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 2010, 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 to 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!

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.

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.

The Pandemic Is Over ! (Maybe)/ "The Great Hits And Albums of 1970"

 We visited my sister Robin in Maryland for Passover, leaving here March 26, stopping in Kingwood, where my under-65 husband was able to get vaccinated against COVID-19 before he was eligible in our county. Kingwood is the seat of the county just to the east of us, on the border of Maryland, not far mileage-wise, but accessible only on narrow two-lane roads. We stopped for lunch near Hagerstown, more than halfway to my sister's place in Greenbelt, Prince George's County, expecting to eat at the noodle place in the parking lot of the mall. It was closed, so we ate Japanese food at a stand in the mall. I skipped my usual chicken. I've been off meat for most of the pandemic, because of news reports about executives at a chicken company taking bets on how many of their workers would get sick. I don't eat beef more than two or three times a year and have been off pork for several decades.

In Greenbelt, people were much more fastidious about masking and distancing than anywhere in West Virginia. The rule in the town is that you have to wear a mask anywhere out of your own house. Most people complied.

Joe ran Tree of Life's community seder from Robin's dining room, online . It went well, and people from all over were able to watch.  I ate chicken and some beef  at Robin's. Passover is a feast, and one should eat what one can, within the holiday guidelines.

We came back after a few days, and two weeks from the day we left Morgantown, we visited Morgantown Mall, in the city of Westover, south on U.S. 19 and across the Monongahela River. Joe headed for the last traditional department store (there were once four) to buy some clothes. I had  a list of CDs to  buy at the media store, but it was gone. I did buy new athletic shoes. We headed out to University Town Center, just north on I-79, in Granville, and stopped at a TV and media store where we had bought our computers. The young clerk scoffed when I said I needed a new portable cassette player and asked about buying CDs. The  "We millennials buy vinyl. We've found that vinyl sounds better," he said to the man who has been buying vinyl since 1955, probably before his grandfather was born. I knew that long ago, but it's hard to take vinyl in the car, and I  don't subscribe to streaming services. Our last stop was Target, where I found a cheap tape player, and a CD version of "McCartney III," the latest from Paul McCartney (I have a vinyl copy of the original "McCartney" from 1970, and "McCartney II," from 1980. I know this is a lot of blather, but it was our first "outing" in over a year.

We were invited to an outdoor lunch with a neighborhood gay couple and another friend of theirs, a widowed man who lives down the street from us. The weather was warm and we sat outside, maskless. That was in April.

Just this week, the weather turned warm, after a much cooler than expected early May, and the CDC announced that people who were "fully vaccinated" could be indoors or outdoors without masks. Many people were surprised and unsure that we could really do this. Cases are up in parts of the United States, roaring out of control in India, and in West Virginia, vaccinations have slowed due to reluctance on the part of many citizens. Our county's statistics are good, but variants have shown up among college students, who could only get vaccinated in the last few weeks. They are just starting to vaccinate people in the 12-16 age range.

Joe and I were doing Shabbat services from home for a year. I sang the candle blessing at the beginning and the wine blessing at the end, and a song if there was a new Jewish month coming up. A few weeks ago, the synagogue leaders decided we could do the service alone, without a congregation, at the synagogue building. A family asked to have a bar mitzvah at the temple, and asked me to be a guest. Most people were not masked, and at the reception at a hotel, where the rule was to wear masks unless eating, the rule was not followed, except by the staff and a few of us guest. I was a little put off, although I genuinely like this family, and I guess no one was hurt after all.

Friday, May 21, we opened the synagogue for services. It was still broadcast over the internet. Thirteen of us came. Others have said they were not ready. There were no refreshments after. The idea was to not have people stand around chit-chatting, but they did anyway, and, as the night was warm, people hung out later on the steps. I enjoyed seeing people face-to-face, even masked. Everyone was glad to get out. Friday afternoon, I had confronted a maskless shopper at our local supermarket, but the manager came over to our argument to tell me that the market's national office had told them that starting that day, they would not tell people to wear masks. I was upset that the supermarket chain did not care that the City of Morgantown, where I am on Council, had not rescinded its ordinance mandating masks. At home, I emailed the Mayor, Council and Manager to ask if there was a change. Apparently, I didn't get the memo (there was no memo) that the rules we set up expired Friday night. So I was right technically that people should have been masked Friday afternoon. I didn't need to get into an argument with someone over it, and today, Monday, I wrote to the manager and apologized for my behavior.

