Wedding in New City, New York

This was a crazy idea. Joe's best friend from school invited us to his son's wedding last weekend in New City, across the Hudson from New York City, and just north of New Jersey. They got a rate for rooms at a good hotel in nearby Nanuet for Saturday night. The invitation said "Formal Invited." We booked an extra night Friday.

Joe wanted to go, so we did, driving 395 miles from about 9:15- 5:30 on Friday. I have a tuxedo from my brief time with West Virginia University's Community Choir; Joe rented one at Daniel's, a local men's store.

Possibly my oldest non-relative  friend, Larry, lives in Rockland County, near where we were staying. I sent him a message on Facebook before we left, asking if we could see him and his wife, Renate, Friday night or Saturday. Larry's parents and mine were best friends from early in my parents' marriage, before Larry and I were born. He is three months younger than I am.

We saw Nanuet Diner near the hotel, and, both of us liking old-school diners, decided to try our luck. It was like the old days, with bright lights, chrome and neon and a twenty page menu. The difference is that the wait staff were all men, conversing with each other in some kind of Caribbean Spanish and what I think was Haitian Creole. We ordered eggplant parmigiana, each serving enough for three, which came with soup or salad, coffee or tea, and dessert. We stuffed ourselves.

We looked around Saturday a bit in New City and in Tappan, where Larry and Renate live. The New Jersey line is an easy walk from Larry's house, and there is a historic district at the center of the town. The house is of the era and style of the identical houses Larry and I grew up in on the same street in suburban Baltimore. He is a musician and clergy in Eckankar; she is also clergy and a health practitioner. She made us a healthy, low-carb brunch, and we talked about old times and new. Larry and I always looked a little alike, both short and cute, now both bald with little mustaches. His mother, who we called "Aunt", and was more of an aunt to me than my biological aunts, is 94 and doing well. She lives in Naples, Florida. For her birthday in September, Larry visited. A call came that they had to evacuate because of Hurricane Irma. Larry was able to drive her across Florida to stay with friends. When they came back, they found a palm tree had crashed the roof of her car. Larry helped her buy a new car- at 94.. She is the last of our parents. Larry noted that he and his two brothers (one older, one younger) are all older than their father waa at his death. In December 2018, I will be the age my father was when he died. My religious beliefs, which include miracles in everyday life, is that there was some arrangement that Larry would be at his mother's side when a hurricane hit. You can take that as possible or chalk the whole thing up to coincidence. We didn't stay too long with Larry and Renate because he was driving to Trenton at 3 P.M. to play a concert with some friends.

Our history is so close. We were inseparable as small children, but grew apart when we were older. I did well in school; Larry did not. This trip, we both acknowledged that, by today's standards,we were ADD kids; Larry with the added "H" that made it impossible for him to sit still. Someone recently posted a picture of my second-grade class on Facebook. Our school, new in 1954, was mostly windows, and that clasroom looked out on a woods. I sat by the window, and I know I was always deep in my own thoughts and enjoying the view, while typically not paying attention to what the teacher was doing. Larry said "I'm grateful that we grew up when we did. If it was today, they would shoot me full of ritalin." That might help some kids, but Larry, after his family moved to Ohio when we were eleven, became a visual artist, a guitarist, singer, songwriter, playwright and actor, and also ran a small referral agency for musicians. I have great respect for him and what he does, and it warms my heart to know his mother, our last link to that generation, is thriving.

Anyway, we went back to our hotel, crashed for a bit, struggled to dress ourselves in tuxedos, and decided to drive to the wedding instead of taking the shuttle, so we could leave before the shuttle, which was returning at midnight.

The venue was the Paramount Country Club on Zukor Road. Adolph Zucker, the founder of Paramount Studios, had an estate there. Steve, the groom's father, has stayed in touch with many friends from school, including Joe, and he invited them..We walked in with a group of sixtyish people. Joe turned to one woman and greeted her ."Diane?" She looked at him for a second before recognizing him and they kissed and hugged. He took her to their senior prom in high school. There were more friends from school, including a gay man, Peter, not Jewish, who Joe said he knew from elementary school.

