The Morgantowner: Climate change

Showing posts with label Climate change. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

End of the Year and New York 2019

This year didn't totally suck, Friends from California visited us here in Morgantown: Jonathon and George from Long Beach, and Roy and Pat from Los Angeles, now living in Lompoc, in Santa Barbara County. We traveled to San Francisco and Los Angeles, where we saw our old crowds, and felt welcome, and just this week, we were in New York City for the first time in three years.We were in Memphis at Thanksgiving. On my own, I visited eleven of the twelve counties I planned to visit, four each in Ohio and Pennsylvania and three in Virginia. The largest and most interesting was Cuyahoga County, Ohio, including Cleveland. Many of the places I visited were economic dead zones, pretty towns with declining populations and abandoned business districts. I ran into a demonstration against abortion in DuBose, Pennsylvania, which infuriated me, and visited Bucyrus, in heinous troglodyte Jim Jordan's Ohio congressional district. I noted that it was warm in northern Pennsylvania in January and February, when it should have been cold. Virginia is pretty, Ohio has good libraries and Pennsylvania has extensive state parks. Most of these places are exclusively white and at least nominally Christian. I know people are in pain, but I still don't get voting for the awful Congresspeople they support. I have that problem here in West Virginia as well.

At the end of last year, Joe and I were talking about whether we wanted to stay in West Virginia. We are bicoastal people, at home in New York, Maryland and California. We have friends in big cities on both coasts, and we miss them. We have many homophobic people in our state legislature, and they showed it openly on several occasions this year, including an attempt to overturn Morgantown's non-discrimination ordinance. I told Joe I wanted to run for reelection to Morgantown's City Council just to prove it wasn't a fluke that I won. Ultimately he was offered and accepted a five-year contract to continue as rabbi at Tree of Life Congregation, so we are staying.

The congregation has been lovely to both of us and people have included us in their lives. Younger people have moved away and are difficult to replace. There were several funerals this year, and Joe spends a lot of his time visited hospitalized congregants. How long this congregation can continue is a question, but it's important that there is a liberal Jewish presence in this part of the world. Joe often speaks to non-Jewish groups, and I spoke to a high school class south of us about the Holocaust, and to pharmacy and counseling students at West Virginia University about "Jewish culture," even though I am unsure what that means.

My reelection turned out to be a joke. Two people originally challenged me. We had to turn in seventy-five signatures in our ward in January and February. I didn't get the help I had two years ago, although my friend Ash helped and neighbor Paul circulated petitions for me. One candidate turned in signatures in the last ten minutes of the last day. It turned out that many of his signatures were fraudulent, a fact discovered by a civic gadfly who thought there was something fishy about this guy, who had moved into the ward, to an apartment building owned by a real estate developer who has made his contempt for our Council clear, specifically to run against me. Why the City Clerk's office didn't catch the signatures that were the same as those on my petitions is a good question. Long story short, there was fraud, as far as I know unpunished, involving this candidate, who not coincidentally, had run for a statewide office as a Republican. The clerk's office and the Republican Party are up to their ears in this, but thanks to our Republican State Attorney, Mac Warner, from our county, nothing came of the investigation he supposedly conducted. The election was the end of April and for several weeks, it looked like I would be unopposed. Then the other challenger, on the Republican central committee in our county, signed up as a write-in. He ran a pathetic campaign, but still won 27% of the vote. I got 73%, but I was robbed of the challenge I wanted, someone with ideas I could debate and prove myself against.

Our big issue on Council was a proposal to annex a large unincorporated area of our County into Morgantown. This is important for us to maintain the vitality of the city, to increase housing options and to make these areas more livable by providing police and fire services, zoning and building requirements. We were met by a barrage of criticism from real estate developers, business owners and some homeowner associations. We had meetings where some people brought up good questions, which we were able to work on, but mostly we faced off against powerful interests who have no interest in the community other than making a fast buck. We were also personally attacked by a number of people, making me question who we might actually want in our city. I've changed my shopping habits to try to buy more from merchants in our city limits.

I look back at pictures of the victory of our "all-progressive" City Council when we were elected in 2017. We were happy and optimistic. That's gone now. Cracks have appeared over the issues of homelessness and drugs in Morgantown, and we have gotten no respect from the Chamber of Commerce (now called Morgantown Area Partnership), West Virginia University, and the Monongalia County Commission. We have five good people from our County in the State Legislature, but they are up against homo-haters, anti-abortion zealots, white supremacists, and people paid off by extractive industries from other parts of the state. It's tough. No knock against the new Councilors elected in 2019; I totally respect Dave Harshbarger and Zackery Cruze, and we are united on most issues. Still, I miss Ryan Wallace, who moved to Canada, where his wife has family. He was my closest friend on Council. And Mark Brazaitis, the Prophet, who was criticized relentlessly for his take on issues, didn't run again. He was right about everything. I have a year-and-a half to go on Council. I hope I can stand it.