We were invited to dinner at the home of congregants Saturday and Sunday; unmasked and inside, three couples Saturday  evening, and four couples on a screened porch Sunday late afternoon. We also attended a memorial to people who had died of COVID-19 at a church near our house. We were all happy to see each other in person, almost shocked and gleeful.

So things seem to be  open, and masks are optional for those of us who are more than two weeks from our second shot. It's liberating and joyous, and a little scary. Are we really immune? What about variants? Will this immunity last? And I feel some guilt about American "privilege" when I see what's happening in India and other  places in the world. 

I just finished teaching an online class for Osher Life-Long Learning called "The Great Hits And Albums of 1970."  I put up at least twenty videos on YouTube each week to play in class. They are still there, if you want to look under my name. At first, I just went chronologically through a list of charted albums, from a book I have. We saw the breakup of The Beatles, with their last albums, and the first solo albums from  each of The Fab Four. I played one cut from each album. We spent time with Creedence  Clearwater Revival, the Jackson Five, Three Dog Night, old-timers like Engelbert Humperdinck and Tom Jones (not so old then) and comedy from David Frye ("I Am The President"). We had second albums from Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young),  solo albums from Stills and Young and Santana. We saw The Supremes without Diana Ross, and Diana Ross without The Supremes. I played tunes from British groups Traffic, Jethro Tull, King Crimson and The Moody Blues. We heard from Grand Funk Railroad and Quicksilver Messenger Service. I spent a lot of time researching the bands and the music. It was exhausting.

On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of interpretive cultural history that I trained for, but never used in real life. People in the class, who are all over fifty, and mostly over sixty-five were, for the most part, enthralled, with memories of their young days and some new things to learn. It was perfect.

Sometime around week three, an article appeared in one of the Sunday magazines about the girl in the picture from Kent State, May 4, 1970, with her arms raised and apparently screaming, as she knelt over the body of a student shot dead by the Ohio National Guard. She was a fourteen-year old runaway at the time, and the writer caught up with her, retired in Florida. The horror of that time returned to my consciousness. I was a junior at Johns Hopkins that year, and we shut down  the campus weeks early after that event. President Nixon and many of  his followers felt it was a good thing that college students were murdered. At twenty, I couldn't yet vote, but I'm proud to say I've never voted for a Republican for any public office. I sold ice cream from a Good Humor truck in the summer of 1970, and spent most of  my senior year depressed, trying to figure out what my adult life would be. I had no idea. Those times came back to me this spring.

I was saddened to see what happened to so many of the stars I highlighted: eleven year old Michael Jackson, so brimming with potential, innocent twenty-year old Karen Carpenter, still living at home with her brother and parents when their hit "Close To You" came out. Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, both gone in 1971, John Lennon murdered in 1980, Duane Allman and Berry Oakley of The Allman Brothers killed in motorcycle accidents, John Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger who both committed suicide. 

For the last class, May 21, I had fallen far enough behind to have forty-one albums I could have highlighted. Some albums I picked were Led Zeppelin III, Derek and the Dominoes, Jesus Christ Superstar, Idewild South by The Allman Brothers and Judy Collins' Whales and Nightingales, where she sang "Amazing Grace." She said she was hoping that would stop the war in Vietnam. For the last four albums, I picked albums that didn't chart that I like. I had The Beach Boys sing "This Whole World" from Sunflower, The Five Stairsteps sing "O-o-h Child," about things would get easier, Laura Nyro's cover of the 1962 King-Goffin hit for The Drifters, "Up On The Roof" and I ended with the ten-minute Latin jazz piece "Just For You" by Sweetwater, a relatively forgotten group from Los Angeles. Sweetwater sang "See the change in the world, just for you." The world didn't really change for me in 1970, and generally I'm not sure things are much better than they were then. As usual, I can't complain about my own life, despite missteps and hardships along the way. Other than being old, which I should have anticipated, but didn't, I am relatively healthy, financially more solvent than ever and blessed with a mate who got me through these last frightening months. 

2020 Oy!

 It wasn't all bad. I actually did lose about eight pounds, and got rid of three big bags of clutter. I could lose another ten pounds if I set my mind to it, and fill another fifty bags with junk to throw out. I started running last year in January, and at first it took me twenty-two minutes to run the course I chose, and today, in good weather, I did it in just over sixteen. Progress. I'm glad my City Council meetings are online, so I don't have to be downtown until 11 P.M. I read ten books from The New York Times "Best 100 Books of 2019," a lot for me, since reading puts me to sleep. I recommend Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luisella and Pulitzer-winner Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys. Both of these books are heartbreaking, but this was the year for that. 

