It's 5785!

 We all have hopes for a new year on the Jewish calendar. This last one has been rough for me personally and for the Jewish community generally. Last year Simchat Torah, the end of the fall holidays, will be October 24 in Israel. Last year, it was October 7, and many of those who were not in synagogue were at the Nova Music Festival near the border with Gaza. Soldiers from Hamas broke through the border, murdered 1200 people at the festival and in nearby town, raped and mutilated many people and took over 200 hostages back to Gaza. This has been compared to Pearl Harbor or 9/11/2001 in the United States. Israel's government, under Prime Minister Netanyahu, retaliated with a pledge to destroy Hamas.

What I've heard from Israel is that people are angry that the government, filled with right-wingers and religious conservatives, had notice that this attack might happen but were unable to stop it. There have been protests against the government about this issue, and the failure to get most of the hostages back.

Meanwhile, college students and others in the United States, some of whom are Jewish, blame Israel for the attacks, for not acknowledging the national demands of the Arabs. I've heard lies from people on the left about how Israel was founded. It's called an "apartheid state," "settler colonialism" or that Jews have no right to live in "Palestine" and should go back where they came from. I grew up in a real apartheid state called "Maryland" and Israel is not like that at all. As for "settler colonialism," to say that as an American of European heritage is perhaps the ultimate chutzpah. And of course, people in Israel aren't just the descendants of Holocaust survivors, as many think. Even they, three generations later, are not going back to Germany or Poland. Many Jews were kicked out of Iraq, Iran, Morocco and Egypt, as well as other Arab countries, or came from Yemen or Ethiopia, where they were not safe. It bothers me that Jewish students at many colleges and in some large liberal cities do not feel safe. I've often thought we would be better off in Pittsburgh or New York than in Morgantown. There have been demonstrations here about the war in Gaza, but it has been respectful and law abiding. I understand the grief over the loss of life in Gaza and now in Lebanon, and I think Israel, with a different government, could have found a more humane way to meet its goals. The rest of the world could also have done a lot more to stop this bloodshed, or to ameliorate the suffering of Arabs. who are living in refugee camps for 76 years, with the delusion that they can return to Palestine.

On the other hand, I have friends who think Donald Trump could have solved this and blame President Biden and now Kamala Harris, for all the bloodshed. I'll just say they are delusional and leave it at that.

This wasn't supposed to be an essay about Israel's war or government policies. I had my own tsuris to deal with. In the summer of 2023, I was diagnosed with skin cancer and thyroid cancer. They cut out the cancer from my arm, and that's fixed, although now they want to take a non-cancerous (yet) mole off my leg. The thyroid cancer was a fairly big operation in November, with follow-up treatment that included a strict diet and a radioactive iodine pill. That also seems to be done now. I've been MRI, CT-scanned and echocardiogrammed the last few weeks. It all looks good, except they said my heart is "no worse than a year and a half ago." They also decided I have osteoporosis,  and need prostate medication. 

My knee was operated on September 10, for a "meniscus debridement," not as bad as expected, and I'm in physical therapy to deal with that. The eye doctor sent me to the clinic, where they will take out the wrinkled film on top of my left eye. It's all depressing, but when I go to any medical office or pharmacy or to physical therapy, I see people younger than I am, and in much worse shape.I also remind myself of the many gay friends I lost to AIDS when they were in their 30s and 40s, and the young women who died of cancer. I'll be 75 this month, and when I think about, I guess I should be grateful I lived this long.

The worst thing this year was the death of my sister, Robin Wendell Olson, on March 5. I think I've processed it and moved on, but then I wake up some nights and miss her terribly, or expect a phone call from her that doesn't come. At times, something happens that I want to share with her, that no one else would understand, or I need advice. I'm trying to arrange a date when Joe and I and my nephew in Colorado can do an unveiling, where family and friends go back to a cemetery to "unveil" the monument or plaque on the grave.

I did manage to travel in 5784, some on my own, in my project to visit one county per month within about 300 miles of Morgantown. Last October, I visited Hancock County, West Virginia, Hancock County, Ohio, and Harrison County, Ohio. My long-time friend Roann, who I met in Los Angeles in 1984, came down from Ann Arbor to meet me in Findlay, Ohio, in Hancock County. 

We flew to Memphis at Thanksgiving to be with Joe's family. It was great to see everyone, especially the now-grown up children of his first cousins, who, like their parents, are brilliant and beautiful, and seem to have made good matches for themselves. Joe's sister and brother were glad to see us, too. 

In early December, I visited Clarksburg and vicinity, in Harrison County, not far from here, so I spent most of a day and came home. There's a mall in Bridgeport, the other city in the county, that was mobbed with people carrying packages. The economy must be better than people think.

At Christmas, we visited my sister in Greenbelt, Maryland. She found us a Jewish deli in Howard County, just north of where she lives, and took us to Nordstrom Rack and bought us both clothes. We had Chinese food in Beltsville, and streamed both "Maestro' and "Oppenheimer." 

In January, I visited Richmond, Virginia, and surrounding Henrico County. I was supposed to take an extra day to visit Hanover County, just to the north, but came home to avoid a pending storm. I got back to Hanover County in February. 

We were in Greenbelt again when my sister died in March, and stayed for the funeral and three days of mourning. We had another service at our home once we got back, and we were grateful that 30 people came to grieve with us.

