The Morgantowner: February 2019

The weather here in February is hard. It may not be as cold as January, but it rains and snows, and there are few sunny days. It's chilly. Both of us have been reading books that make us nostalgic for something else. Joe's is Less, by Andrew Sean Greer, about a San Francisco gay man turning fifty, an author regretting his lost youth, who takes a literary trip around the world to avoid going to his ex-boyfriend's wedding to another man. I'm reading Gary Shteyngart's Lake Success, another picaresque novel about a guy named Barry, his wife Seema (Seema was the name of my first and last serious girlfriend in high school and the beginning of college). Barry in the book leaves his wife and three-year old autistic child in New York to go look for his college girlfriend across the country. Seema visits her parents in Cleveland. Of course, both Arthur Less, from Less, and Barry Cohen from Lake Success have lessons that must be learned to find some sort of redemption.

Last week, a committee in the West Virginia House of Delegates proposed a rule to annul laws made in several cities, including Morgantown, to add LGBT protection to the anti-discrimination laws. The amendment to the original bill (which would have prohibited cities from changing labor laws, like minimum wage) failed, but 10 Republican men on the committee voted for it, and one went on a rant calling LGBT people "terrorists" and a lot worse. This state does not have a reputation for being gay-friendly, something Morgantown City Council has tried to change. There is a plan afoot to have a "gay picnic" here in April, and I went to the first planning meeting Saturday, where I was the oldest queer person (including all LGBT people) by several decades. It's been lonely for us, and, with the crappy February weather, the hostility in the House of Delegates, and our literary friends, we've had our doubts.

I was at our local grocery store today, and while I knew few people there, I did run into three friends, which was good. I also saw people who looked familiar: a woman who I thought for a second was Janet the Dentist, who came to Israeli dancing at BCC, the synagogue for gay people, thirty-some years ago, pregnant. She talked about her "partner" with whom she was having the baby. When pressed, she admitted the partner was a very traditional Jewish man, and that they were in fact married. She didn't want to seem different. I saw her more than ten years ago, and she told me about having breast cancer and surgery. I wonder how she is now. And then I saw the Principal Realtor, a woman I knew from temple in L.A., who was an elementary school principal, then retired and sold real estate. Her partner in later years was a woman I had also met dancing at BCC. The Realtor passed away a few years ago from pancreatic cancer. Suddenly, I feel like people from my past, alive or dead, are showing up for me and making me regret the community I lived in, not Los Angeles so much, but the people there who were my community. Still, I think about a young friend, who grew up in Europe (now 40) who complained to me about the constant sunshine in L.A., how boring it was! I loved that about L.A., and I think about his complaint, and how, like him, I should be more grateful for what I have.

We'll stay here and live with our old-people regrets. Maybe with Joe's new contract, we'll be able to take a month in the winter and go to Palm Springs or Ft. Lauderdale, although I fully intend to win my Council election at the end of April, so maybe not, at least not for the next two years. It was our choice to come to Morgantown, and people depend on both of us here. We've made friends, some our age, some much younger, and when we don't get all maudlin but look at reality, we have it good.

Spring is here early in March, at least in the afternoons, so we are almost there. Regrets are real, as is Seasonal Affective Disorder.

"When the going gets tough, the tough... leave town." That's what I always say, or something like that. The next few weeks in February are booked. This week I only had two meetings I didn't want to go to, both at the same time Thursday, so I would have missed one anyway. All my paperwork to run for City Council again was done. At least I thought so, but the City Clerk told me at Tuesday's Council meeting that I was short thirteen signatures of the seventy-five required from my ward by Monday. I went down there on my way out of town Wednesday morning. There were some errors and I came away owing them seven signatures, not thirteen. This whole process has been hard for me, and for Joe, with past supporters being ill, or moving away, or disappearing January to March to warmer climes, and progressives either tired of me or burnt out after 2016 and the local elections last year, I haven't been helped as much as I was two years ago.

It was my intent always to visit Columbia County, Pennsylvania in February and here I am. I was three counties west of here, in Clinton County, last month during a warm spell, and now I'm back in this part of the world again a month later, during another warm spell. Is there a pattern here? The average temperature for February 7 (today) in Bloomsburg, the county seat and largest town in the county, is a low of 15 F. and a high of 34. Today, the low was 37 and the high was 52. On my journey here, there was precipitation the whole way, but not snow, as one might expect on February 6, but rain. I know it was below zero here and in Morgantown just last week, but in general the weather has been way too warm. It makes it easier for me to travel and explore, yes, but I would hate to see my former town of Miami under water, and my ex-hometown of Los Angeles more burnt than it already is.

