October, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Medical Check-In

I have healthcare through WVU Hospitals. I see a general practitioner annually, a cardiologist, dermatologist and allergist usually twice a year, and I have an annual check-in with a Medicare doctor. They GP, cardiologist and Medicare doctor  were scheduled for this month, but the general practitioner was postponed and they asked me to do an online with the Medicare doctor. I've seen the same Medicare doctor for four years, a soft-spoken Italian woman. This year they told me she was on leave and gave me a physician's assistant. There were complicated instructions involving an app on my phone, but they relented somewhat and said I could do it on a laptop. The app on the laptop wanted permission to go into all the other apps on my desktop and change them, so no. The phone app was better, but then there was a WVU app on top of that that wanted to access everything on my phone. When I clicked "No" it said I couldn't use it, so I said "Yes."' Later, I sent a note to WVU complaining.

The PA was an older woman  (I checked. Her degree was from 1979, so maybe sixty). She had issues with the technology. They always ask the same questions "Do you have rugs or rickety stairs?" "Do you have a bar in your bathtub to hold on to?" "Are you afraid in your house?" No, I'm afraid out of my house these days. They test your memory, and ask if you are depressed. "I'm a 70-year old gay man living in West Virgina," I said. "Of course I'm depressed." I said that.

I told her about being sick all of January after spending a glorious week running around Manhattan at the end of December. Is it possible I had a mild case of COVID-19? Mild, like not going out of the house for ten days, then no more than an hour a day for the next ten, not being well until the end of February. She told me there is a test, but we don't have it, and if you had it before, we don't know if you can get it again. The regular test for the virus would show if you had it, but you don't qualify for the test.

Meanwhile, our Governor wants to partly reopen the state this week. Maybe outdoor dining if separated from others (and if it ever stops raining) and haircuts. Our county is not included, because we are considered a "hotspot" in the state with 107 confirmed cases. My constituents are already asking City Council here in Morgantown to block off a lane on certain streets to add space for cafés on the expanded sidewalk. And Delegate Evan Hansen, from our district, and a scientist by training, points out that, although the state has recorded fifty deaths from COVID-19, statistics show that deaths in the state since the first of the year are running 1,600 above what one might expect, with most of the "excess deaths" in March and April. So maybe the pandemic is worse here than people think. Certainly everyone should be tested, and everyone should be covered by healthcare, not just rich people or people who are here "legally." People who lose their jobs, and thus their health insurance must be covered. You can't stop a pandemic if there is anyone excluded from treatment. Anyone.

Joe and I have still been going to the grocery store twice a week. All but one worker at our local Kroger is masked, but the vendors who come in to stock the shelves are typically not, and many of the customers are not masked, especially the younger ones. With pressure from the state and federal government to reopen quickly, I fear going out in the future will be terrifying. Even our city manager's office has proposed reopening. There's a meeting tonight (Tuesday) and I know some of us will object to opening city offices too soon.

In addition to my OLLI class and City Council, I've been reading a lot, five books at a time. I'm reading about the music from the Brill Building in the 1960s (my next class), a haunting collection of short stories from Carol Shields, purchased at a library sale in New Vienna, Ohio on my trip to Clinton County in December of 2018, a Pulitzer-winning book about people who are evicted, and how and why that happens. I'm reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' book We Had Eight Years, a collection of his writings during the Obama presidency with new commentaries, and Vikram Seth's more than 1500 page novel about India in 1951 and 1952, which I'm reading for the third time, A Suitable Boy. Coates attended my high school, briefly, I think, and twenty-five years after I graduated.

I read Morgantown's Dominion-Post and Charleston's Gazette-Mail every day, and Sunday's Washington Post and New York Times. We get Consumer Reports and Rolling Stone for me, and The New Yorker and The Economist for Joe. Joe has stopped reading news for the most part. It makes him too anxious. I have to read about the virus in New York City and the politics in Washington in short doses to keep from losing my mind completely.