In April, I fell off my bicycle onto the grass on the side of the road. I was almost home, but it was a hot, humid, day and I had drunk all the water I brought with me. I hadn't ridden my bike in a month, and there was a lot of traffic as I was trying to slow down and look back to see if I could make a left turn. I fell, and couldn't get up. Two women came out of a restaurant to help me, and insisted on calling 911. I was in emergency for three or four hours, and got eleven stitches in my leg. They bandaged my bleeding arm with sterile tape strips. I haven't been on my bicycle since. Not that I can't ride, I just can't fall and bleed like I did. After my sister's death, this was the second saddest thing that happened. I've been a bicyclist since I was five, and now I can't do it. 

Joe and I were invited to a Memorial Day weekend bat mitzvah in New York for the daughter of one of his classmates, who is now the rabbi at the synagogue off Central Park West. We were adventurous and took AMTRAK, which meant driving 60 miles to Greensburg, Pennsylvania to get the train. It seems to take forever, but we could move around, get food in the dining car and go the bathroom whenever we wanted. We also didn't have to pay hundreds of dollars for parking. There were three days of events at the temple, and people we knew were glad to see us. We also made some new friends. While we were there, we saw two of my cousins, and Joe's stepmother and half-brother, the famous Zack Hample. Our last night there, we dined with a friend Joe knew from high school. I loved being in New York. It was intimidating at first with the crowds and the traffic, but after a day, I calmed down and enjoyed being there. 

Less than two weeks later, we drove to a wedding, the son of one of Joe's long-time friends, to his girlfriend of many years. The ceremony was Jewish, although the bride is not. The older guests, many of whom go back decades with Joe, were fun, they had a fabulous soul band and great food. Before the wedding, we spent some time exploring and got a tour of a fire museum and and ate outdoors at a French-Thai  restaurant in Somerville. 

Later in June, I visited Harford County, Maryland, the last of the twelve I scheduled for the period of July 20213-June 2024. I saw Bel Air, Aberdeen and Havre de Grace, and some rural parts of the county. 

July was our big trip to California. We had six days in Los Angeles and six in San Francisco. Almost all of the time was seeing friends, not so much touring. People cooked for us or took us to restaurants. I lived more than two decades in Los Angeles; Joe lived in San Francisco about the same length of time. We had a car in Los Angeles, but not in San Francisco. Our first day in Los Angeles, we attended the funeral of someone I knew form BCC, the temple I joined in 1987, and where I met and married Joe. We visited the graves of some of my pals in that cemetery. We went to services there Friday night, also. We moved away in 2012, so of course, there have been lots of changes. Our friend were happy to see us, and I still think Los Angeles is beautiful, despite the ubiquitous homeless encampments and trash on many of the streets.

In San Francisco, we were treated well by Joe's long-time friends. We had some time on our own, and explored a bit. When we visited The Castro, the central gay neighborhood, I was thrilled to see so may older gay men, many of them in couples, out on the street. We were not outsiders there. One day, we saw my people. We went out to Contra Costa County on BART to see my cousin Eric, who is close to my age, his wife Karen, two of their three children, and all four grandchildren. They call Eric "Poppy," which is what he and I called our mutual grandfather. Their daughter and her husband had just gotten back from a month-long hiking trip with their 13 and 10 year old daughters on the north coast of Australia. Eric and Karen's son and his wife had taken their 7 and 4 -years old to Italy for a month. Eric and I reminisced about how hard it was to get our parents to take us anywhere. It was lovely to see all of them. Eric pointed out that he is 75, and his father, my mother's brother, died at 78. We hadn't seen them in three years, and I think it occurred to us both that we might not live to visit again.

From Eric's, we took the BART back all the way across San Francisco to see my friend Art and his wife. Our parents were friends before we were born, so we've known each other forever. His older brother was in town for his grandson's 9th birthday, so we met all of them at a cold and windy park. We saw the two brothers, the brother's daughter and her son, and the daughter's mother. We went back to Art's, bonded with the cats and went out dinner. They booked us a WAYMO, a driverless taxi, to take us back to the hotel. It was a sci-fi experience, but went off without a hitch.

One more word about San Francisco. We had dinner at the home of a college friend of Joe and his husband, out at the west end of San Francisco. We came back to the hotel on the Geary bus, the main east-west bus. A lot of people got on who looked be Cental American. They were  probably hotel and restaurant workers getting off work, and seemed friendly and upbeat, laughing and joking with each other. They mostly got off a few blocks before our hotel, in The Tenderloin, a place known for homeless people and drug users, and probably one of the few places these people could afford to live. It burns me that one of the candidates for President makes demonizing immigrants the centerpiece of his campaign. 

I took two more trips in August on my own, determined, despite my leg problems, to get back to what I like. I visited Martinsville, an independent city surrounded by Henry County, Virginia and Monterey, in Highland County, Virginia's least populated county, in Appalachia, adjacent to West Virginia. My later trip was to Highland County, Ohio, and to Fayette County, which I missed a few years ago because of the pandemic. I enjoy being out on my own, exploring an unfamiliar town.

I had surgery on my bad knee on September 10, and my physical therapy is helping. Tomorrow, October 9, they will fix my eye, and with new glasses, I should be all set. 

It's been hard, but there was fun, too. I'll be seventy-five later this month, and I;m determined to enjoy whatever time I have left, and as my sister Robin said, quoting (loosely) Michelle Obama, "Whatever comes up, you get through it and keep going." We might move in two years when Joe retires. I might not be able to a big trip like we did to California this year. I'm hoping we can get to Memphis for Thanksgiving.

On the world scale, I'm hoping that Israel can live in peace, and that all people in that part of the world can live freely and without the tyranny many have had to deal with.

Shana Tova!