In 2019, I visited eleven counties within three hundred miles of here, one a month, except December, and Joe and I spent a week each in San Francisco and Los Angeles in late spring, Thanksgiving in Memphis, and a week in late December in New York City. We were able to stamp our "bicoastal élite" passports. In December 2019, I visited my sister  in Maryland and planned to go on to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the ninety-sixth county in my series, when Joe called that a congregant had died. I came home instead for the funeral.

After the New York trip, we returned to Morgantown December 30, and  I proceeded to get sick. I had the headache, coughing and fever that could have been Covid-19, only we didn't know about that. I went to WVU Medicine, and they said it was viral, take Tylenol, drink fluids, and rest. I developed a sinus infection, and went back for antibiotics. 

In February, I made it to Harrisburg for an overnight trip. It's a great city, but I ran myself ragged and was way tired. By the beginning of March, I was feeling strong again. We had services at temple Friday,March sixth, our annual Purim party on Saturday, an interfaith dinner at a church downtown on Sunday,  and Purim on the real date at Chabad on Monday. By then we had heard of coronavirus and had Friday's service socially distanced. Not many people showed up. 

We had a crazy long City Council meeting on Tuesday the tenth, and I figured I would go to Delaware County, Ohio on Wednesday and come back Friday before services. At that point there were no Covid-19 cases in Ohio or West Virginia. Wednesday morning, I read that three cases had turned up in Cleveland, and Governor DeWine was closing Ohio State in Columbus. I decided not to go.

December 29, yesterday, there were more than 1300 new cases in West Virginia. December 7, there were more than 9,000 new cases in Ohio. and as of today, 341,000 Americans have died. People are still arguing about masks. Businesses have closed and people are out of work, out of money, and out of food, yet the United States Senate is still arguing about helping people financially. I am sickened by the thought that this country has reached a dead end.

At least the Democrats won the election. They're not a perfect party, but the Republicans have shown themselves to be deaf, dumb and blind to what is going on. Still, the current President, who is spending this week on vacation in Palm Beach, is fighting the election results, not accepting his loss, and today people in Congress said they will challenge the results. The Vice-President is skiing in Vail. 

I remember in the early days of the AIDS crisis, in 1982, when people said it wasn't a big deal. "I don't know anyone who has it" was a common refrain. I worked for Social Security in the Miami area, and I saw handsome young men come in to apply for disability, and often the case would come back before it was adjudicated because the claimant had died. The rules were changed so that we could approve them in the office if they said they had AIDS. Some wouldn't do that, because of the stigma involved.  I took that seriously, and I'm here to tell the story. People are just now taking this virus more seriously. It was in the news today that a Republican Congressman-elect in Louisiana, who had recently called for opening the economy to avoid "disaster" had died of the virus. 

There were also protests about police brutality after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in May. The officer knew he was being recorded on cell phones, but thought this was something he could do. It was as much the brazenness, the idea that there would be no consequences, that see people against the police. The President's response was to blame the protesters, and he gassed people who were peacefully protesting, and sent in unidentified troops to round people up without charge. Here in Morgantown, there were protests, but we are not big city with a large minority population, and while there ae some issues with the police, they are relatively benign, and have done things like saving people from overdoses and jumping into the Monongahela River to save people from drowning. The City Council is discussing civilian oversight of the police, which has caused alarm in some quarters, while others fear we won't go far enough.

I'm in my fourth year on City Council. It's a lot like college: daunting the first year, then more comfortable the next two, then, the last year, just wanting it to be over. Everyone on Council put in a lot of work. We hired a new City Manager, dealt with a homeless encampment on city property in as humane a way as we could, dealt with a faltering budget and the fallout from the pandemic. We made rules to protect public safety following state guidelines, but stricter. We were sniped at from all sides through everything. 

My side project was pop music history at Osher Life-Long Learning at WVU. In the four-week winter term, I taught in person to a small group about Laura Nyro's first five albums. In the spring, I taught online about "The Great Hits and Albums of 1968." Summer brought six weeks called "Music from The Brill Building" about Jewish composers in New York who dominated pop music in the early sixties, writing for The Drifters, Gene Pitney, and girl groups like The Shangri-Las and The Crystals. In the fall I taught mostly albums from 1969, including artists who were new at Woodstock, like Crosby, Stills and Nash and Santana. The reviews were mostly good, but some complained that they were unfamiliar with the music, because I had veered away from Top 40. I'll teach 1970 in the spring, then that might be it. I'm ready for a change.

