I wrote my end-of-year piece this year after Rosh Hashana. Looking back at this blog, and the pieces I wrote for the end of the year in 2014, 2017 and 2019, I can see a progression. In 2014, I felt homesick for Los Angeles, although we'd been away for almost five years at that point. By 2017, I had been elected to Morgantown's City Council and started to make friends and have some influence, and we had bought a house. I was more comfortable here. After we had been here two years, Tree of Life offered my husband Joe Hample, aka Rabbi Joe, a five-year contract, to July 2019. Joe asked me if I wanted to stay here after that. I said I wanted another two-year term on council, just to prove my election wasn't a fluke. The congregation then offered Joe another five-year contract, to July 2024. At the end of 2019, I was beginning to feel satisfied with our life here. Last year, he asked for a two-year extension, because he will turn seventy in 2026, and plans to retire. The congregation agreed to that.
The question is, what do we do then? We're here, we have a house, I have medical issues and get care through West Virginia University Medicine, and we know more people, in and out of temple, than ever. We were featured in AARP Magazine, as a couple who relocated later in life.We presented a positive view of our lives here. I don't want to betray that.
On the other hand, I miss our aging friends in Los Angeles. Joe has college friends in San Francisco with whom he keeps in touch. I have childhood friends in Baltimore and Washington, and, until March, a sister in Maryland. Joe's sister, a first cousin, and an aunt and uncle in Memphis.
We were in Maryland, in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Memphis this year. We're worried about affording California at this point, and although I miss Los Angeles, when I was there, I was happy to leave with Joe as he embarked on his rabbinic career. This year, I reconnected with a cousin in Florida, who invited us to visit in Boca Raton. Joe hates cold weather, and is anxious to visit South Florida. We are both political junkies, and Florida as a state is as bad, or maybe worse, than West Virginia. Today (January 6) we are snowed in. Morgantown schools were closed today and will remain closed tomorrow.
I often do studies of cities, and I've embarked on a study of the first 256 counties of 100,000 or more in the United States, one a day, getting larger each day Today, I finished the 128th, Clark County, Ohio, which includes Springfield where they're (not) eating the dogs! They're (not) eating the cats! I've been there on my journeys to counties within 300 miles of Morgantown. I divided the 128 counties into groups of 16. First I eliminate the eight most likely to have voted for the incoming President (I had to update for the 2024 election). Of the eight remaining, I delete the four with the coldest January average temperature, then the two in states less-than-friendly to LGBT people, and finally. pick the one with a lower housing cost. At the end, I'll have sixteen winners, and I'll pit them against each other. Logical? Maybe.
My picks halfway through the study:
1. Wicomico County, Maryland (Salisbury)
2. Monongalia County, West Virginia (Morgantown)
3. Kankakee County, Illinois (Kankakee)
4. St. Mary's County, Maryland (Leonardtown)
5. Wayne County, North Carolina (Goldsboro)
6. Clark County, Indiana (Jeffersonville)
7. Skagit County, Washington (Mt. Vernon)
8. Wood County, Ohio (Bowling Green)
So far, I don't think this is working out. The only county where a majority of citizens voted Democratic for President in 2024 is Skagit County, Washington, the most expensive of the counties I picked. Our county (Monongalia) is the second most Democratic county, giving the Democratic candidate for President 48% of the vote last year. Our county was the only one of twenty-seven in our Congressional District to give me a majority in 2022. The two counties in Maryland are the only two, other than ours, that has a synagogue.
It looks like our choices will be A) to stay here B) to get rid of 90% off the things in our house and move to Memphis, Tennessee, Long Beach, Palm Springs, Los Angeles or San Francisco in California, or somewhere in Florida. Boca Raton is the most Jewish spot; Fort Lauderdale is the gayest.
I'll look for eight more cities in the current study, and see what turns up.