A Visit Home, Part One

I often have dreams about trying to go home.  I lived in Los Angeles for more than twenty-five years, in eight different apartments. I sometimes dream about standing on Wilshire Boulevard, trying to figure out where my current apartment is and how to get there. One time, I dreamed that I moved back to Baltimore and I was working in the kind of men's clothing factory my father used to own. I was unhappy with the work and the cold weather, and decided to go back to Los Angeles, to the sun and palm trees.

Joe moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1980 with friends from college. He lived in Berkeley for a time before settling in San Francisco about the time I moved to Los Angeles from Miami in 1984. He wanted to go back to visit his long-time friends. We were last there three years ago for a week each in Southern and Northern California. I came back from that trip with a sinus infection that lasted a month.

I've had a rough year. I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer last summer, and my thyroid gland was removed in November. My sister died in March, in Maryland, after an illness of only a few days. Then in April, I fell of my bicycle and need eleven stitches in my leg, and glue and surgical tape for a wound on my arm. I've been riding a bike since I was five, and the idea that it might be too dangerous, along with everything else, depressed me. I've had trouble with my left knee for some time, and the sports doctor from WVU Medicine figured out that it was a torn meniscus. I met with the surgeon, but I needed permission from both my cardiologist and general practitioner before they could proceed with the operation. I didn't get those before the trip. I'll have the surgery August 9.

We finally agreed to two days of travel, and six days apiece in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Joe had a schedule. We would see one group for lunch and one for dinner every day. I could schedule Los Angeles, and he would schedule San Francisco. He wanted all this written out before we left. Joe wanted to throw diet-consciousness to the wind. I didn't want to gain a lot of weight, or have my bad leg swell, which has happened before. 

Nothing went wrong with the travel times, only that the facial recognition equipment at the airports didn't recognize me, or it didn't match my driver's license. Everything was hard from the drive to Pittsburgh airport, to picking up the rental car in Los Angeles, to being at San Francisco airport for the trip home at an early hour, to walking through the airports. I did all the driving in Los Angeles, about 300 miles in six days, trying to figure out which lane merged onto the freeway I wanted.

We saw many of my friends, long-time buddies some going back to the 1980s. We don't have that in Morgantown. It's not anyone's fault; we just didn't get here until 2012. We walked around the Silver Lake neighborhood, where we stayed, with my friend Gregg, who took us to a Persian restaurant near our motel, ate Italian food and visited a bookstore in Los Feliz with Stephen and Thomas, had dinner at a fancy fish place in Santa Monica with Jay and his friend Dr. David. We were supposed to have lunch the first day with Rabbi Lisa Edwards and her wife Tracy, but Lisa texted Joe that she had to officiate the funeral for Martin Krieger that morning.at the old Jewish cemetery in East Los Angeles. I knew Martin. He was 80, and used to come to the monthly Saturday morning service at Beth Chayim Chadashim, where Lisa was the rabbi and Joe and I first met and were married. Martin came with a little boy he had adopted. So we went to the funeral, and saw David, the little boy, who is now thirty-eight years old, and well over six feet tall. Steve and Steve were there, the couple that used to run the minyan (and might still). A few other BCC people were there. Joe and I asked Lisa to track down the graves of other BCC people I knew. Ginger Jacobs, an ally of the LGBT community, was buried near Martin, and we wandered around in sunny, 90 degree weather to find the graves of Fred Shuldiner and Sol Halfon, long-time friends who died in the 1990s, Fred of HIV-related disease at 49, and Sol of heart failure in his mid-60s. We found Sue Terry's niche in the wall inside a building. She died not long after we left. She was always joining things at temple: the Israeli dance group, the choir and whatever else was around. She wasn't good at any of it, but she was always upbeat and enthusiastic. She met my sister once and told me Robin was "hot." We left the cemetery, and I suggested we go to El Pollo Loco, a chain Mexican chicken place, and a favorite of mine back in the day. We found a branch near the cemetery. I had a white meat quarter chicken, rice, beans and  a corn tortilla with a Diet Coke. On the way back to the motel, I saw Garfield High School, my favorite place to substitute my last few years in LA School District. 

Friday night, BCC was having a dinner out at a restaurant before services. Our friends Jonathan and George, just back from a train trip across Canada, met us at the temple, and we walked a few blocks to the restaurant. I didn't know many of the people; there has been a lot of change since we left in 2010.

There is a new clergy at BCC, Rabbi Jillian Cameron and soloist Rebecca Mirsky. I thought they both did a fine job with the service. The people who used to never  miss a Friday night were mostly not there. There were about twenty people on Zoom. My friend Sylvia was in town from St. Louis. We became friends on the temple Israel trip in 2007 (I think). Don, who I met early in my time at temple, around 1987, came in from Burlingame near San Francisco. Lisa and Tracy were there and my long-time pal, Gordon. I looked at the memorial board, copper plaques put up in memory of the deceased. I was shocked at how many of the names were familiar to me: men who died of complications of AIDS, women who died of cancer, which seemed to be an epidemic at the same time men were dying of AIDS, and even the names of parents of my friends, who used to come to temple sometimes. There was a plaque I had put up for my mother, who visited once, and created quite a stir among the older men. You would have thought Elizabeth Taylor herself had walked in.

We had lunch with Rabbi Deborah Goldmann and her husband Eyal in Hawthorne, a formerly working class suburb where The Beach Boys grew up in the 1940s and 50s. Eyal is a college professor, and Deborah is moving away from the rabbinate to a teaching career. Joe was always close to them, and I like them a lot. Their baby daughter, now in middle school, was there with a friend, all dyed hair and piercings. We had fun with them. 