Joe and I visited Doddridge County, West Virginia, a very small county about sixty miles southwest of Morgantown. The county seat is West Union. In April, when we visited,  there had not been any Covid-19 cases there . We had lunch outside, took some pics and drove out to see a covered bridge. Outside of town, many homes had big banners and flags supporting th current President. We found the same thing traveling only sixteen miles north, to the tiny historic town of Greensboro, Pennsylvania. To me those flags might as well have had swastikas on them. In the summer, we visited our friends Scott and Jan, two gay men, who have a farm near Greensboro. We sat out on their porch and had lunch. Other than that day, we haven't seen friends live and in person. 

I did get to Ridgway, Pennsylvania, a few hours north of us, in the second county south of New York. It's a pretty place, and was still "green" on Pennsylvania' s map in June. It's in Elk County, which was my scheduled county for June. In Ridgway, people were masked, and restaurants were open with limited seating. In the smaller towns to the north, there were more signs out for the President. 

We took the risk of visiting my sister in Greenbelt, Maryland, once in the summer, and again  over Thanksgiving, just over two hundred miles away. We packed lunches and tried not to stop too often. My sister Robin has been cautious about going out, as we have, and we felt safe. A few days after we came back, we got tested and were both negative. 

I'd like to be hopeful about the future. The people in power scare me, and I hope that there is a peaceful transition on January 20th. I hope the vaccine is given to everyone and we are able to stop Covid-19. Our county is the only one in West Virginia that only gave the President a plurality of votes, and not a majority. People worked hard for state-level Democrats, all much better people than the Republicans, but none of them got the votes they needed to win. I truly despair for West Virginia. 

So far, we are well, and we have money, not a lot, but more than we've had in the past. We've been getting carry-out on Saturday nights from our favorite restaurants, and we've taken walks in the local parks and along the riverfront. We are not in danger of losing our house, or our healthcare. Joe's job is secure, at least for another three years. We are blessed in many ways, and I think our job this year is to be more charitable, to live more harmoniously in nature, and to be less materialistic. It's something to strive for.

I wish all of you reading this (averaging about 25) a healthful, prosperous, conscious 2021. 

Pandemic Thanksgiving

At Robin's

 Typically, I go with Joe to visit his family in Memphis at Thanksgiving. His aunt and uncle host Thanksgiving dinner. Joe's sister lives in Memphis, and his brother comes up from Louisiana. He has a cousin with a husband and kidskin Memphis, and her sister, also with a husband and two kids comes from Austin. Other cousins sometimes show up from Buffalo, Portland, Boston and Eureka. We drive to Pittsburgh, catch a plane, change at Atlanta or Charlotte, stop for lunch, and land in Memphis where we rent a car and drive to a hotel. We spend time with family, brunch at his cousin's, we go to a bar part-owned by Joe's sister and we try out several restaurants.

This year, the CDC said not to go anywhere because of a spike in novel coronavirus cases all over the country. My sister Robin invited us to visit in Greenbelt, Maryland, a bit more than two hundred miles from Morgantown. I had my doubts, but Joe was anxious to get out, and my sister, after she had invited us, suffered a back injury and needed our help. 

So we went. Instead of stopping at a restaurant for lunch, we packed sandwiches and fruit, and ate lunch in the car at a rest stop. We stopped at three rest stops on the way.

Greenbelt is a progressive city in Prince George's County, outside Washington, D.C. The rules there are that you can't be out of the house without a mask. I went out to run in the morning and Joe and I walked in the evening. People approaching us moved into the street to maintain six feet of distance from us.

Robin had picked out our menu, which, of course, included turkey. I have not eaten any meat since late March, when there were coronavirus cases at meat-packing plants, and the companies (and the United States government) seemed to think it was good that people were dying, because at least we had meat on the table. I could have lived on the plentiful side dishes, but I went for the turkey just these few days. 

We did go out Friday with a shopping list for the Co-Op, a locally owned grocery, a check to cash at the bank, and we stopped to have the tires checked on the car, since the tire light had gone on as we neared Greenbelt Wednesday. We had them change the oil as well. We were out for about two hours, not near anyone. Robin and Joe played scrabble and we watched "Jeopardy" together. We did housework for Robin also, and helped prepare meals with her. I read a book and kept up with social media. Robin put up pictures of us, usually eating. On Friday night, Joe's online Shabbat service was from Robin's dining room table, and he ran Saturday morning Torah service from Robin's little office. 