The wedding was lavish with donuts and champagne before the ceremony and lots of food after Both the bride and groom are Jewish; they met in college. The rabbi at Steve's synagogue, who has been there since before Steve's son, Josh was born, officiated. He sang the blessings, was warm and kind. He greeted me and Joe after the ceremony as if we were all old friends.

Weddings follow a pattern, and each one reminds me of another one. The bride and groom each have a brother, and the brothers escorted their grandmothers down the aisle. I though about my sister's wedding, thirty-nine years ago, and how I walked down the aisle with our eighty year old grandmother, I in a brown corduroy three-piece suit, a full multi-colored beard and my father's old hairpiece; my grandmother in her traditional blonde bouffant, and a pretty blue dress she had picked out. It made me conscious of how much things change, even as they are the same. Hopefully, our traditions will continue, even if we who witnessed this wedding, join those who witnessed previous weddings, in whatever world there is to come. The couple is cute enough, and I found myself rooting for them to have a great life together. Steve and Elise, the groom's parents, kissed and hugged us over and over and thanked us for making the journey to their son's wedding. We are in New York almost every year, and we always see them, often taking a train from Manhattan to their home in Scarsdale. Their son was probably fifteen when I first met him.

The food was great, the band, with three wonderful singers, and a repertoire of mostly soul oldies, was terrific. They started off with a medley of Jewish tunes, the copy of the "Fiddler On The Roof" wedding, which passes for traditional Jewish content. Everyone was into it and the band wailed, so I joined in, instead of going "Bah! Humbug!" as I usually do. Everyone was lifted on chairs, like in the Jerome Robbins choreography in "Fiddler."

We didn't leave early. We left with the van after midnight. Joe was engrossed in conversation with his old friend Peter. I chatted up two of the other women, and their husbands, who were not part of that circle. I told Diane, Joe's prom date, past sixty, married with two grown daughters, that Joe had discussed her with me, that if they had been a few years older, and his sexuality had skewed a little more to center, he would have tried to make a life with her. I thought about the girl I took to my prom, and I might have said that, on my own behalf, to her as well.

I will admit that I was annoyed with Joe, that he sat talking to his friend, when we had to get up early and drive home Sunday. I slept less than five hours, and told Joe he would have to do most of the driving home. I usually drive the two of us because I don't mind driving, and his driving makes me nervous. We were out just after nine in the morning. I drove to the Pennsylvania line near Easton; then he took a shift. I drove again, then stopped in Maryland, where I let him take over. When I awoke that time, we were in the mountains of Western Maryland, and it was snowing. We were home just after five.

This was a shlep to do this, but I was glad to see Larry and Renate, and happy for Joe that he was able to connect with his old friends. And of course, it is a mitzvah, a commandment, to rejoice with bride and groom, which we did, with gusto.

And we leave for Memphis Wednesday. Oy!

Larry and I on chairs from his parents' house when we were children

Larry, his wife Renate, Joe and me

Joe and I in our tuxes by the wedding canopy, the chuppah

Snow on I-68 in Western Maryland

Twenty-Five Hours in Centre County

Centre County is the home of Penn State University, once an arch-rival of West Virginia University in athletics, but no longer in the same league. Penn is in the town of State College, which, like Morgantown, is a small part of a larger county. Bellefonte, about ten miles up the road, is the county seat. Since it is less than two hundred miles from Morgantown to Bellefonte, I figured one night away would give me time for a visit. I arrived at the county line at 12:40 Sunday and left the county at 1:20 Monday, so I ran over a little. I make the rules, so I can modify them.

I booked a motel on the edge of State College. Coming in on U.S. 322 Business, a heavily trafficked four-lane road, there is the typical jumble of shopping centers and fast food restaurants, before one hits the city limits.

It was late and I was hungry, but I was determined to get to the main part of town. College and Beaver Avenues are the one-way pair through town, marked as East and West although they seem to travel more North and South. Meters being free on Sunday (hint to Morgantown Parking Authority) I was able to find a spot to park on Beaver. I found a Turkish restaurant called "Penn Pide" and thought I would go for exotic. "Pide,", probably similar to "pita," is a kind of flatbread, in this case with cheese and chicken. They made it on the spot, which took some time, and it was enough for three people to eat. I finished it off.