We headed across town to Altadena to my friends Jim and Michelle. Jim and I were like Matt Groening's Akbar and Jeff, brothers or lovers, whichever offends you more. We were neither. He unexpectedly fell in love with Michelle Huneven, a novelist and food critic, and they have a compound out above Pasadena, complete with chickens. We talked like it was old times and Michelle made us a scrumptious dinner. I own copies of all of her novels. 

We had lunch one day at a vegetarian restaurant with Les and Richard, a long-time couple. Les and I attended the Jewish genealogy conference in Washington together in 2003. 

We were free one afternoon, and did some luxury shopping at the Beverly Center, near Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, but in Los Angeles. We visited Bloomingdale's, Banana Republic, and Michael Kors, and bought expensive stuff at "end of season" sales. The clerks actually talked to us. I asked one woman if she was Russian or Armenian, because I heard an accent. She said "I'm from Persia. Do you know people from Persia?" I do, actually. I didn't ask if she was Jewish, but I know Jewish people from there don't say "Iran."  There was a beautiful young woman at one of the stores who asked where I was from. When I said "Baltimore" she told me she was from there, too. I asked about her high school. It was one that was unfamiliar to me, because it opened long after I had left town. 

I guess the peak for me, and the one thing that made me think I could live there again, was the Monday night hike in Griffith Park with Great Outdoors, a gay men's hiking group. Until I had a heart attack in 2003, I did their difficult hike on Thursdays, but once I was able to hike again at all, a year or so later, I stuck to the easier one on Monday. Most of the men on the hike were the same ones from twenty years ago, many of whom were at our wedding in 2008. The route is different now. We used to start at the planetarium and hike to the top, but since Los Angeles made it expensive to park there, they start on a neighborhood street at the bottom of the park and hike halfway up. I wasn't sure I was in shape to do it, but I managed, even with my bum knee. The view of downtown from the park was spectacular, and the weather, of course, was perfect. I thought "This is what I love about Los Angeles." There were 25 men on the hike; 20 of us went to dinner at Fred 62, a restaurant on Vermont Ave, They had set up a long table on their patio and took each person's order on a tablet and were able to give us separate checks.

I saw the trash in the streets, the homeless living in tents along the boulevards and under the freeways. It's disgraceful, given how much money there is in Los Angeles. Still, there is the weather and the strange plants that grow there, and the people I know and the memories. I was ready to leave in 2010, when Joe and I left together, but it was great being back there. It felt home-like.

The morning after the hike, we checked out of our motel, drove to the place to drop off the car, after filling the tank, which was nearly empty, and flew to San Francisco. That will be Part Two this epic narrative.

I have a few L.A. pictures on my phone, but I haven't figured out how to get them up here. If I do figure it out, I'll post them here. You can find most of them if you scroll back through my Facebook feed.

Robin Joan Wendell Olson (1952 - 2024)

 It's been a month since my sister died, so I thought I should write a post about her. We were the only children of Martin Wendell (né Wenglinsky) and Deborah Polk Wendell, raised in suburban Baltimore by New York parents. I was the handsome, calm, smart one. Robin was the fat, bratty, unintellectual one. In fact, we both reacted to the same stimuli in different ways. Our parents, in my opinion, lost interest in us early on, perhaps because of tensions in their marriage. Our father wanted more children; our mother wanted to go to work and make money. Child rearing was left to my mother, who taught school, then went out at night to take classes to finish her B.A. degree, which she had abandoned at 19 after three years at Brooklyn College, to marry our father and move to Baltimore. The result was that neither parent had time for us. My reaction was to withdraw into my own world, hang out with friends and explore Baltimore on my bicycle. Robin's reaction was to do whatever it took to get our parents' attention, even if it meant misbehaving. One day, when she was about seven, Robin, my father and I were standing in the kitchen, near the window that faced the street, when Robin took a banana and started to walk outside. My father called after her "Don't drop the peel in the street." She walked out to the street, looked back to make sure we were watching, then threw the peel in the gutter.

Robin's school problem was that she had terrible vision. It took her first grade teacher to notice that she put her face right on a book to be able to read it. Once, when we were grown, she went looking for our report cards at our parents' home. She said she was as good a student as I was. It turned that our grades were similar, but we were surprised, good kids that we both thought we were, that we both had "N" for needs improvement in conduct over several years. There's a stereotype about "TKs," teacher's kids, that they are brats, and I guess we both were.

Our neighborhood was zoned for Woodlawn High School, farther away than the closest Baltimore County high school, Milford Mill, and with a much smaller population of Jewish students. Pikesville High was an even newer school, and as an employee of Baltimore County Schools, our mother offered to arrange to switch us to one of the other schools. I told her that I couldn't go to Pikesville, because they wouldn't let me buy the expensive clothes needed for that nouveau riche crowd, overwhelming Jewish, and Milford Mill was in a stodgy old brick building from 1949. Woodlawn was more modern looking, all blue tile and glass. Our Mom switched Robin to Milford Mill, which was more academic, and more Jewish. I think she had also noticed that Robin was attracted to pretty blond boys, and wanted to put her in an environment away from that. She didn't notice that I also liked pretty blond boys. By this time, Robin looked beautiful and was popular. 

I joined a fraternity in college, ZBT, and Robin went out with some of the brothers, and fixed up her friends also. There were some she liked, but she complained that most of them were immature and whiny. One of her friends married a guy from the fraternity, but I don't think they stayed married.