We packed up and left Sunday, with sandwiches, fruit and a cookie in a bag for lunch. I thought Robin was trying to delay us. She said over and over how much she appreciated our being there, and how her back was felling better.

I was nervous about traveling at all, but the traffic was light, and we didn't hang out with lots pf people. In fact, Greenbelt is safer than Morgantown because people are all masked and socially distanced. People take the coronavirus restrictions seriously. I don't always get that impression in Morgantown. I resented my sister's bossiness at first, but I found my compassion after a while. She needed help, and she is the only one who knows what it was like growing up in my parents' house.

We got back yesterday afternoon. We unpacked, I took a short nap while Joe made dinner, and I went out for groceries, where I had to complain about an unmasked employee and tell a few people that the mask has to be over your nose. Today (Monday) I'm overtired, but still managed to run this morning. One day, I'm going to have to take it easy, as befits my advanced age. I don't think I was exposed to coronavirus this trip. 

I'm glad we went, and I understand why people chafed under the recommendation to stay home. We didn't take a big risk, and it was great just to be away for a time.

Greenbelt, "On The Town," "Treyf" and "Hamilton"

In the six years since I moved to Morgantown, Joe and I have become closer to my sister Robin, who lives 208 miles from us, in Greenbelt, Maryland. She bribes us to visit her, this time by offering tickets to "Hamilton" at Kennedy Center in Washington. Joe and I both love live theater, and we try to go often in Morgantown, but we are wrapped up in meetings, services, teaching and chores and don't always get out.

We had good weather to drive to and from Washington last Thursday and back this past Monday. I've been reading The Washington Post on Sundays, and I saw in the paper that "On The Town" a World War II-era musical with music by a 25-year old Leonard Bernstein was playing at Olney Theater in Maryland, sixteen miles from Robin's house. We arrived at her house in time for a nap, and she made us dinner. We got out to the 8:00 show in Olney. The music is glorious, and while the choreography wasn't the original Jerome Robbins move, it was great. In the show, three sailors arrive in New York at 6 A.M., with twenty-four hours leave. There's a line from two about how the third had saved their lives, and at the end they go back to an uncertain future on a warship in 1944. Meanwhile, they sing and dance, have fun and meet girls. I saw this show at UCLA years ago; Joe had never seen it. There is a movie, but most of Bernstein's complex score was cut, and many of the songs were replaced with generic pap. We both loved this fun, charming show with gorgeous music.

Joe and I walked around Greenbelt Lake Friday morning, then hit the local mall, shopping for discount clothes at Burlington Coat Factory and buying Joe's favorite coffee at Giant supermarket. Our Morgantown friends, Dan and Daya Solomon, who now live in Greenbelt, asked if we would be at Mishkan Torah, Greenbelt's synagogue, Friday night. We agreed to go. We were happy to see Dan and Daya and greet the rabbi hired last summer, Saul Oretsky, who was a member before he went off to rabbi school. He was my nephew's bar mitzvah tutor thirteen years ago.

It was cool and not raining Saturday, so I went walking around more in Greenbelt. Robin got us tickets to "Trayf," which means "not kosher," a play at Washington's Jewish Community Center. We had the adventure of driving into Washington, like driving and parking in San Francisco.. "Trayf" is a small play, with only four characters, about two black-hat Jewish men, each nineteen, and about to go their separate ways. It's a moving tale of faith (or lack thereof) and friendship.  We dined at Silver Diner, our go-to place in Greenbelt. Growing up in Maryland, at a time where every place was segregated, I love being at a restaurant with a multi-ethnic staff, a great menu, and where everyone is welcome.

Sunday was our big day. We got to Kennedy Center at noon for a 2:30 show, and ate in the cafe on the top level. Our seats were marked "obstructed view" which meant they were sold late and for five hundred dollars less than seats down the row. I have the two CD cast album from the show, and Joe and I listened to it in the car on the way to Greenbelt. We couldn't see one corner of the stage well in our cheap seats, but it didn't dampen our enthusiasm. "Hamilton," if you haven't heard about it is a fast-moving depiction of the life of Alexander Hamilton, where the main characters, Hamilton, George Washington, Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson, Lafayette and the sisters, Eliza and Angelica Schuyler, are portrayed by African-American, Caribbean or Mexican actors. The music, operatic in its scope, is modern rap and hip-hop, with a few ballads and novelty songs thrown in. Only King George III, played for broad comedy, is European-American.

