the eclipse passed. I could hear and smell diesel trucks passing by. It wasn't much, just a scene, comforting, somehow, of a small-town in America.

I sat on a bench for a few minutes, then walked back to the motel, stopping for a frozen "treat" at McDonald's.

Charlottesville

I was in Canada the weekend of the Fascist marches and demonstration in Charlottesville.We didn't watch most of it, and didn't see what a big deal it turned out to be.

We came home, and I watched the HBO video, read the comments from the president of the Jewish congregation in downtown Charlottesville, and read as much as I could.

At the Morgantown City Council meeting on August 15, and previously on Facebook, I had asked for a meeting with members of City Council, the Monongalia County Commission and West Virginia University, and their respective police departments to firm up plans in case there was a similar march here in Morgantown.

I was out last Thursday downtown for an event at WVU, the Human Relations Commission and a social gathering. I took the PRT, WVU's ingenious driverless mass transit system, to get downtown and walked between the venues. I didn't stay long at any of them. Joe had a meeting, and I thought I would catch up with him at temple to get a ride home. Our signals were crossed on that, and the PRT had an emergency shut down. I got home much later than I expected, and way tired. That's when I lost it.

There was an op-ed piece in our local paper that day from Michelle Malkin, a truly horrible person, IMHO. Her response to criticism of the President over Charlottesville was "What about Black Lives Matter?" I also got a response from Morgantown's mayor, someone I like and consider a friend, who brushed off my concerns by saying he was sure the Morgantown police could take care of anything that might come up.

I get Black Lives Matter now, and "intersectionality." I will admit to (generally) being white and "passing" for straight, at least when I'm alone and not with Joe. My parents made choices for me in housing and schools that were not available to African-Americans. I had financial help from my family that a vast majority of Americans of any race could not imagine. I expect to be taken seriously. That's how I was brought up, as a White Male in the South.

And yet, when I was concerned about heavily armed young men with Nazi flags standing outside a Reform synagogue in a liberal college town, I was told to worry about African-Americans instead, or to not worry, it wasn't a big deal. That hurt, not so much the former from Malkin. I wrote a scathing letter to the editor about her, which was published this past Saturday. I was more hurt by the Mayor's response. I accused him in my response of not being worried because he is "straight, white and Christian." "Clueless" might have been a better adjective. My husband is the rabbi at the Reform synagogue in a college town 235 miles from Charlottesville, according to Google maps. And my family had relatives in Poland in 1939, who were murdered by the Nazis. That Nazis marching in America did not upset the Mayor, or the President for that matter, meant to me that my life doesn't matter. And Black lives matter even less.

This past Sunday, there was an article in Morgantown's Dominion-Post about preparations for events like those in Charlottesville. The reporter, Alex Lang, quoted me, but also sought out the local police and WVU officials. Apparently, they have thought about this issue, and there are plans in place.

Tonight, I attended a panel discussion about Charlottesville put on by the History Department at WVU. The speakers were good about putting events into perspective. They explained that many of the monuments to Robert E. Lee and others were placed in the early part of the twentieth century, to emphasize white supremacy, and that schools named for Confederate heroes were often built in the 1950s and '60s during the battles over school integration.

Ultimately, the issue is not about statues. It's about white people, almost always young white men, feeling threatened by Blacks, Jews, gays and women, and feeling left behind, like it's someone else's fault. I asked the panel tonight where the hatred of Jews comes from, and the embrace of Nazi flags and admiration of Hitler. The panelists said that young people have no knowledge of what Nazism really meant, no idea about Jim Crow or the Civil Rights Era.

Some of this is prejudice handed down. I know what Baltimore, where I grew up, was like in the 1950s and 1960s. People don't believe me when I say it was totally segregated, not just by race, but also by religion, and not just between Jews and Christians, but socially between Catholics and Protestants, between German Jews and Russian Jews. The Civil War was still an issue in Maryland 100 years after it was over, and to an extent, still today.

It's late and I'm rambling. The talk tonight put things into a historical perspective, and the failing Trump regime, which encouraged outbursts from Nazis and Ku Klux Klan people, will not last. As to racism, anti-Semitism, and our fear-based culture, our only hope is to be open with everyone about who we are, present everyone with a friendly face, and demand much better from our politicians. I'm working on being a good politician, writing letters to the editor (another went out today) and being open, in our city at least, about who I am.

What I Learned In Canada

It's been nine days since we left Morgantown for thirteen days in three of Canada's largest cities. Joe and I both needed to get away after a  busy year (so far), and we wanted to go someplace we didn't know much about, someplace different, and frankly, someplace  away from the trauma of living in the United States today. We decided on an ambitious trip to Montréal with side trips to Ottawa and Québec City. We knew that Montréal and Québec are in French-speaking Quebec Province, and that Ottawa, Canada's capital and fourth-largest city, is in English-speaking Ontario Province, but on the border of Quebec. We decided to be "green" this trip, and ride by train between the cities, and walk and use mass transit in the towns instead of having a car.

The weather ranged from the mid-fifties to upper seventies, averaging 65 to 75. There were periods of rain everywhere. I expected it to be cooler.

We visited all the tourist places. Quebec and Montreal (I'm not using accents from here on) are among the oldest cities in North America. Parts of Montreal could pass for Paris, and Quebec looks medieval in places. Ottawa is much newer with great piles of stone buildings and beautiful parks, as befits a national capital. Tourists came from all over to Montreal and Ottawa, women in Muslim or Indian garb, African families, busloads from Korea and Japan. I couldn't help feeling that many of these people were not comfortable with the idea of traveling in the United States this summer, and chose Canada instead.

It's Canada's 150th birthday, and there were celebrations, festivals and parades everywhere. It seemed welcoming to everyone. I saw no one treated rudely or excluded by race or religion. We were early for Gay Pride celebrations in Ottawa and Montreal. We heard that there was a history of anti-gay actions by the government in Montreal at the time of the World's Fair in 1967 and the Olympics in 1976, but now there is a gay neighborhood with decorations and street signs. At the synagogue in Quebec,  people told us that many in the community had left because of virulent anti-Semitism. They are starting over with a new rabbi and are themselves taking on a more welcoming stance.We saw a festival of First-People's culture, and a parade with indigenous people of other countries, to say the Canadian First People welcomed them. In Quebec, there were signs about celebrating "our common heritage as Canadians," I'm guessing to put aside the rancor  from the Quebec separatists.

In Quebec City, few people speak English at all. We were fine in the tourist areas, and Joe and I, having both studied French in high school and college, and priding ourselves on our linguistic abilities, did our best to get by speaking French. I think people appreciated our attempts.

What I learned in Canada is how a country can try to be welcoming and open, understand that the future is multi-cultural, make amends and include its First Nations people, accept French culture as equal to English, and try to forge a real national identity across a vast amount of miles.

I learned that the United States could use Canada, at least what I saw, as an example. We could be less afraid and more embracing of change, of other races and cultures. We could protect the environment from further degradation, and make amends to our Native population for the horrors our government has inflicted on them.

The United States could have a brighter future than we are heading for. Canada has that future. I'll write more and put up some pictures...soon.