I went to Johns Hopkins, and expressed to my parents my dissatisfaction with the school. So, although Robin was accepted to Washington University in St. Louis, they made her go to the University of Maryland in College Park. She lived in a co-ed dorm freshman year, where she met her first real boyfriend, a Jewish guy from Silver Spring. It was a good match, but it didn't work out. Robin was always very competent, but also demanding about how things should be, and I think that's why some of her relationships didn't work out. 

After freshman year, she lived with two other women in an apartment near campus. She didn't want to come back to Baltimore in the summer, and took waitress jobs around College Park. One summer, a fraternity rented out rooms for the summer, and she lived there. That's where she met Jim Olson, but I don't think they hit off right away.

I wanted to teach high school, but my mother and her father, a high school teacher, made it clear I was not to go into that field. Robin was interested in science and health issues, but our parents pushed her to teach, so she could "be home to make dinner for her husband." I don't think she ever made dinner for her husband. She got a degree in education and possibly biology, and although she applied to Montgomery and Prince Georges Counties, she was only offered a job in Prince Georges, where she made her career. My parents wanted her to move back to Baltimore, where my mother could get her hired in Baltimore County schools. Robin didn't want that.

Robin moved to Greenbelt after college, and she remained in that town, which she loved, for the rest of her life. She taught science and health in junior and senior high schools in Prince Georges County for several decades, and after retiring, substituted in elementary schools.

I'm going to skip the long story about how Robin and Jim Olson got back together. They did, and she brought him home to my parents. He showed up at their house with blond hair down to his waist, wearing a dashiki. My parents were scandalized, especially since he was living with his parents and planning a career as a jazz musician. When they were married, by the cantor in a Reform synagogue at the wedding venue, not at the temple, our father threatened to sue The Baltimore Jewish Times because they didn't want to publish the wedding announcement. Jim offered to convert to Judaism. He said "One superstition is as good as any other." Robin said "If you would do it to please my mother, don't bother." There was always some tension between Jim and my parents and between Robin and Jim's parents. This dissipated with the birth of their son, Evan, in 1991. 

At their marriage, Robin and Jim agreed not to have children. Robin changed her mind after several years. I was living in Miami, and started attending a Reconstructionist synagogue. Robin noticed that the synagogue in Greenbelt was Reconstuctionist also, and she went a few times. She met women who had smart, cute, adorable kids, and changed her mind about being childless. She told me it took three years for her to convince Jim, and another three to get pregnant. Our grandmother, Irma Polk, died in January, 1990, and Robin felt that Irma pulled strings from the next world to get Robin pregnant. 

Evan had eyes like my father's, was much smarter than all of us, even as a toddler, and was blond and, relative to my family, tall and athletic. He always had a lot of friends, and he's still close with friends from pre-school.

Jim Olson was a brilliant musician, could read anything from James Joyce to Thomas Pynchon and tell you exactly what it meant. Despite growing up in the Washington area, he couldn't find his way around the block in a car, let alone to jobs downtown in Washington. He was also a prodigious drinker and drug user. Robin eventually asked him to leave their house. I believe she still loved him. He moved in with a woman after some time, but when he died two years ago, after getting clean, he had not changed his will or filed for divorce.

Robin came to my wedding to Joe Hample, at the time a student rabbi, in Los Angeles in 2008, with her friend Cathy. She was a hit at the party and visited us in Los Angeles, and later, in Morgantown, West Virginia, about a four-hour drive from Greenbelt. Early on, Joe found her off-putting, loud and bossy, and they didn't get along. But after a while, they discovered they were both well-matched cutthroat Scrabble players, and would play together.

 Robin took charge of her temple sisterhood, fixing people up with projects that needed to be done, arranging food platters for families in mourning, sending cards to people when someone made a gift to the temple in their honor or in memory of a loved one. She also sent out notices for the Greenbelt Golden Age Club, and as COVID vaccines became available, she notified the Golden Age people where to go and when to get them. 

Robin had spinal problems from a car accident when she was in college, and she also gained a lot of weight after her marriage. It became difficult for her to sit in a car for long distances, although she could drive to the public pool in Greenbelt and swim laps. She couldn't walk the stairs in her house the last few years, and had a ramp built to the back porch, where she could pull herself up two steps to get in the house.

She was an expert at Scrabble and Mahjong, and during the pandemic years, she played Mahjong online with people from Tree of Life, our temple here in Morgantown. The temple ladies would fill me in on what she was doing, and she would also tell me what the congregants were up to. 

Joe and I were with her over Christmas. She took us out to a Jewish-style deli in Fulton, north of her in the next county, and then to Nordstrom Rack, where she offered to buy us clothes. I picked out two shirts and a sweater for myself. I think she picked out a shirt for Joe. She thought he didn't dress appropriately for a rabbi, and a few years ago, she picked out two suits for him, with shirts and ties to match. He wears them for weddings, funerals and b'nei mitzvah.

Robin texted me Friday, March 1, to say she was having stomach pain and dry heaves. She said "I hope I don't die from this." I assured her she wouldn't. She called me Sunday morning and I called her back at 7:30. She said "I thought you forgot me." She said she was better Saturday, but worse Sunday. Her doctor prescribed some medication, which made her condition worse. Her friend Susie came over with Pedialyte and crackers, but she couldn't eat. Susie texted me too late Sunday, when my phone was off, to tell me that Robin called 911 and went to the hospital in an ambulance. Evan flew in Monday and I came Tuesday, arriving at 3 P.M. By then she was on life support with no chance of recovery.