It seems like it shouldn't work, but it does, and beautifully. That the actors don't look like their pictures on American currency, and the twenty-first century music makes everything seem more real, not less. If you've seen "1776" where the characters are stiff and the music trying to sound old, you can tell the difference. The dancers, men and women, are all dressed in the same outfits and perform the same steps. They are the townspeople in New York, where "Hamilton" is set.

This play opened before the last election, but it seems more relevant than ever-the intrigue, the political games, the infidelities are not different now. I even thought of the power struggles in Morgantown, of our young Council questioning the status quo, and the possibility of shifting alliances in our second year in office.

I haven't talked much about spending time with my sister, but I do enjoy being with her. She has been kind and generous to us both, and introduces us as "my brother and his husband" or "my brother and brother-in-law." Not everyone is that open about us with their friends. She and Joe are well-matched competitive Scrabble players.

We drove home after breakfast Monday, stopping for lunch in Cumberland, Maryland, at Queen City Creamery. Tomorrow (Friday) we're off to Buffalo to spend time with Joe's family and visit Canada.

Shabbat dinner at Robin's

Before temple Friday with our friends Dan ans Daya Solomon

At Silver Diner in Greenbelt

Robin and Joe playing Scrabble

At Greenbelt Lake, the great natural space preserved in Greenbelt

At Greenbelt Lake

Robin and Joe at Kennedy Center before the show

Intermission at Kennedy Center

On the Potomac at Kennedy Center

On the set of "Trayf" Saturday

Four Days In February: Greenbelt and Charles County, Maryland, Charlotte County, Virginia, David Fryson

My original plan was to visit Charles County, Maryland, with a stop at my sister Robin's, one county north, in mid-January. That didn't happen because of an unscheduled Morgantown City Council meeting, the same day as an awful snowstorm. By the weekend, I was sick, possibly with the flu, so a January trip didn't happen.

I've been bombarded by invitations to meetings, demonstrations, dinners and temple events, and I was exhausted, just getting over being sick. I figured it would be less stressful to take a Friday to Monday, visit my sister, Charles County, Maryland, and Charlotte County, Virginia, my February county to visit, southwest of Richmond and east of Lynchburg. By combining trips to the two counties, I could save 300 miles of driving over separate trips and two days' time. I thought it would be warmer than in Morgantown, which has often been bitterly cold this winter.

My sister lives in Greenbelt, Maryland, in Prince George's County. This is an area that white people fled in the 1970s because of school busing. Greenbelt is a planned community, started by Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1930s, and located near the University of Maryland, Goddard Space Center and the US Agricultural Center in Beltsville. As Washington has become prohibitively expensive, Greenbelt, relatively affordable, has become a magnet for government and university workers. While it was almost all-white when my sister moved there more than forty years ago, it is, I think, a happily integrated community, and I suspect the election of 2016 has brought the people there even closer together.

I was late getting to Greenbelt because of blowing snow on I-68 and an accident in Garrett County in 6 F. weather, which closed the highway for twenty minutes. I met up with Robin at the community-owned movie theater in Greenbelt, showing "The Shape of Water" prior to the Academy Awards. I had seen the movie on my computer courtesy of the SAG Awards, but I enjoyed seeing it again on a big screen. Robin knew lots of people in the theater. She is an icon in Greenbelt. On the way out, we ran into my 26-year-old nephew's baseball coach from when he was eight. We stopped at Robin's house to drop off my bag, then adjourned to Silver Diner, once a burger-and-fries old time diner, now serving that, still, but also gourmet and diet items as well. The staff there are young, African-American and Central American-American ( I just invented that phrase), polite, friendly and helpful.

Even though it was Friday night, when I am generally offline for the Jewish sabbath, I updated my online presence while we watched "Jeopardy." I was asleep by 10:30.

At Silver Diner with Robin (photo by our server on my phone).

 That's turkey bacon on my plate.