I'm traveling in my dreams. Last night, I told the bus driver parked on 6th Street by the Los Angeles County Art Museum that I wouldn't be going on the trip to New York because I had been there with Joe in December, and last year with my mother and sister. I had a memory in the dream of visiting some elderly relative in The Bronx in an apartment house on a hill. I was, in reality, in New York with Joe in December, and in New York with my mother and sister (and nephew) not last summer, but in 2002. I haven't had relatives in the Bronx since the 1950s. That scene was filched from another dream. My friend and classmate (second to eighth grade) Rodger Kamenetz writes about dreams. Maybe I should ask him what this means.

The PA at WVU was only worried that I get up to pee five or six times during the night. She doesn't think it's heart failure because I run several days a week, and that seems to be getting better. Maybe it's kidney failure or prostate problems. She wants tests for all of those. The cardiologist told me that  my heart works at 40% of what it should do. My father died of kidney failure (refusing dialysis) when he was a year and a half younger than I am now. And Medicare won't cover a prostate test.

So, the future doesn't look bright. My generation had too many people to start out with. They sent some of us to Vietnam to reduce our numbers, ignored AIDS for many years to kill off those of us who are gay men, and now that we are old, we are expendable so that the economy can reopen. Without the possibility of contracting or contracting again COVID-19, I still have plenty of medical issues that could end my life. I was able to answer most of the questions in a good way. I generally remember to take my meds, I can still keep track of money, carry grocery bags, remember most things, cook, clean (although I pointed out that we generally don't). I don't fall or feel dizzy. My goal now is to keep it all going as long as possible. I said the other day "If I can have ten more years of decent health, I'll be happy." Then I remembered that one of my grandmother's friends said that sitting around the lake in her Florida condo development more than fifty years ago. I guess that's where I am now.

Still Locked Up

Looking at my last few blog posts, I see that in mid-March the temperature in Morgantown was in the seventies and eighties. April is running thirty degrees cooler, rainy and overcast.  There are only eighty-three confirmed COVID-19 cases in Monongalia County, but that is eighty-three times the one case we had a month ago. Two counties in West Virginia, both somewhat larger than ours, have more cases, and their number of cases is rising more rapidly. I would suggest that people here are more immune, not to the virus, but to the talking heads of Fox News and the White House who think we should just go about our business and let people die.

We are both busy. Joe is teaching and leading services. I have city council business to deal with and a meeting coming up Tuesday. I will be at an online funeral tomorrow for a long-time acquaintance in Los Angeles who died this week, and my postponed class at Osher Life-Long Learning, "The Great Hits And Albums of 1968," starts online this coming Friday. I have learned to use Facebook Live, Zoom and Cisco Webex. For me, all this isolation is a taste of the world to come, not the afterlife, but the time when I'm really retired and can sit home and read books and not have to be anywhere.

I've been taking my temperature and monitoring my breathing. My temperature has not gone over 98 F.  My breathing has been impaired from the dust in the house, from running on windy, pollen-strewn days, and from Joe occasionally adding an unfamiliar spice to his cooking. I always think I have "it," but I recover quickly.

Our Governor, Jim Justice, a liar and long-time grifter like the President, has at least expressed an interest in keeping people healthy, and not rushing to "reopen" the economy, unlike protestors in Ohio who look like zombies, and in Michigan, who were apparently paid for by someone who works for Betsy DeVos. And don't get me started on the talking heads who say we would only lose one to two percent of the school kids if we opened schools now, or that killing off old people to save the economy is a fair bargain. I plan to stay in until everyone can be tested and there is a vaccine.

I miss my trips to counties within three hundred miles of here, and I miss the library and sitting in a restaurant or walking around the mall. I'd like my class to be live. I've said before that we are privileged because our income and health insurance are stable, and we have enough space to not be tripping over each other at home. I've come to appreciate Joe more, because I see more of his work, and he has gone out of his way to be considerate and helpful. I can't imagine being without him. And I have to give shout-out to Tappuz Katom, our cat, who seems to alway show up when one of us is looking for company.

When this is over, I hope to do less, drive less, buy less, be more environmentally aware. Shutting things down has created cleaner air, given a break to wildlife in the oceans and on land. Maybe our whole economy needs to take a breath and wind down. I'll take my twelve hundred dollars and give it to local people running for office to make West Virginia a place I would be proud to call home.