I found a free weekly newspaper, and was delighted to find that last week, three liberal Democrats were elected to the borough (Pennsylvanian for "town") council. Their interests include diversity and inclusion, competing with the nearby suburbs for commercial growth and the difficulty of annexing more land to the borough. In Pennsylvania, there is no unincorporated, everything is part of a borough or township.

The weather was cooler than in Morgantown by a few degrees. I had a sweater and a coat, and I put the coat on to walk around Penn State's campus. It's big, but contiguous, lots of trees, all labeled by species, and some when they were planted. They have a dairy farm, and a building called The Creamery, where they sell their own ice cream.

I avoided going Saturday to Sunday because there was a football game, and they have a larger stadium than WVU. It was also cold Saturday; Sunday was warmer. There were still crowds of people. I didn't figure that it would homecoming weekend, but it was. At the Creamery, people were lined up in 38 F. weather to get ice cream, and although it was close to three and sunset was 4:59 (eight minutes earlier than Morgantown) and I was stuffed with Turkish food, I waited to get a cup of Alumni Swirl, vanilla ice cream with blueberry swirl and mocha chips, a huge portion for $3.95, and delicious.

I walked around campus and through College Heights, a pretty historic neighborhood. People were out raking and bagging leaves. In my youth in suburban Baltimore, people burned piles of leaves, but that has been stopped in most places for air quality reasons. I used to like the smell of burning leaves.

I didn't find all six National Register places in State College, but I found four, plus a Reform synagogue and a pretty mid-century modern house. I was back at the motel before five, and crashed for over an hour.

I wasn't hungry- I'd had two days of calories, salt, sugar and fat for lunch, but I thought I should eat something. I looked online for a place to eat and found there is a Wegman's just outside of town, not far from my hotel. I went there and ate some greens, tomatoes, a bit of salmon, a garlic roll and some cut-up fruit, mostly pineapple. It didn't seem like much, but it was enough. I noted that most of the big stores are outside the borough limits, surrounded by acres of parking and impossible to walk to. Wegman's was in a development called "Colonnade" which had office buildings that looked like oversized Renaissance Italian palazzos with columns. My heart sank. This was the real commercial hub of Centre County.

For Monday morning, I planned to go to Bellefonte, a smaller borough than State College and the county seat.I found Philipsburg on a map, an even  smaller, isolated town on a river, with a historic district. I started the morning there. It has  a real downtown, but like so many places in this part of the world, not much is going on there. There is a movie theater, which has one showing in the evenings. I drove from Philipsburg through Black Moshannon State Park and State Forest, finding the town of Unionville on my way to Bellefonte.  There is a park on a river in the center of Bellefonte, and the main street rises to a war monument and the classical-style county courthouse. I walked around, snapped a few photos and visited the library, in a little mid-century building off the main square downtown. The librarian told me it had been a grocery store at one time, and they wanted more space. I bought a Hanif Kureishi novel for Joe for $1.00 at the library book sale. It was already after noon, so I looked for a place to eat, finding a Chinese buffet place a half-block from the courthouse. I tried not to overeat. By 1 P.M. I was back at the car ready to drive home.

According to Google Maps, it is 180 miles from Morgantown to State College, 189 from Morgantown to Bellefonte, about 10 miles between Bellefonte and State College. Philipsburg is 23 miles from State College and 29 from Bellefonte, the way I went on a back road.

Centre County has one and a half times the population of Mon County, but in three times the area. Morgantown has three-quarters the population of State College in twice the area. Here's the 2010 Census breakout, rounded from Wikipedia:

Centre County: 154,000
Monongalia County: 96,000

State College: 42,000
Morgantown: 31,000
Bellefonte: 6,000
Philipsburg: 3,000

Centre County is certainly scenic, and looks to be more upscale and urban than Monongalia, although much of the county is agricultural, park land or mountains. I was happy to see more retail options, but sorry that they are located out of the main cities and lost in a jumble of signs and parking lots.

Here are the pics, which came out in a different order than I took them. My error, I guess. Also, some of my pics disappeared from my phone. I have no idea why.