Evan, competent like his mother, made arrangements with the rabbi for the funeral and burial on Sunday, a long time away by Jewish standards. Joe came in Wednesday and Evan's wife Kellie came from their home in Colorado. Joe and I bought food at Greenbelt's Co-Op Grocery, where members have a number. When Robin's name came up at the cash register, we introduced ourselves to the cashier and told him that Robin had died. He had known her all his life, he told us. I got a haircut at the downtown barber shop, and the barber was sad about the news. She had three books out of the library, and I returned them. The young man at the desk told me he knew she had died. The last book she was reading, on her bed with a bookmark, was Janet Evanovich's latest Stephanie Plum mystery, Dirty Thirty. She almost finished it. For someone who had difficulty reading as a child, she read lots of books. I started reading more during the Pandemic, but most of the time, when I asked her about a book, she had already read it. She also had most of the streaming services, and saw all the important movies. We watched "Oppenheimer" and "Maestro" in her living room when we were there in December.

The day of the funeral, March 10, was cold with high winds. People turned out from the congregation, the Golden Age Club, and from Greenbelt generally. The funeral was more than twenty miles away from the cemetery, and in a Chicago-like wind, we buried Robin. The golden agers, mostly not Jewish, came out in the difficult weather and participated, putting their canes and walkers aside so they could place their shovelful of dirt in the grave, per Jewish custom. I was touched by that. 

We observed shiva, the Jewish mourning custom, for only three evenings in Greenbelt, then one in Morgantown after we came back. Evan's friends, some going back, to preschool, all came to her house. 

Some of my friends, Mike from elementary school, Lenny from junior high and Seema, my "high-school sweetheart" as she likes to say, and the one most likely to have been my wife in an alternate universe, all came to Robin's. I college roommate Chris came to the funeral and to the cemetery.  I was moved that these people came for me and for Robin.

Robin was a force of nature, a ballabusta, a mench. When people asked who would notify the sisterhood and the Golden Age Club about the funeral, everyone said "That's Robin's job." Her loss is a huge one for Greenbelt, and for me, it's devastating. She was the only one I could talk to about growing up with our parents, and if I needed advice, she was there for me to talk to. Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet. Blessed is the Holy Judge. May her memory be a blessing.

The S.A.G. Awards 2024

 The S.A.G. Awards are for acting merit in various categories. They are a gift to acting union members who haven't worked enough to be admitted to "That Academy." The awards are only for acting and are voted on by the membership.

When I lived in Los Angeles, I saw a movie every week in a theater. Now, I got to a theater once or twice a year. I don't subscribe to streaming services, so I see things when I visit my sister in Maryland. It has been years since I watched television at home. They used to mail out DVDs of the nominated films and television shows to all members, some with elaborate brochures and no end date on when you could watch. Now, everything is on line, and I think we have another week or so to watch things, although the award ceremony was last night (2/24). I voted Thursday.

I saw all the "Male Actor in a Leading Role" movies and I voted for Colman Domingo, an openly gay actor, for his exuberant performance as Bayard Rustin in "Rustin." Cillian Murphy won for "Oppenheimer." All of these actors nominated are great. For me, a lot depends on what the role is, more than making a judgement about the actor.

For "Female Actor in a Leading Role" I went for Emma Stone in "Poor Things" a beautiful but seriously flawed movie. She was fearless. Lily Gladstone won for "Killers of the Flower Moon." I saw all of the nominees in these two categories. 

For "Supporting Actor," I voted for Sterling K. Brown for "American Fiction," a great movie. Again, he's a Black actor playing a flamboyant gay man. Robert Downey, Jr, won for "Oppenheimer. "

For "Supporting Actress", I skipped "The Color Purple." Read the book, saw Spielberg's movie. I voted for Da'Vine Joy Randolph for "The Holdovers." I looked her up and found that she is a classically trained actress playing what could have been a stereotypical role, not at all who she is. She won.

For "Cast Performance" I voted for "Barbie" where everyone was great, especially America Ferrara and Rhea Perlman. "Oppenheimer" won.

On the TV side, I didn't see much. I watched one episode each of "Beef," "A Small Light," "The Last of Us," "The Morning Show," "The Crown," "Ted Lasso," "Barry," "The Bear" and two of "Abbott Elementary." The only "Limited Series" I watched from beginning to end was "Fellow Travelers," about two closeted gay men going from the early 1950s into the 1980s.  I would have voted for Jonathan Bailey for "Best Actor in a Limited Series", but Matt Bomer was nominated, so I voted for him. Good to see an openly gay actor play a gay part, especially making the love scenes look real. On the female side, I voted for Bel Powley as Meep Gies in "A Small Light." I was blasted, emotionally, after one episode, and I didn't think I could deal with more. Ali Wong won for "Beef."

For "Drama Series" I voted for Pedro Pascal in "The Last of Us" and he won. On the female side, I voted for  Elizabeth Debicki, who was absolutely charming as poor Princess Diana. She won, also. 

For "Performance in A Comedy Series" I voted for Jason Sudeikis for "Ted Lasso" on the male side, and Quinta Brunson of "Abbott Elementary" on the female side. The winners were both from "The Bear," Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri. " For Ensemble I voted for "The Gilded Age," basically a lavishly-costumed soap opera in the "Drama" category, and "Abbott Elementary" on the comedy side. "The Last of Us" won on the drama side, and "The Bear" on the comedy side.

There are two awards for "Stunt Ensembles." I don't watch a lot of action movies, so I missed  the "Mission Impossible", "John Wick" and "Indiana Jones" movies that came out last year, and voted for "Barbie." "Mission Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One" was the winner. For television series, I voted for "The Last of Us" which won. 