Saturday was my day to go to Charles County. My rules are to hit as many National Register Historic Places as possible, go to a mall, find a synagogue, visit a park and a college or university. There are thirty-nine historic places on the National Register. I picked ten to visit, and mapped out  directions to three. The problem was that since Charles County used to be mostly rural, the historic places tend to be country houses from the colonial era, way back off the roads and posted with "No Trespassing" signs. Also, although it was sunny out, the temperature never got above freezing all day, way below average for Southern Maryland in February. I found Mt. Carmel Monastery, dating from the 18th century, and the College of Southern Maryland, both north of La Plata. The one place I wanted to see was Thomas Stone's estate. Stone was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and his home is a National Historic Landmark. There was a gate down at the entrance and a sign saying "Closed for the season, opening mid-March." I visited the county seat, since 1895, La Plata (pronounced la-plate-a), where I ate the $6.99 lunch special at a family-run Chinese restaurant. I had chicken chow mein, east-coast style, some chicken and lots of veggies in a salty sauce, with a bag of greasy noodles to add to it, and a chicken egg roll, also greasy, with little plastic packets of orange duck sauce and spicy mustard. They didn't have hot tea, so I had a can of Diet Coke. I didn't find La Plata interesting, and I wondered where the pre-Civil War county seat was? That was Port Tobacco, on an inlet of the Potomac River, current population, thirteen. There are three houses, and a 1970 reconstruction of the old courthouse. Two of the houses are on the National Register, one used as a dwelling, the other, part of the museum that includes the courthouse. Port Tobacco was a Native American settlement, then a trading point with a port, a place with both Catholic and Anglican churches that maintained a native population, and a large population of slaves during the Civil War. There was Confederate sentiment, and John Wilkes Booth fled there with his co-conspirators before being killed in Virginia. The town declined because the port silted up and became unnavigible, and because when railroads came, they bypassed the town. By 3 P.M., I was at  Smallwood State Park, where a creek flows into the estuary of the Potomac River. The estate of William Smallwood, who was Governor of Maryland at the time the Constitution was adopted, is in the park, and was reconstructed in the 1950s.

I had booked a motel in Waldorf in the northern end of Charles County. This is a "boom berg" a far away suburb of both Baltimore and Washington, a jumble of stores, town houses and single-family homes strung along U.S. 301, once the road between Baltimore and Richmond that avoided Washington. It's not far from Annapolis, Ft. Meade, and Andrews Air Force Base. Wikipedia is surprised that the county went from Republican to Democratic in elections in a few years. What I know of the area is that it became built up in the 1970s when people fled school busing in Prince George's County (where my sister lives), but were followed by military and other government employees, many of whom are African-American or descendants of Latin Americans. Waldorf is 25 miles from Washington, 41 miles from Annapolis and 62 miles from Baltimore. It is 94 miles north of Richmond, Virginia.

St. Charles is a planned community, part of unincorporated Waldorf, and that is where I found a Reform synagogue in an industrial park and a mall, crowded Saturday night mostly with "minority" teens, well-dressed and well-behaved, out for a night of seeing their friends and shopping. It's easy for me to see how middle-class minority youth would be angry at the current President for suggesting that their lives are terrible and that he was going to solve all their problems. It's insulting to talk that way to middle-class people living in modern suburbs. I had dinner at the food court in the mall, and returned  to my motel, The Usual Chain, by 8:30 P.M. I no longer plan for adventurous Saturday nights.

College of Southern Maryland, near La Plata

Mt. Carmel Monastery, near La Plata, 1790

Charles County Courthouse, La Plata

Reconstructed Old Charles County Courthouse, Port Tobacco Village

Ellerslie (left) originally mid-18th century, and Stagg Hall, 1732 Port Tobacco Village

Smallwood Sate Park near the Potomac River and icy

Smallwood's Retreat, 18th century, reconstructed in the 1950s, Smallwood State Park

Sunday was to be my day in Charlotte County, Virginia, 175 miles southwest of Waldorf. I booked a motel one county north, in Farmville, a small college town. I stayed there before when I visited Buckingham County, northwest of there, three years ago. The weather forecast was for freezing rain. The temperature stayed above freezing, just barely. It wasn't pretty. I left early, drove across the bridge on US 301 over the Potomac, bypassed Bowling Green in Caroline County, which I visited last year in April, bypassed Richmond and drove through Chesterfield County (scheduled for this June) and Amelia County (June 2013) to Charlotte County, a rural county of twelve to thirteen thousand people, one third of them African-American, and although the county voted for the current President, it wasn't by much. There was a sign at the gas station just over the county line near Keysville, the big "city" (850 people) in the county, saying something about how good the food was. I don't remember what I ate there, but they did have hot tea. Three Euro-American women worked there, two older, one younger, most of the customers in this gas station-convenience store-restaurant were African-American. The people of different races seemed to know each other and greeted each other warmly. It's a small place.