Brockerhoff Hotel, built 1866, remodeled in the 1880s, Bellefonte

Black Moshannon Park

High Street, Bellefonte

Centre County Courthouse, War Memorial, and statue of Andrew Curtin, the governor, from Bellefonte, who served during the Civil War

Bellefonte Historic District

Union Church, 1820, remodeled 1842, now a museum, Philipsburg

rental bike stand at Penn State

College Heights Historic District, mostly early 20th century, State College

An interesting house, next door to Camelot, in State College

One of the buildings in the "Ag Hill" area of Penn State, from the original land grant era in the 19th century

"Camelot," 1922, State College. A window is boarded up, but someone may be living there.

Holmes-Foster-Highlands Historic District, much of the area southeast of Penn State. Highlands ia a more élite area than this

Old Main, 1930, Penn State campus

Saturday in Pittsburgh

I heard it was an exciting game between Iowa State and West Virginia in Morgantown last Saturday, November 4, starting at 3 P.M. The weather was just warm enough, and it was sunny. I don't go to football games generally, and a game in town means one is stuck in the house at least an hour before and an hour after the game.

I could have gone to Torah study at Tree of Life in the morning. That's not something I typically do either. In my original retirement plan, I would go to Pittsburgh, preferably with my spouse, the rabbi at Tree of Life, to have lunch in a restaurant, find some historic spots, see amovie that will never play here in Morgantown, and if it's not Saturday, go to the Jewish bookstore and gift shop in Squirrel Hill. We haven't done that in a few months. We've been through Pittsburgh's airport, on our way to and from Canada this past summer, and I went with Joe to two weddings he officiated at the Heinz Museum in the Strip District, even singing at one of them.

I left at nine, before Joe left for Torah study, and went searching for my five historic sites, Numbers 115-119 on Wikipedia's list of National Register Sites in Pittsburgh. First up, in the South Shore neighborhood (the south shore of the Monongahela River, which also flows through Morgantown), there is the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Rail Station, and a separate listing for the  Railroad Complex. These were a major rail hub into the 1960s, but are now, combined, part of Station Square shopping complex. There are also movie theaters, and a hotel. The rail station is now a fancy restaurant.

From there, I headed to the "Pittsburgh Central Downtown Historic District," just across the river from Station Square. I parked at a meter on the street, as I did at several stops in the city. They have machines where you enter your license plate number and then pay for the amount of time you want. Downtown meters were $4.00 per hour; in other places they were $1.00 for an hour. Much of the area dates from the turn of the last century, imposing stone and brick structures, including the William Penn Hotel. I was surprised to find some mid-nineteenth century row houses still standing, and the more impressive Alcoa Aluminum building, coated in... aluminum, and now being converted into apartments, and U.S. Steel's steel tower, with its fine coating of rust, a deliberate design feature, now used as offices of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.  I walked around a few blocks of downtown, and lamented that Kauffman's Department Store, most recently a branch of Macy's, is closed.

My next stop was the former Pittsburgh Brass Manufacturing Company, in the Strip District, the part of town that sits at the bottom of a the cliff along the Allegheny River. This was an industrial area, now full of shops, restaurants, and offices and new hotels. The Brass Company, probably from about 1900, is now a law office.

It was already after noon when I was in the Strip District. I turned on the GPS on my cell phone (something I only recently learned how to do) to head over the hill to Oakland, the hipster neighborhood around the University of Pittsburgh, once the archrival of West Virginia in sports, before West Virginia switched leagues to the Big 12, a more lucrative league, with teams from Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa. The weather had warmed up, and kids were out playing frisbee. It was my goal to do my pictures and get to Whole Foods in Shadyside no later than 1 P.M. for lunch.That didn't happen. I got my pic of the Pittsburgh Athletic Association Building, then stopped for a sandwich at a Starbuck's across the street in one of the dorm buildings from Pitt, filled with young people ignoring each other in favor of their laptops.

I found my way to Bakery Square, a development of offices in an old bakery building and stores in the surrounding area, including a gym, a chain bakery and lunch place, a café, and a few other places to shop. Nothing that interesting, but there are rumors that the developer wants to build in Morgantown, so I wanted to check it out.