All of these award shows are a game of sorts. I'm glad I got to watch so much online, especially the television shows without commercials. And I guess it gives me some power in "Hollywood" where I never  felt powerful, to vote for my favorite actors.

More Life

 Wednesday night, we attended a costume party/murder mystery at a restaurant in downtown Morgantown.  Kathy, the guest of honor, was turning seventy-five. She is a friend from temple, although only her husband is Jewish. She's been active in Democratic Party politics here, and helped me with my first political campaign. We were to dress in gangster outfits from the 1920s. We had roles to play: I was the butler to the head gangster and it was suggested I wear a tuxedo. Instead, I came in a black shirt, black pants, a loud jacket- and saddle shoes. The costumes ranged from very successful to not so much. The game was moderately interesting. What I realized was that the guests at the party were mostly people I know and like very much, and that seventy-five is only ten months away for me. My sister and I offered to make our mother a seventy-fifth birthday party in 2003, but Mom insisted on planning her own party at an Italian restaurant in Pikesville, Maryland, inviting only family. She died thirty-nine  days later, so the idea of being that age is scary.

They pulled my cancerous thyroid gland out in early November, and, as predicted, it wasn't too bad. I'm still sleeping a lot, but less, and I'm back at the gym, and went out for a run today. I'll see the doctor in February, and he'll decide what, if anything, needs to be done next. So I guess I'm doing well for seventy-four. I can feel my joints freezing up, especially the knee that was bad over the summer. 

Joe and I were back at my sister's house in Greenbelt, Maryland last week. I didn't throw up, and no one from the temple died, two events which have messed up our vacations in the past. We ate at a Jewish deli in Fulton, a Howard County suburb, and my sister Robin treated me and Joe to some new clothes. I hear a lot about how awful the economy is, but the stores were mobbed with people, so someone has money. We ate the traditionally Jewish Christmas meal: Chinese food, at a storefront restaurant in Beltsville, just north of Greenbelt. The portions were huge, and everything was yummy. Robin has all the streaming services Joe and I don't subscribe to, so we watched "Maestro" and "Oppenheimer." The commonality is that both are about chain-smoking Jewish men who are unfaithful to their wives. I thought "Oppenheimer" was a better movie. "Maestro" didn't cover a lot I would have liked, about the man Bernstein left his wife for, who later died of AIDS, or about the party for the Black Panthers at the Bernstein's, which was organized by his wife, Felicia. In The Forward, a critic pointed out that they downplayed Bernstein's commitment to Israel and to Judaism generally. It might have been interesting to see how both men died from their smoking habit, Bernstein of a heart attack when he was hospitalized unable to breathe, and Oppenheimer of cancer of the larynx. 

A young man at the party last night, a friend of one of  Kathy's grown daughters, asked me about staying in Morgantown. He was raised here by adoptive parents and now lives in Virginia, near Washington. The people at the party, mostly about my age, are our friends, and although Joe would like to live elsewhere when he retires in two years, preferably somewhere with warmer winters where we know people and he wouldn't have to be "The Rabbi" all the time, I'm not sure I have enough life expectancy to start over someplace else. We've been here more than eleven years, and we're invited to a party with gay fiends on the 30th, and a party with temple people on the 31st, so we do have different crowds we can hang with. I also have political friends, some of whom were there last night. 

I can say now that I'm doing okay. My health problems are all typical of someone my age, and I think I'm in better shape than most. That's no guarantee that I'll make another year, but I'm doing my best to stick around. Joe and I agree that we have good lives, even as the country and the world fall apart. But that's a whole different essay.

October, 2023

 I haven't posted much on this blog lately. I used to write about all the places I visited, one or two a month, and post lots of pictures, mostly of historic places. It took hours, and at most 20 people would read what I wrote. Lately, I've been putting a few pictures on Facebook, without much commentary, and 75 or 80 people give me a "like" or make a comment. 

I've also gotten a lot more private about how I'm feeling and what I'm doing. I was diagnosed, long ago, with "mild, chronic depression," whatever that means, But turning 74 last week really hurt. I know I'm in better shape than most men my age, the ones who haven' t died yet, anyway, and when I look in the mirror, I think I look better than most my age. Still, I've had two cancer diagnoses since the summer, one a skin cancer thing that was ugly, but is fixed except for a scar. I'm scheduled for an operation to remove my thyroid gland this Friday, November 3, and that is stressing me out. The doctors thought they saw something on my pancreas this summer, but after an endoscopy, said it wasn't a big deal, "come back in six months" and have it rechecked. Then they called two weeks later to tell me they wanted to take another look. My mother lived with pancreatic cancer for fifteen months. She was diagnosed at the age I was in August. She said at the time "How long was I going to live anyway?" I think about that a lot. She and I too, don't want to end up in a nursing home, like her mother, my grandmother, with no memory of anything. And I feel like my time has come and gone. The world is not what it was and, while at one time I had some power in it, now I don't think I do.

I ran for Congress last year against a MAGA-Republican hack who had not done anything in several terms of office, who beat a more rational Republican in a primary with signs that had his name over Trump's. He never appeared in this area, which was new to him, refused to debate, and didn't run a campaign. We did an interview together with the Morgantown Dominion-Post where we could only answer questions, not debate. I didn't think he had anything to say, and the paper endorsed me. I won only in this county. The race wasn't close, only closer than predicted. He's now running for Senate against our Governor, Jim Justice, a shameless liar, deadbeat and grifter, originally elected as a Democrat, who switched to the Republican Party in short order. I was at the state convention where he was nominated, and almost no one at the convention liked him, in fact, most of us there walked out of his speech. Joe Manchin wanted him, so that's who we got. He has a high popularity rating in the state. Don't ask me how that is possible.