I had a light bulb moment in New York Christmas night. People in West Virginia talk about how much they love this place: the beautiful scenery, the friendly people, the sense of place. It is pretty, away from the strip mines, the trash heaps and junk yards. Morgantown is a unique town, and there are many good people here. But I don't find most people here friendly, quite the opposite. So the moment came when we were out with family at Sammy's Roumanian Steak House, a famous Jewish spot on Christy Street on the Lower East Side. It's loud and crowded, in a basement, with raunchy jokes from the DJ/Comedian, Dani Luv. He asked where we were from, and he was shocked that we were Jewish from West Virginia. But I also knew that my great-grandfather ran a little store across the street from where Sammy's is, in the early part of the twentieth century, when my grandfather was a child. I felt a strong connection to that place. I feel that way in New York City generally, even though I never lived there. We visited often from Baltimore when I was a child, and my mother's parents, who lived in Queens, took me into Manhattan to see the sights. I get, more than I did before this trip, how people can feel attached to a place. It's an emotional and visceral thing.

In New York we stayed in Hell's Kitchen, once a rough neighborhood, and maybe still, to some extent. There were lots of gay clubs on the streets, and our non-luxury hotel was filled with people speaking foreign (to us) languages. We felt welcoming to them, and I tried to translate from Spanish for a couple who couldn't make themselves clear to the desk clerk. We walked quite a bit and took subways to most of our destinations. We weren't far from Times Square, absolutely mobbed at all hours. I like it, but I was sad that we are too old to enjoy the gay clubs, and that the people on the subway were almost all much younger than us. The stairs to the subways were daunting for me. Decades ago, I would have run up and down them; now I clutch the rail and walk slowly and carefully.

Joe's brother Henry, a musician, was in town from Louisiana and dragged us to Carnegie Hall to see Handel's "Messiah"with a small baroque orchestra and amazing soloists. While I might disagree with the theology, the music was glorious. I took Joe to see Pedro Almodóvar's stunning new movie "Pain and Glory," out of fear that it would never play in Morgantown. We walked around Greenwich Village that day. One day we visited the Guggenheim Museum, one of the last of Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpieces, on Fifth Avenue, to see an exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe photos and those of people who came after and critiqued or imitated him, then we visited the Neue Gallerie, in a mansion down the street, to see German and Austrian Art, including Gustav Klimt's "Woman In Gold."

Just being in New York, seeing the 59th Street Bridge, the block where the album cover for Dylan's
"Freewheelin'" album was photographed, walking through Central Park and Times Square, places we could identify from movies and television, was great. We visited Joe's stepmom and went out with her a few times, and hung out with Joe's brother and sister, in from the South, and his half-brother, the notorious baseball collector and YouTube personality, Zack Hample. I saw two cousins of mine, one after forty-five years, because I made a connection with her adult grandchild on 23 and Me. A successful friend of Joe's from Harvard came into town from Long Island with his husband and treated us to lunch at the fancy Harvard Club. Our last night in New York, we took the subway to Brooklyn to participate in the lighting of a giant menorah by Chabad in the rain on the last night of Chanukka. We wanted to show solidarity after the attack on Jews in Monsey, Jersey City and in Brooklyn.

I noticed that the temperature was well above normal for the last week of the year in New York City. It's not just weather, it's climate change, and it's here. The day we left there was a forecast of flooding in many areas around the waterfronts.

Of course, the trip was exhausting and expensive. We drove, and paid to park the car for a week, in addition to the hotel. I came back with a cold, and we had boarded the cat, who has been clingy and neurotic since we picked her up.

So, if you asked how I was doing, I would say I'm depressed about how things are going politically, for me personally on the city council in Morgantown, but also with the corruption and hatred generated by our state's Republicans and by the current administration in Washington, I turned seventy in 2019, so I'm a year older than my father was when he died. Of course I worry about my health and that of everyone in my generation. I feel left out of contemporary culture, like my time has definitely come and gone. Joe has been stressed too, and while our relationship is strong, it's been strained this year by the pressures we both feel.

I'm trying to be hopeful for myself and our country. I hope to build some bridges politically with other progressives, and be more understanding of those who think differently. I want to continue to travel, and to strengthen my marriage, shunning those who think it is illegitimate. I say this every year: I want to lose fifteen pounds (I lost five this year) , and declutter my house. May this be the year. If you've read to here, thank you for letting me rant, and may 2020 and The Twenties, be a healthy and prosperous time for all of us.

Sunday, October 14, 2018

Clearfield County, Pennsylvania

I was burned out by the whole Brett Kavanaugh thing and by politics in general. I thought I would get away from here over Columbus Day, Sunday and Monday. Clearfield County is about 150 miles north and a bit east of Morgantown. It's been way too hot here in Morgantown, while climate change is still "debated." I thought maybe I'd see some leaves changing color.

There is one city, Dubois, in the county, and the county seat, Clearfield, a borough, which typically means "City" in Pennsylvania. I decided to stay one night in DuBois, the bigger of the two places, and a more-or-less straight shot from Morgantown on US 119 north, where it ends at US 219, the most interesting, but not the fastest way to go. It was about 145 miles to DuBois. I booked The Usual Chain, in this case next to a country club, on a little lake. It looked like an old wood-frame hotel, but it is actually of newish vintage, built when the clubhouse from the country club burned down, and they decided to make it a destination resort for weddings and such.