My plan was to leave at three, and get home in the middle of the WVU game, when the streets are deserted, and in time for a nap before dinner. I knew how to get to Squirrel Hill from Bakery Square. Classic Lines is an independent book store on Forbes Avenue. I would rather pay full price there than go to a chain bookstore and get a discount. Morgantown does not (yet) have an independent bookstore downtown. I don't buy enough books to worry about a discount, anyway. My sister had sent me sixty-eight dollars for my birthday and told me to spend it on something I wanted. The books cost me eighty, but that was close enough. I stopped in at the coffeehouse next door to the book store (also filled with geeky young people bent over laptops) and bought a fancy cookie as my meter was running out. It was an easy hour-and-a half drive home, eighty miles from Squirrel Hill. I did most of what I planned to do in the time I had allotted for myself.

WVU won the football game, and Joe and I decided to stay in for the evening.


Here are my pics:

Interior, Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Rail Station, now a restaurant

Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Rail Station, 1898

Part of the railroad complex, containing a shopping mall

Lobby of the William Penn Hotel, downtown Pittsburgh

Views from Mellon Square, downtown Pittsburgh:

19th century houses, Strawberry Way, Downtown Pittsburgh

                                      

Pittsburgh Brass Manufacturing Company Building, Strip District

Pittsburgh Athletic Association, 1911

                                        

Forbes Avenue between Murray and Shady, Squirrel Hill, my favorite Pittsburgh neighborhood

My new books

Cecil County, Maryland

It is 270 miles from Morgantown to Elkton, the county seat of Cecil County. You might think, from driving 240 miles through Maryland, that it was a big state. Much of the way, however, you can see West Virginia from the road, or walk to Pennsylvania from the exits. At Hancock, Maryland is only three miles wide.

I visited Cecil County this week, my sixty-fifth county to visit within three hundred miles of Morgantown since I moved here in July, 2012. These trips were my retirement project while playing spouse to the town's new rabbi, my husband, Joe Hample. Since July, I am out of retirement in my supposedly part-time job as representative for the Seventh Ward on Morgantown's City Council. Only three meetings a month, and committees, and demonstrations and events I'm asked to attend. I like it, but it makes it harder for me to get away. Our meetings are on three Tuesdays, and since October had five Tuesdays this year, I was off two of them.

I try to visit my parents' grave in Owings Mills before the High Holy Days. This year we were in Canada, and I didn't get there. It was only a few miles off the Beltway to go see them, so I did.

I grew up in northern Maryland, about sixty miles west of Elkton, and when I was a child, my family drove through Cecil County on our frequent trips to New York, where my grandparents and most of my parents' families  lived. What I knew as an adult was this: that Elkton, having the first courthouse in Maryland coming from the northeast, was a haven for quickie marriages, there being no blood test or waiting period required to marry before 1938. My grandmother's sister, Aunt Mary, told me that she and her Italian-American boyfriend were married in  Elkton, in what she called "Marry-land." The JFK Expressway, Interstate 95 from Baltimore to Wilmington, Delaware, was ordered built by President Kennedy because there was a scandal. Ambassadors from newly-independent nations in Africa driving US 40 from Washington to New York were not served in restaurants in Aberdeen and Havre de Grace in Harford County, nor in Elkton, in Cecil County. A state-owned restaurant was built in the median of the highway and everyone was served. President Kennedy attended the ribbon-cutting a week before he was murdered, and the highway was named for him. Cecil County also was home to a resurgent Ku Klux Klan chapter in the 1960s. In the last presidential election, the current president was favored with sixty-three per cent of the vote.

Cecil County borders Delaware and Pennsylvania both, and Elkton is only about twenty-one miles from Wilmington, fifty-one miles from Philadelphia, and fifty-eight miles from Baltimore. It looks like Maryland as I remember it, a handful of colonial buildings, little suburban houses, and big trees, reminding me of the hay fever and asthma attacks I suffered through as a child. There is corn, lots of it, although this year the stalks were brown and wrinkled from a long, blazingly hot and dry summer. My sister, when I told her where I was going, thought she had visited a lighthouse on a trip from her senior center. Cecil County lies at the point where the Susquehanna River, traveling through New York State and Pennsylvania, and flooded with seawater, becomes Chesapeake Bay.