Mallard Fillmore and Why My "Red Is Up."

It's hard enough to read Morgantown's Dominion-Post these days, now that they have added Michelle Malkin as a columnist, in addition to Cal Thomas, both flame-throwing fascists, calling themselves "conservatives." They also run Bruce Tinsley's "Mallard Fillmore" on their editorial page every day. It just "gets my red up" as my new hero, Trae Crowder, likes to say. Last week, I had enough of Tinsley and wrote a letter to the paper. They haven't published it yet, and I was going to wait until Sunday to see if they found room. They usually do publish my letters, eventually.

There was a letter today from Pastor Terry Hagedorn, of Calvary Baptist Church in Reedsville, West Virginia. Reedsville is located fifteen miles southeast of Morgantown, in Preston County. It had a population of 593 as of 2010, and is 98.5% white according to the census. Pastor Hagedorn's letter is about the football player who won't stand for the Star-Spangled Banner.. He claims racism is in the past. He would know, living in a virtually all-white community in a rural area.

I'm so angry about what goes on politically, especially here in West Virginia, but nationally as well. I protested last week at Mylan Pharmaceuticals' factory a few blocks from our house,After lobbying to have Epi-Pens in all the schools, they raised the price from under $100 for a pack of two to $600. The CEO raised her own pay from five million to sixteen million. I also marched with WVU's Black Students' Union and NAACP  to protest targeting of African-American males by some policemen.

Yesterday, both the Morgantown and Charleston newspapers ran a two-page ad from the CEO of Dominion Gas about why workers were locked out in a labor dispute. The dispute is because the company, highly profitable, wants to eliminate retirement and pension benefits for new hires.

The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce invited the Democratic and Republican candidates for Governor to their annual conference. The Chamber has previously lauded the Republicans in our state for cutting business taxes, eliminating prevailing wage, and implementing "right-to-work" which means no one has to pay union dues, even though the union is still obligated to represent all workers. This is the kind of thing Republicans like, but our Democratic candidate, Jim Justice, attended this conference and said he is with the Chamber of Commerce. And our Democratic candidate for Attorney General, Doug Reynolds, voted for a "religious freedom" bill in the Legislature this year, which would have allowed discrimination against LGBT people. He also voted for a twenty-week abortion ban, which passed, and wants to continue to defy Federal guidelines allowing transgender people to use the restroom that fits their identity. He introduced a bill in the Legislature to demand that West Virginia colleges and universities allow concealed weapons on campus. Justice and Reynolds are the Democrats. The Republicans are worse.

Back to Mallard Fillmore. In last Thursday's cartoon, August 31, Tinsley shows Hillary Clinton saying "...And if you think being gay is a crime... or that women are chattel... or that Jews are vermin... Donald Trump is such a bigot... (new balloon) ... that he doesn't want you to come to his country.!" There is a pic of Trump.

Here's my response:

"Bruce Tinsley, in his cartoon "Mallard Fillmore," is often offensive. His cartoon published Wednesday, August 31, hits a new low. As a Jew, a gay man, and the son and brother of women, I feel compelled to speak about this. Although Tinsley does not explicitly say it is Muslims Trump plans to keep out of the United States, the meaning is obvious from the context and from Trump's own statements.

The Republican Party has never been any kind of friend to gay people. At the National Religious Liberties Conference in Des Moines last November,Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal, all contenders for the Republican nomination for President, appeared with Kevin Swanson, a pastor who has called for the death penalty for gay people. just not yet, but when America embraces the "one true religion." It's not Muslims I'm afraid of. Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, claim they will overturn same-gender marriage.. They have opposed every kind of law proposed to give LGBT people equal rights in employment and housing.

Locally, Republican legislators have supported "Religious freedom" bills that allow discrimination against LGBT people for allegedly religious reasons. It is not the Islamic community that has asked for these laws. The Dominion-Post often publishes hate-filled letters aimed at LGBT people, sometimes signed "Pastor."

Jewish journalists who have covered the Trump campaign have been bombarded with anti-Jewish memes and threatened with death by Trump supporters. Trump's comments to and about women have been ugly and stupid.

