Friday, January 18, Tree of Life Morgantown had a Tu B'shvat seder, a celebration of the New Year of Trees (technically Sunday night and Monday). We ate fruits and nuts, dates, figs, and olives, things native to Israel. I felt bloated and a little dehydrated during the night. I thought I would be okay Saturday as I was making breakfast- but then I started to feel awful and threw up three times. I felt a little better and managed to swallow some oatmeal, but I felt terrible after and put my head down on the breakfast table and closed my eyes. Joe was getting dressed to go to his Saturday Torah study. Next thing I knew, he was standing over me, asking what I was doing on the floor. He had heard me pass out and fall.
I called WVU Medicine, and they had a doctor call me back. I told her what happened and she said "Go to the emergency room." Joe made arrangements for someone else to open the temple building for study, and off we went. At triage, I barfed twice more while they were asking me a hundred questions. They ran some tests and said I should be admitted because some enzyme was way off- a pancreatic enzyme. That shook me up because both my mother and her father died of pancreatic cancer, and I thought maybe this was it.
Ruby Memorial Hospital is not a good place. They use a lot of aides, students and others. Real nurses are hard to find, and a real doctor even more so. I shared a room with a man my age who is a Viet Nam veteran who claims he has liver and kidney failure from exposure to Agent Orange. I realized I could be a lot worse off. By evening they let me chew on some ice, brought some pills for me, but not the heart medication I usually take, despite the fact that all my medical records are with them. The doctor said I could order something easy to eat. She left and I barfed again, so I didn't eat.. After a nearly sleepless night, they let me shower and said I could go home if I wanted to. The bad numbers for the enzyme were back to normal. They had no explanation for what happened. My guess: serious dehydration. I was running at half speed for most of the next week. The silver lining is that I lost seven pounds- twenty more to go.
I'm on Morgantown's City Council, and hope to be reelected in April, I need to get 75 signatures on a petition from voters in my ward by February 11. It's been cold and snowy, hard to go out and knock on doors. As it was sunny and over 40 F., Tuesday, I went out for an hour with a friend to collect signatures. It was a weekday, so most people weren't home. We got a few signatures and came back so I could nap before the City Council meeting, which went from 5 P.M. to 10. I drove home in another snowstorm.
I was scheduled for an annual workout with a trainer at my gym at 8:30. I didn't get up early and I was late. We didn't do everything we were scheduled to do, but I couldn't do much more. I'm still way overweight, but apparently I'm more muscular than a year ago, which is why people think I've lost weight, when I have not.
A drama teacher at North Marion High, deep in the woods off US 250, maybe an hour from Morgantown, asked Joe if he knew a Holocaust survivor who could speak to her class. There was someone in Morgantown who did that , but she is now quite elderly and unable to get out. Joe didn't want to go, but when he told me about it, I offered. I spoke to the teacher, and she said I could talk about growing up Jewish generally, since there are no Jewish kids in the school. The class is performing a play about the
St. Louis, the ship full of German Jewish refugees that was turned away from the United States. I wasn't sure what I would say to them, but I made a list of books and movies I had read and seen. I was late getting there after two wrong turns, but we had more than an hour together from 3:50-5 P.M. when there were late buses. I told them what I knew about Belchatow, the town in Poland that my father's family came from, about people I knew growing up who were the children of survivors, and why Jews in America were so freaked about the President's anti-immigrant stands. They asked what ritual we observed growing up in our family (precious few), was it hard growing up Jewish? (no, because we lived in a segregated society, and Jewish kids were a majority of the students in my elementary and junior high schools). I mentioned that my parents had no friends who were not Jewish, and that between CYO, Young Life and B'nai Brith Youth, there was not a lot of socializing outside of school among Catholics, Protestants and Jews. The kids were attentive and engaged. Many of them had read
Number The Stars, a Newbery Award-winning book about Jews smuggled out of Nazi-occupied Denmark to neutral Sweden. I added that my friend Barbara, whose mother was one of the children smuggled out, was the only Jewish person I knew who visited relatives in Europe when we were growing up.