I booked a motel for two nights off I-95 near  North East, along the bay in the western part of Cecil County. My Usual Chain gave me two free nights based on accumulated points. The clerk seemed unhappy.

I napped a bit, then headed out to find two historic places in North East, one the lighthouse at Turkey Point in South Elk Neck State Park. It was farther than I thought it would be, and I got there just at sunset, 6:13, 16 minutes earlier than in Morgantown, when the park was to close. It was nearly a mile to walk on a trail, but I got there in time to snap a shot in the fading light. Walking back, people were coming out to the point in Quaker garb, in family groups.  I drove back up to town with the "low gas" light on and made it to a gas station where our ten-gallon tank car took ten and a half gallons. I stopped at a chain of pizza places, ate a chicken parmesan sub, and headed back to the hotel. I never found the other place, a covered bridge.

Turkey Point Light, 1833, South Elk Neck State Park

I still had fifty places on the National Register of Historic Places to visit, and plotted different ways to see all of them on Monday, my one full day in Cecil County. I finally gave up and picked every fifth one, giving me ten places to visit throughout the county. The other things I do: visit a mall, a college, a synagogue and a big park, would have to wait. I had already done the park, there is only a Messianic synagogue, which I saw, on US 40 in Elkton in a beige box of a building, and there is no mall. I passed Cecil College, the local two-year school, near where I stayed in Northeast, but didn't stop .

I was up too late and on my alternate day diuretic Monday, which made my day difficult, because I needed more bathrooms than available. Twice, I had to duck out somewhere to pee. I'm one step away from adult diapers.

I did manage  to find my ten places and photograph them. One place is a 17th century waterfront estate down a long country road, and posted with "No Trespassing" signs. This happens often in Tidewater Virginia and Maryland. I didn't get that picture. Also, some of the places on The National Register are archaeological sites that no one wants you to find. I skipped those.

It should no longer be surprising that the it reached into the 70s F. during the day in late October. 2017 will likely be the warmest year of the last 150 or so since records have been kept. West Virginia politicians, and the US government think climate change is a "hoax."

Here are the pics:

West Nottingham Meeting House, 1811, near Colora

Elisha Kirk House, 1813, near Calvert

Rock United Presbyterian Church, originally 1761, remodeled 1872 and 1900, near Elkton

Cecil County Courthouse, Elkton, 1939

Mitchell House, Main Street, Elkton, between 1769 and 1781

painted parking meter and Halloween decoration, Elkton

Painted elk. There are several of these throughout Elkton

Holly Hall, Elkton, 1810-1820, off a main street, surrounded by fast food places and shopping centers, abandoned

Elk Landing, about 1780, near Elkton, in a park

St. Francis Xavier Church, dedicated 1797, near Warwick

site of the wharf in Charlestown Historic District

Main St., Port Deposit

Paw Paw Building, 1821, Port Deposit, built as a chuech

Walkway along the Susquehanna River, Port Deposit, looking south to the I-95 and US 40 bridges

Cecil seems to be a depressed place. Bainbridge Naval Station was once a major employer near Port Deposit. It now lies abandoned behind locked gates. I didn't see much going on in downtown Elkton. There are wealthy people who own shorefront homes and it is possible to commute to Wilmington, Delaware. The last place I visited, Port Deposit, is an old town on the Susquehanna at the base of a cliff. I saw some tourist-oriented places there, but all of them were closed on Monday afternoon, and many of the historic structures are decrepit and/or abandoned. Across the railroad tracks that front the river, there are new condo buildings. A sidewalk along the water is open to the public.

Having eaten too much at breakfast Monday at the motel, I skipped lunch, napped late in the afternoon, and went looking for a place to eat. I ended up at a chain buffet restaurant, located in a truck stop off I-95 north of Elkton at the Delaware line. The clientele may have been mostly travelers. There are now two state-owned restaurants on I-95, serving only several brands of fast food. In addition to the heavy-set people one might expect at a buffet, I saw many African-Americans and Spanish-speakers. I thought that odd, in a largely Caucasian-populated county. Still, anyplace in the South, including Maryland, that is a small restaurant, bragging about "family-owned" or "since (any date before 1965)" , were I African-American, I would be wary of how I might be treated. For me also, I like an anonymous sort of place where you can pick-and-choose what you want to eat.