I got a suite at The Usual Chain near Bloomsburg, but not in it, in a Town Center-like development with a Lowe's and a Wal-Mart. I have lots of things I plan to do on these trips, but eating in "the best restaurant in town" is not one of them. I had dinner yesterday at the Chinese buffet in this development, and I foolishly thought I could walk to the Panera across the road tonight for a fast supper. Like the Town Center (Towne Centre, usually) in Morgantown, this one is not set up for walking, and I risked my life walking from the motel to the restaurant. I thought I would have lunch in the mall at the food court. The mall here, just across I-80 from the motel, is not well, like most malls in these small towns. Despite the loss of three anchor stores, Morgantown Mall is doing better. There was a branch of that ubiquitous sub place, and I ate there for lunch. Most of the people in the mall seemed to be seniors, getting in their walking.

I started today at a park at the south end of the county, passing through Catawissa, a borough of 1552 people, large for Columbia County, and with some life and architecture. I headed out to Weiser State Forest along Roaring Creek, still somewhat ice-clogged despite warming temperatures. There is an artificial lake created along the creek.

I drove to the far south end of the county to see the borough of Centralia, population 10 as of 2010. I saw many streets with no houses, a municipal building, and a church uphill from what should have been the center of the town. I found out later, from Wikipedia, that Centralia had been a coal-mining town, still functional into the 1990s, but that there was an underground fire, spread from a landfill to an abandoned mine, and the whole borough has been condemned as a result. A few people were allowed to live out their lives there in the five remaining houses.

There are twenty-three covered bridges in the county, six in rural Cleveland township. I thought I could track down the Cleveland bridges, but only found one, and it was blocked off so one could not even walk to it. On the way back to Bloomsburg (and the mall for lunch) I found a park with a covered bridge and two railroad bridges, one abandoned and one in use.

After lunch, I drove to Berwick, east of Bloomsburg, and the second largest place in the county with a population of more than 10,000. I found the Jackson House, now set in a park, from the 1880s, and a former armory, now apparently a gym. This was an iron ore area, and a company manufactured tanks during World War II. Main Street seemed busy, and there is a functioning movie theater and several restaurants along U.S. 11, the main street of both Bloomsburg and Berwick.

By three, I was ready to tackle Bloomsburg, and started with Beth Israel, the small Reform-affiliated synagogue near the center of Bloomsburg. Their website advertises holidays and monthly Shabbat Friday nights. Bloomsburg University anchors the east end of town, and there is a student ghetto of rundown rental houses similar, but on a smaller scale, than what one sees in Morgantown. Bloomsburg is a state school.

I walked down Main Street and stopped into a bookstore/ gift shop. I chatted with the owner, who said her store was in the former Woolworth, the property being previously owned by her grandmother. She tried to interest me in some books, but I didn't see anything I wanted to read. I told her I was going back to the motel to nap, and would probably eat at Panera, near the hotel. She told me I should treat myself to dinner at The Blind Pig downtown.

My last place to see was the city park in Bloomsburg along the mighty Susquehanna River. The weather was cooling off, into the forties, and it seemed awfully dark, but I saw the park and the mighty river, ice chunks bobbing along the surface. I brightened most of the pics in Bloomsburg. It's a pretty town, and an interesting place to visit.

I looked up The Blind Pig after my nap from 5-6, and Yelp agrees that it is the best restaurant in town. I checked out the menu, all unintelligible names of things containing pork and shellfish, what Joe and I call "food porn." I did consider going elsewhere downtown, maybe an Italian place, of which there were many. The reviews bragged of "giant portions" of breaded and fried things with garlic rolls. Even after a nap, I was tired, and having lost maybe eight pounds in 2019 (seven of them from throwing up, but still) I really didn't want to eat a lot, and didn't want to have to drive anywhere.

So Panera it was. I came back to my room and read about the bigots in our West Virginia State Legislature, and the great Delegates from Morgantown and a few other places, who called them out.

It should remain warmish tomorrow for my drive home, although it may rain again. For the weekend, I have to get more signatures to turn in Monday for my campaign.