The movies I gave them were a whole lesson in film history, including Vittorio de Sica's
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Agnieszka Holland's
Europa, Europa, Louis Malle's
Au Revoir Les Enfants, Pawel Pawlikowski's
Ida,and Bernardo Bertolucci's more than five hour epic
1900.
The kids were great; the teacher said I could tell the kids I was married to the rabbi, but they didn't ask about that. It may have come across that my parents were not interested in Judaism, and were angry about the plight of the Jews. I never thought of them that way, but perhaps they were.
North Marion High is between the towns of Farmington and Mannington on two'lane U.S. 250 . Even in dark, dreary weather it's a beautiful area.
Thursday night was the annual dinner from Morgantown's Chamber of Commerce. Joe had agreed to go with me, although he was not happy about it. I could have skipped it, too, but the Mayor and City Manager thought Councilors should put in an appearance. Quite a few people showed up, men in suits and women in dresses and heels. Mingling and networking were the order of the day. I knew only a few people there, and Joe and I were largely ignored. I think people know who we are (I being on Council and Joe the rabbi who speaks to school and church groups all over town), but I had the feeling we were deliberately being ignored by the overwhelmingly white, Christian crowd. No one from our synagogue was there, and I spotted only two other Jews. An African-American woman won an award for her business, and Charlene Marshall, a former Councilor and State Delegate, an African- American woman with whom I share a warm and friendly relationship, introduced me to her. We City people sat together, the Mayor and three Councilors and the assistant City Manager, mostly with spouses. Only a handful of people greeted us at our table. It seems the Chamber members would just as soon ignore the City of Morgantown and concentrate on development outside our borders. Rabbi Joe says "Nothing is about you," but I felt that was a hostile crew, and I do take it personally.
Thursday night I voted for the S.A.G. Awards. I joined AFTRA in 1986 and S.A.G. the Screen Actors Guild, a year later, after an appearance on "General Hospital," possibly the peak of my professional acting career. I was a stand-in once for a short, bald actor, and a union extra on "Matlock" and some failed T.V. series in 2009. I got paid to audition for a pilot that never took off, and that's about it for paid acting. Still, I maintain my membership, and they send me DVDs and codes to watch movies online during awards season. I don't get to watch everything, and I don't go to a lot of movies these days. Here's a list of my votes and who won:
Lead Actor and Actress in a Film: I voted for John David Washington and Lady Gaga. Rami Malek and Glenn Close won. I didn't see the winning performances;
Bohemian Rhapsody because it's a Fox movie, and I have issues with Rupert Murdoch.
Supporting Actor and Actress in a Film: I voted for Mahershala Ali in
Green Book, and he won and Margot Robbie in
Mary Queen of Scots. Emily Blunt won for "
A Quiet Place." I didn't see any of these performances but I loved Margot Robbie in "
I, Tanya."
For Performance by A Cast, I voted for "
Crazy Rich Asians." "Black Panther" won and I think that was fair. I voted "
Black Panther" for Stunt Ensemble, which it won, because I didn't vote for it for "Cast" and I didn't see the other pics.
I voted for Darren Criss in the movie about Gianni Versace's murder and Patricia Arquette for
Escape from Dannemora. I saw some of both series and they were amazing. They both won. I voted for Sterling K. Brown in "
This Is Us" and Sandra Oh in "
Killing Eve." Oh won, but Jason Bateman won for "
Ozark." I think Bateman is a great actor, but I hated the show last year, and didn't watch it this year.
For Actors in a Comedy Series I voted for Alan Arkin in "
The Kominsky Method" and Alex Borstein in "
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." Tony Shaloub and Rachel Brosnahan won for "...
Mrs. Maisel." People rave about that show, but except for the very butch Ms. Borstein, I find it unlikeable. Maybe I've just gotten old, but I enjoyed all eight episodes of "
The Kominsky Method," a show about
alter cockers in Hollywood. I guess that's where I'm at now.
The Americans and
The Kominsky Method got my vote for Drama and Comedy Ensemble. I didn't much care for the one episode I watched of
The Americans, but I did think the acting was great.
Mrs. Maisel and
This Is Us won those awards. I didn't see any of the Stunt Ensembles on television this year, but I watched some of "
GLOW" last year, and it's a mostly female cast, so I voted for that, and it won.