I drove back leisurely on Tuesday, detouring off the Baltimore Beltway to drive through Pikesville, from Greenspring Avenue to Old Court Road., through Sudbrook Park and down Campfield Road past my elementary school to see the house where I grew up. I still often dream that I live in that house, sometimes waiting, alone, for my parents to come home.

Wendell-Washington House, 1953 (remodeled), Lochearn Census Defined Place, Baltimore County, MD

The Reunion

You might think about the reunion fifty years after your high school graduation at the time you graduate, but you don't really think that it will ever happen. At seventeen, I couldn't imagine sixty-seven. That would make me almost the same age as my grandmother! Unthinkable. And yet, somehow, the day arrives.

Two years ago, the class of '65 invited all the sixties classes from our school, Woodlawn, in Baltimore County, just west of Baltimore City, to join them in their reunion. I was planning to go to that. Our school only opened in 1961, with no seniors that year, so 1963 was the first graduating class, and I knew people from the classes from '63 to '69. I sent in my money, but a visit to the cardiologist a week before confirmed that I needed work done, and I was hospitalized Tuesday before the weekend, and three new stents were placed in my arteries. I had to admit I could not drive 200 miles over the weekend to a reunion. This year, my fall cardiologist visit is after the reunion, this week, and I'm hoping I will be okay.

I asked a few people I know if they were planning to attend, but they were not. One of my very best friends from those years died in 2012. Another friend, who left our school after eleventh grade, wouldn't spend a hundred dollars to attend.

I was nervous about going. Joe and I drove to my sister's house, twenty miles from the venue, where we stayed Friday and Saturday night. He had agreed to do a wedding for the daughter of a high school era friend (different school, different year) in downtown Washington.

I had directions to the venue, a hotel in Columbia, Maryland, where many of my classmates live now, in the next county west of Baltimore County. Columbia, a private development, didn't exist until our senior year. I used to go by there on Saturday nights with a daredevil friend at 100 miles per hour on empty two-lane U.S. 29, which is now a six-lane expressway jammed with traffic, on the way to visit friends in Silver Spring. I dressed for the reunion in my dress-up hipster clothes and had lost a few pounds, but still, I didn't look anything like my high school picture. I didn't know if people would speak to me at all.

I need not have worried. People were friendly. I pretended to remember people I didn't. I was greeted at the door by two women who grew up a few blocks from me and were in my class in first grade. A woman from the 'hood reminded me that she had graduated from Johns Hopkins with me, after transferring in junior year, the first year Hopkins had women undergraduates.

I sat with the former student council president, who had been kicked out of Yale freshman year after a raucous demonstration, had lived in West Virginia, become a leftist activist, then a Christian and now a religious Jew again. He is still dedicated to social justice issues. He thought we were on a similar path, and I imagine we are.

Everyone was upbeat, and did not discuss politics. We were there to catch up, to get a look at our old friends and compare and contrast. People tended to gloss over the sadness in their lives, but if you dug into them, you could find illness, the loss of a spouse or child, divorce, the fear of being alone in old age, the feeling that we may have lost our looks or passed up chances that would have improved our lives. My heart went out to everyone, happy or pretending.

There was a little book, where we had sent in about our current marriages, children and grandchildren. Most of us were retired and spending our time traveling. There were several marriages in our class, or with students in other years. Some were married very young (two in or just after eleventh grade) two marriages were between Jews and Christians, not at all common then, but still married. People asked me how I came to live in West Virginia after twenty-five years in Los Angeles, and I told them I was married to a rabbi, a man, and he was hired by a congregation in Morgantown. Most people knew that Morgantown is the home of West Virginia University. A few smiles froze and eyes glazed over on hearing this, but not many. And I have become friends with some classmates on Facebook, so they knew about it. The only other openly gay man in the class, I found out from reading our little book and doing some research, died two years ago. I knew he had AIDS, but he may still have died from something else.

People were surprised that I not only remembered them, but what street they lived on, and one (still) pretty girl told me I was the cutest boy in our class. I felt like I was on a playground from my childhood, and many of my friends were there, all trying to look like their grandparents. I still think of us all as the teenagers we were then, despite everything we have been through.