I left Morgantown at 8:20, and arrived in town just about noon. I decided to start at the mall, east of town on PA 255, the main road to I-80, which runs through the county at the top of the Allegheny Mountains. The mall was half-dead, but still has a Sear's and Penney's as well as a chain bookstore, a Ross Dress-For Less, and a consignment store with CDs and records, although nothing I wanted to add to my vast collection. The restaurant is a stir-fry place, where you put ingredients and sauce in a bowl, pick a meat, and they stir-fry it for you. I would do less sauce and more vegetables next time, but I like the idea.

I visited S.B. Elliott State Park, where there are buildings built by the W.P.A. in the 1930s on the National Register. Penn State DuBois campus, just a few buildings for commuters, is on 255, the same road as the mall, on the way back to town from the park. I looked around in town, which has a downtown historic district. There wasn't a lot going on, but there were anti-abortion protestors lining the streets just north of downtown, waving signs like "Abortion is bad for women" and "Jesus will forgive you." So much for avoiding politics. I should have known. Clearfield is a classic rust belt county, overwhelmingly white, older, with decaying factories and a declining population. Seventy-three percent of voters went for the current president in 2016. The county population peaked in the 1920 census with over 120,000 people; now it's under 80,000.

I checked into the hotel, not expensive, but comfortable and quiet, with views of the golf course. I felt better after a nap. There was still time before dark, so I headed back south where there are a number of sites on the National Register. I had divided my one afternoon and one morning by West (DuBois) and east (Clearfield).The two towns are in the northern part of the county, but there are many historic places in the southern part of the county. I made it only to one before dark, the McGees Mills covered bridge, in Bell Township, built in 1873. There is a little park there along the west branch of the Susquehanna River.

It looked like most of the restaurants were on State Road 255, the route out of the city to I-80. I was going to eat at Eat 'n' Park, a chain diner out of Pittsburgh, with a branch in Morgantown,when I saw a sign at a strip mall for Napoli's, and stopped in there for chicken parmigiana, delicious, although with spaghetti and bread, not exactly on my diet.

In the morning, I started out to Parker Dam State Park, northeast of S.B. Elliott along the same road. The morning was cool, and there is a lake with a boardwalk around part of it. I thought I could walk all the way around it, but a spillway prevented that. There is a W.P.A. museum, and an octagonal cabin that was damaged by a tornado in 1985 and rebuilt. Walking back to my car after checking out the dam, four kids came by on bikes, two with training wheels attached. Two moms were walking behind them. I was in jeans and a purple Ralph Lauren t-shirt of many years wear. One of the training wheel kids said "I like your shirt" as he rode by. That made my day. I said "Thanks! I like your bike." It was emerald green and sparkly. Leaves were turning color uphill in the park. A sign pointed out that the W.P.A. men had planted most of the trees in the park, as the area had been logged over by that time. I thought about those men planting those trees, and how they were not likely around to see the beautiful forest they had created. I related that to the politics of our day- how we have to work for justice, even if we don't live to see it come to fruition. I know leaders of the civil rights movement, like Dr. King, talked about that often, but seeing the forest, started eighty years ago, reminded me. I went looking for, and found, St. Severin's, a wooden church farther east off I-80 and past a sign that said "Highest Point on I-80 East Of The Mississippi," built by German settlers in 1851 and a National Historic Landmark

I ended my tour in Clearfield Borough, a somewhat smaller but more fixed-up town than DuBois. I figured a fast look around, then lunch. There was once a synagogue in town, in a former telephone company building, now owned by a community theater. The synagogue merged with the one in State College, over the next hill to the east. I found the courthouse with the ten commandments in stone in front, and a district of historic homes along the west branch of the Susquehanna, then headed to lunch at a restaurant on Main Street. I ordered a salad, which took so long that I had to go out and put money in my parking meter, which was only a quarter for an hour. So I left town at 1:20 and arrived home after five, driving courthouse to courthouse on the recommended route, less scenic, $3.40 in tolls, but faster.

The temperature both days reached well into the 80s, warm for Morgantown, even more so for north central Pennsylvania. I also noted, traveling over hills and winding roads, that I want a nicer car than the Suzuki SX 4 I've been driving the last six years and 98,000 miles. I want more power and a quieter ride. This week, I talked Joe into buying a used Honda Civic, 2015. We're keeping the Suzuki, but traded our 2001 Civic, which I typically do not take on trips. Other than being banged up, nothing was wrong with our old Honda;, and the Suzuki, as it approaches 100,000 miles, drives as it always has. I just wanted something else.

I did get away, but for once I enjoyed the open spaces and parks more than the towns.This week is already cooler, and the leaves may reach peak color in a week or two. People I spoke to in Pennsylvania were annoyed that most of the leaves were still green and the temperature twenty degrees above normal for October 7th and 8th, but I don't think anyone put a political spin on it, as I did.