It's not just this state. The Republicans, who have a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, just elected a speaker, without Democratic support. He has railed against same-gender marriage and abortion rights, which one might expect from a radical Christofascist, but he also is open to cutting Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, against aid to Ukraine, and wrote many of Trump's lawsuits arguing, falsely, that he won the 2020 election. This is what the United States has come to. 

Meanwhile, there is a war in Israel-Gaza-Palestine. My friends on the right blame Obama and Biden and say Trump would have taken care of this. My friends on the left think Israel is totally the villain here, that the country is a "colonial power," engages in "apartheid" and "genocide." I grew up in an apartheid state called "Maryland" and as to genocide and "colonialism" if you're an American of European origin, you need to tread carefully, given our history on this continent. Yes, Israel could conform to international law and not risk murdering innocent civilians, But Hamas has to go. There should have been a reckoning a long time ago among the nations about Palestine, but no one wants to touch it. Israel took in Jewish refugees from Iraq, Iran, Egypt and the rest of the Arab world, yet Palestinians cling to the false hope that they will be able to turn back the clock, and they've lived in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt for 75 years. The Jewish homeland is in Israel/Palestine. There is nowhere else. I've seen signs that say "Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism." It's a thin line. Jewish students at Cornell are afraid to leave their rooms, and in a former Soviet republic, protestors attacked a plane from Tel Aviv, looking for Jews to beat up. It's scary now for all of us. When I was in high school, a speaker came to my Jewish youth group. He was a Holocaust survivor from Poland, and had been in college in Poland in the 1930s. He was probably only 45 at the time he spoke to us, but he told us that Jews were treated badly by other Polish students and faculty at his campus. I am reminded of that by the events today.

I'm out of patience with everyone. While on City Council, I was called a "centrist" which was a high insult to the person who lobbed that word at me. I still consider myself on the left, but I don't really fit in that community anymore. The Republican Party would love to reach out to me and profess how they "Love Israel." It's American Jews they don't much care for, especially those of us in same-gender marriages who also think corporations have too much power.

You might notice that I'm not relaxed. I'm working on it. Tonight is Halloween, and I'll give out candy to the goblins and ghouls who come to our door. Tomorrow, November 1, is the 15th anniversary of my marriage to Joe Hample, and we'll celebrate that milestone. Friday is my operation, and I'm told that the prognosis is good. 

I still want to live, I'm just not sure I want to continue to interact with the rest of the world. Maybe I'll just fade away as I continue to age. I'll update this when/if I recover.

Greene County, Pennsylvania

Waynesburg, the county seat of Greene County, is 27 miles north of Morgantown, just over the Mason-Dixon Line, which is seven miles north of our house. This was the twelfth and last county I had scheduled for the year from July 2022 to June 2023. A temple member, a doctor who worked with black lung patients, has a farm there, and he told me recently he's involved with the Greene County Democrats, and we know gay people who live there. Still, from what I saw of this county, it's all about coal mining (dying out) and fracking (still going strong). I saw lots of heavily tattooed young men, people who stopped me on the street, suspicious that I was taking pictures of historic places, and unrepentant Trump acolytes, with F**k Biden banners and lawn signs saying "Still My President" with a picture of The Former Guy. My overall impression is that it's more stereotypically West Virginia than West Virginia. 

I visited the small towns of Waynesburg (3,987), Jefferson (253), Rice's Landing (426), Carmichaels (434), and Greensboro (267), all in the central and eastern parts of the county. That's five of the six boroughs (cities in Pennsylvania) in the county. The total population in 2020 was 35,924 divided among twenty townships. The census says the county is 91% White.

Waynesburg is a pretty town with a historic district, Waynesburg University, and a blocks-long park between downtown and the university.

                                                            Downtown Waynesburg

                                                                Monument Park

                                                          Miller Hall, Waynesburg University

                                                              Greene County Court House

East of Waynesburg is Greene Hills Farm, from 1861, now Greene County Historic Museum. The house had several additions, and for a time was the county poor house. I took a tour, and enjoyed spending time with the museum docents.

The John Rex Farm, from 1874, is in Jefferson Township, near the town of Jefferson.

Rice's Landing is a pretty, very small town on the Monongahela River. It's mostly below a cliff on the river.

W.A. Young and Sons Foundry and Machine Shop, a National Historic Landmark operated from 1900 to 1965, Rice's Landing.

                                                       Underpass in Rice's Landing

Carmichael has Greene Academy, a stone building built as a church and a brick building attached to it from 1820. There is also a covered bridge from 1889 connecting two neighborhoods.

Greensboro is a historic town on the Monongahela River. Joe and I visited there in 2020, and found almost every house sporting a sign for the incumbent president. A man came out and showed us his house, with multiple banners and signs. As I was walking around taking pictures on May 30, a woman came ut of her house talking on a cell phone and questioned me about what I was doing there. I told her I was taking pictures of historic places, and once she got a good look at me she calmed down, and said "We've had a lot of burglaries here, so I have to check." There is a bike path/trail along the river which may one day hook up with the trail in West Virginia, but it doesn't yet.

                                                   Former hotel, Greensboro Historic District

                                                          Trail/bike path in Greensboro

                                                       Greensboro School, 1909

                                                 County Street, Greensboro Historic District

Since this is the next closest county to ours, I feel like I should make it a point to visit each of the twenty townships. It's a pretty area up in the mountains and along the Mon River, despite the unfriendly politics and attitude I found.