If my reasons for voting seem arbitrary and somewhat capricious, get over it. That is the nature of film and television awards.
Joe had Sunday school Saturday night, pizza and potluck at a family's home. I had spent an hour in the afternoon collecting signatures at an apartment complex in my ward, where at least I was mostly indoors. It was cold and snowy out. I agreed to go with Joe, and the event was fun after all, with mostly younger kids and their parents at a giant home in a gated community near the west shore of Cheat Lake. I like the parents and kids, although even the parents are much younger than we are.
Sunday to Tuesday was the West Virginia Municipal League Conference in Charleston, 160 miles south of here. Mayor Bill Kawecki drove me down there, along with Rachel Fetty, these days my favorite among the other Councilors. We stayed at the Marriott in the middle of town. There's a mall across the street with a Macy's, which we don't have in Morgantown. Unfortunately, Macy's announced last week that they will close that store. I was supposed to be at this conference last year, but came down with flu (despite having the vaccine) the night before the convention. People at this conference were more down-to-earth, much more friendly than the Chamber people. At breakfast Monday, Mitch Carmichael, our West Virginia Senate President, addressed the crowd. He supports our main issue, home rule for cities, but then pushed the education "reform" bill making it's way through the Senate. I walked out on him. It's a bad bill, a revenge bill against West Virginia teachers who went out on strike last year, pushed by charter advocates and the worst of the business community. We were bused to the state Capitol, a beautiful and immense building for such a small state. I found Danielle Walker, one of the five Delegates in our District, all friends and good people. We sat in on a mystifying House of Delegates session, then we were called out for lunch. The Conference provided box lunches... from Chick Fil-A. Rachel offered to go to the Capitol cafeteria, where she treated me to a sandwich and we met up with the other four Delegates in our District. It was better than the summer conference in Morgantown, where they served pork for dinner, with no other options. I'm still mad about that. (Rabbi Joe: "Get over it and move on." ). He gives good advice, if only I would take it.
We were supposed to lobby certain Delegates and Senators about home rule. But it had gone up above 50 F. in Charleston, and I don't know the city well. It's 2.2 miles from the Capitol to the hotel. I decided to walk back early. People in Morgantown think Charleston is a dump, and it's true, the population is in decline, but I think it's pretty and an interesting place. I walked down Quarrier St. and saw Joe Cohen, the ACLU director for West Virginia, coming out of the YMCA building. We talked a bit, and he told me he liked Charleston, because it's a diverse city with two active synagogues. I noted from the paper that it is four to five degrees warmer than Morgantown in January on average, and indeed, I saw plants just starting to sprout on my route, and magnolia and holly trees that don't do well in Morgantown. At Capitol St., I looked for Taylor Books, a famous independent bookstore. They show movies in the basement on weekends. I would love to have someplace like that in downtown Morgantown.
I had time for a short nap before we were bused back to the Cultural Center in the Capitol Complex. There was finger food, but not really dinner. I ate some. I saw Nathan Tauger, the son of a congregant, who is working for the Democrats in the Legislature, and Andrew Schneider, the president of Fairness West Virginia, the gay rights organization in the state. He told me he finds Charleston to be a friendly city, with an active gay community. He's buying a house. There's a gay rights ordinance introduced in the House of Delegates and Andrew asked if I would come down and speak to it when they have hearings. I would love to. There was a "hospitality room" in the hotel later that night- more food, mostly bacon and crab, but chicken tenders, which I ate. I didn't sleep well, between allergies and a lot of less-than stellar food. I ate breakfast Tuesday with Bill the mayor, the mayor of Fairmont and Councilor Selin, another friend at the hotel's buffet, Bill and I took off for home about 10:30, arriving at about 1:30, with only one brief bathroom break. I was back at City Hall at five for our monthly Committee of the Whole meeting.
Today (Wednesday, the 30th) the temperature dropped to near zero, and maybe below that and windy in the morning. I have one day to totally stay home. I still need about forty more signatures in the next two weeks; if I get them, I will be able to run a serious campaign until the end of April. I'm looking forward to resting up in the bitter cold tomorrow.