I have attended interfaith meetings which have included Islamic, Christian and Jewish leaders. One of these, called to support resettling Syrian refugees in the United States, attracted several hundred people, of many religious faiths, right here in Morgantown. After the shootings at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the Islamic Association of West Virginia issued a statement in support of the gay community,

Maybe your newspaper hasn't noticed, but there is a large Islamic community here in Morgantown, and to allow someone to smear that entire community is despicable. As the only local daily paper in town, you should know better. "


I ran for office to change the political culture of West Virginia. Between Donald Trump's wide-support here, the greed-based oil, gas and pharmaceutical industries located here, and the Chamber of Commerce that they support, and a Democratic Party that lost control of the state by not standing for anything substantive, and whose leadership continues to block progressives from power, I'm not sure their is hope for this state.


It may be hopeless, but I support Charlotte Pritt and Michael Sharley of The Mountain Party for Governor and Attorney General respectively in the upcoming election. And I will continue to protest greed-based corporations in favor of workers and the environment. And yes, I support Colin Kaepernick's right to protest by not standing for "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The Election and What I'm Doing About It

This is one of those election years where no one really knows what will happen. The "Brexit" vote in England went against all predictions. Politicians there borrowed from Donald Trump's playbook here: bash immigrants, "The Elite" and prey on the legitimate fears of working class Caucasians that they are being left out of this so-called "recovery." They have a point, except that immigrants, gays, and women having abortions are clearly not the problem.

I have never voted for a Republican, and I don't plan to start now. In my campaign for West Virginia Delegate, I aligned myself with the Bernie Sanders people. This was not political calculation on my part (although Sanders won in every county in West Virginia). I am thrilled that a candidate came up who was willing to talk about economic inequality, breaking up the big banks, and being inclusive of everyone in our country. Although Sanders is not traditionally religious, he embraces core Jewish values, whether he knows it or not.

I don't believe Hillary Clinton is a crook or even a bad person. She would have been a great candidate in 2000 or 2004. She lost to a brash outsider in 2008, and I believe she deserves to lose now. Only the system is rigged in her favor. Sanders pointed out in an interview in Rolling Stone that despite winning in every county in West Virginia, six of our eight superdelegates are pledged to Clinton.

Things are worse than that in West Virginia. Our Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, did not appear at the state's Democratic convention, except at a lunch he sponsored in honor of the Democratic Party's West Virginia chair, Belinda Biafore. There was an election for a new state chair, and Chris Regan, a hero to progressives in this state, was defeated for the position of state chair. Still, we passed a progressive platform from the floor of the convention. I'm sure the platform will be ignored. That's how things roll here.

There's hostility in this state  from Democrats toward their anointed leaders. Jim Justice, a coal mogul, Republican until last year, and the wealthiest person in West Virginia, has not taken positions on most issues. Our Attorney General candidate, Doug Reynolds, has an anti-gay, anti-choice and pro-gun voting record. Ugh. And Hillary Clinton's record of being the Senator from Wall Street has not helped her with working people here.

I've been fending off people on Facebook who post horrible anti-Clinton stuff. Not Republicans, because I have "unfollowed" them, but Democrats. At this point, I'm hoping for a convention miracle that will give Bernie the nomination, or at least that the platform will accept his ideas, for what that's worth. Still, if Clinton gets the nomination, I will support her.

On the Republican side, there is shock and outrage every time Trump opens his mouth. Republican stalwarts are abandoning ship for fear they will be tarred with his legacy and shamed forever. To me, the Republican Party has pandered to racists and gay-haters for decades. Trump only says what they've been thinking all along, only with his Outer Borough lack of manners and WASP "tastefulness." They deserve him.

This year, we will have to eat shit (to put it delicately) and vote for the Democrats. For the future, I would hope progressives and unionists will form a new, more open party, pro-union, pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-diversity, and pro-environment. We can start by electing local leaders who can reach everyone , uniting anti-corporate, pro-worker, inclusive people of good will to overturn the status quo in West Virginia and in the United States. We have our work cut out for us.