I enjoyed myself, and I was friendly to everyone, even people I could have held a long-time grudge against, and I felt like that favor was returned. We are all turning sixty-eight this year, and chances are we won't make it to a sixtieth reunion.

Despite our differences, we all shared a common experience many years ago. There was an understanding of how things were then, and we all knew each other when we were somewhat less guarded. We had to be honest with each other; we all came from the same place.

I'm glad I went to this reunion. I feel more grounded having seen how things turned out for everyone, including being able to see how things turned out for myself. I'm grateful to still be alive, and for my life to have turned out surprising, and surprisingly good.

With friends from the neighborhood: top, L. to R: David, Jimmy, Ann and me, bottom, L to r. Nancy and Harriett

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I won Russ Margo's CD as a raffle prize. Here he is with me after autographing it. It's good!

With Lenny, my friend since 7th grade, and his wife, Shelley

With Connie (still married to classmate Darryl) in her mascot uniform for the Woodlawn Warriors

Panic and Grief

Things have been tough lately for a lot of people. The parents of a friend in California were evacuated from Santa Rosa because of the fires there, and may have lost their house. Many people in Puerto Rico are still without water, food and power weeks after Hurricane María blew over the island. In Miami, where I used to live, the main streets downtown were under water because of Hurricane Irma. And Hurricane Harvey in Houston flooded the city and poisoned the waters nearby when chemical plants were destroyed. A man in Las Vegas shot into a crowd at a country music festival. The whole nation is in crisis.

Then there is the current national administration. The President is clueless and vindictive. He models himself on Vladimir Putin. His henchmen, Mike Pence, Scott Pruitt and Jeff Sessions, are bent on destroying individual freedom, environmental progress, and the voting rights of many Americans. The President threatens a nuclear war with North Korea. That would likely be the end of all of us.

I was elected to Morgantown's City Council earlier this year. I was helped by people who are appalled at the clumsy stupidity and arrogance of our national government. In addition to approving bond sales for redevelopment, tweaking the city's codes and fixing the streets, we have signed Morgantown to the Paris Climate Accords, and will pass an LGBT rights ordinance next week. We are doing what we can to fight fascism in the United States. It looked like we would be attacked by bused-in anti-gay protestors, but so far that hasn't happened. Two weeks ago, while we were worried about this, the President was going to visit Morgantown, to be interviewed by Sean Hannity. Friends of mine were planning protests, and a motorcycle gang said they would come and protect the President. Meanwhile, the whole city would be shut down. I had visions of what happened in Charlottesville happening here in my town.

The President cancelled. He traveled instead to Las Vegas to meet with people injured in the mass shooting there. His party will block any attempt to stop the proliferation of weapons in this country. We are all just sitting ducks.

On a personal level, my life is good. I have a strong marriage; we own a modest house and two aged cars. We travel, and I will be at my fifty-year high school reunion this weekend. Suncrest, the neighborhood where we live, is suburban and leafy, but in the city of Morgantown, where I am the first openly gay man, the first in a same-gender marriage, to be elected to Council.

It's strange that what has most disturbed me this week is not any of the above. Last week, tree surgeons parked down the street from us, and started hacking off limbs  from a beautiful oak tree, still mostly green, and towering over a modern ranch house. At first, I thought maybe they would just cut a few branches. After a day, I saw five or six blue jays in the street by this house. Their nests must have been destroyed. I noted also, that some tree limbs were over the roof of the house, and that it was planted too close to the house. Actually, the house was likely built too close to the tree, probably fifty years ago. They cut the whole tree down. When I saw the workers there, I wanted to scream "Murderers!" at them, like I want to do with people who have NRA stickers on their car.

Maybe it's just that this tree was more visible to me than fifty-eight people shot to death in Las Vegas, or people without food and water in Puerto Rico, or the current EPA allowing the use of a pesticide known to have a negative effect on children's brains.  There's so much outrage over everything this administration has done in just ten months, that I can't process it. Instead I use the fallen oak tree as a means to process my grief and rage over every senseless thing that is happening in my country. That's what I think, anyway.