Keysville didn't look like much. I found an historic farmhouse on the way into town and the rail depot, just about falling down. The town of Charlotte Court House is another fifteen miles down the road, and there is the old court house, now a museum,  a newer one under construction, and a district of older buildings. I read the sign in front of the library, an early 19th century house, explaining that the library was paid for by Ambassador David Bruce and his wife in 1937, on the condition that African-Americans be permitted to use it. The sign goes on to say that even though they had to use the back door, and could only access some sections of the library, this was a step up for African-Americans in the county. I was in a hurry to move on, because at the edge of the county is Red Hill, Patrick Henry's home, also a National Historic Landmark. It is in Charlotte County, but not far from Lynchburg and Campbell County, which I visited in January, 2017. I was there before four on a Sunday, but in pouring rain and with a temperature of 34 F. and dropping. It was closed, but one could access the parking lot and walk up to the house. The weather was not conducive to exploring the extensive grounds. It's surprising to me that people like Thomas Stone and Patrick Henry could live so far out in the country at a time before paved roads. It's hard to imagine the kind of isolation they lived in.

Four Locust Farm, near Keysville, 1859

Charlotte County Courthouse, 1821-23, based on plans by Thomas Jefferson, now a museum

David Bruce Library 1810 and 1836

Red Hill, near Brookneal, Patrick Henry's home from 1795-1799

I made it to Farmville, checked in and napped. There are lots of chain restaurants on Main Street in Farmville, but I ate at a café near the center of town. I had fish tacos and some kind of exotic tea. I took a chocolate muffin back to the room for later. In the room, the internet went off, and the desk clerk claimed to have called a manager. The television also said "No Signal." Not that I would have watched it, but the Super Bowl was on. I was able to get internet through my phone.

It's 300 miles from Charlotte Court House to Morgantown, the outside limit of my mileage. It is possible to do it in 270, but that beautiful route over the mountains takes longer, and the rain Sunday was snow in the mountains, meaning the route might be difficult or even impossible. I drove back 20 miles to Charlotte Court House. It was sunny and somewhat warmer. I took a pic of the statue of the Confederate soldier (from 1901) and the cannon, common to court houses everywhere. I slipped and fell on the invisible ice on the brick sidewalk by the court house. A man in a pickup truck stopped and asked if I was okay and did I need any help? I told him I was fine. Actually my left arm and leg and my ego were bruised. I drove home on the complicated route laid out for me by Google maps, stopping in Baker, in Hardy County, West Virginia, the county in our state most likely to have voted for the current President. I thought I would boycott the county, but  I was hungry and I'm trying to be less judgemental about people who make poor political choices.At this place, another combination gas station-convenience store-restaurant, I declined the special ( a BLT) and had a grilled chicken sandwich with cheese, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, and onions. I asked them to hold the cheese, onions, and mayonnaise, which they did, and I had fries. The people who worked there were friendly. The roads home were not icy except in Garrett County, Maryland (MD's most likely county to vote for the President). I bought snacks at all the places where I used the bathroom that day.

Confederate Monument, 1901 and cannon, Charlotte Court house

Village Presbyterian Church, Charlotte Court House Historic District, 1835

I was in Morgantown at 4:30, and headed immediately to a reception for David Fryson, who was retiring as Vice President of WVU, the Director of the Division of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. He is an eloquent speaker and a great friend to the LGBT community at WVU and in Morgantown. Joe was there.

Several speakers talked about what David Fryson had done for them. Here's my story:

A woman at temple volunteered me to be on the LGBT Equity Commission at WVU as a community member, in 2013. I went to the meetings, but because I wasn't affiliated with the University, I didn't have a lot to do. In the summer of 2015, the Commission wanted to do something for the University's "Diversity Week" in September. I suggested we do something around the idea of religious acceptance of LGBT people-a panel discussion. I immediately signed up my husband, Rabbi Joe Hample, and Dr. Fryson, an ordained minister, offered to speak. We found other Christian clergy to round out the panel. A week before the panel, I visited my cardiologist, who insisted I go in for a heart catheterization the day before the panel. "Outpatient," he said. They put in three new stents and kept me overnight. I got out late morning, and went to the panel that evening. We didn't know if anyone would show up. I bought file cards and had people write questions, which I read to the panel. We had more than sixty people come, mostly students, with a lot of tough questions about religion and LGBT people. I didn't know Dr. Fryson well, and he showed up at the last minute, which made me nervous. His answers however, were intelligent and compassionate and he spoke beautifully and directly to the points people raised. All of the panelists were good, but he was the superstar. I'm happy for him now that he is able to semi-retire and go back to Charleston, where his family is from, but I don't think he can be replaced at West Virginia University.

With David Fryson, Esq., at his reception , February 4 at West Virginia University