Los Angeles and Palm Springs

 I finished my second and last term on Morgantown's City Council June 30. Joe had a wedding in early July, a bar mitzvah July 17, and a bat mitzvah August 14. We were working on renegotiating our mortgage. We had a narrow time where we could get away. We were gone July 19 to August 2. 

The Centers For Disease Control said that, since we were fully vaccinated, we could go anywhere without masks and be safe. We discussed driving up to New England, but we both wanted to see our long-time friends in California. We decided on a week in Los Angeles and a week in San Francisco. Joe's credit card gives him points, and they have a travel agent on staff to help out. That took care of much of the plane fare. I booked hotels through "The Usual Chain" where I have points. We were able to rent an overpriced car in Los Angeles, but the agent couldn't find us one in San Francisco. I'll write a separate post about our week in San Francisco.

By the time we left, the Delta variant had shown up in the United States. Los Angeles County required everyone, vaccinated or not, to wear a mask indoors. We had to be more careful than we expected to be.

We drove to Pittsburgh to the airport early for a 9 A.M. flight. I picked up my carry-on bag, which was too heavy, and the strap slid across my arm, taking my paper-like skin with it. This was at 5 A.M. as we were trying to get out of the house. I bandaged it as best I could. We changed planes in Denver, where the airport was crowded with, to my eyes, more people than live in West Virginia. Both planes were full. "Social distancing" was a joke. They did ask everyone to wear a mask in the terminals and on the plane. Almost everyone complied in the terminals, and everyone on the planes. 

We got our car, supposedly mid-size, but actually a compact, which wasn't bad. Compacts are bigger than they used to be. I had booked a motel on Colorado Boulevard in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles, between Glendale and Pasadena. It's not a wealthy or Jewish neighborhood, but there's a mall with a Target and a Macy's and a Trader Joe's. It took an hour and ten minutes to get to the motel from the airport. The desk clerk said "You made good time."

The purpose of the trip was to see our friends, and we had mapped out a schedule for lunches and dinners for the week we were there. Many of my friends are from Beth Chayim Chadashim, the synagogue where most members are LGB or T and where I met Joe in 2005.  Joe was a popular student rabbi there from 2007-2009. I became a member in 1987, and maintain a membership. My closest friends from there are not Hollywood heavies, but teachers and librarians, mostly now retired. Joe's friends in Los Angeles are women who were in rabbinical school with him. 

Despite just getting in and being off by three time zones, we found out that the gay mens' hike in Griffith Park was back on (after being off for a year because of COVID), so we went. It was mostly the same people we knew years ago, maybe fewer of them. They don't go all the way to the top of the hill as they used to, and they rarely go out for dinner afterwards, although they agreed to go with us. We got behind when I saw my friend Meyer, known as Mike, an avid hiker and a Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh native, and we stopped to talk. By the time we got back to the starting point, everyone had left. 

I was worried about my arm, and Tuesday morning I found Eagle Rock Urgent Care online, and we stopped by after breakfast. The motel typically provides breakfast, but all they had to offer was a bag with a microwaveable sandwich, a packaged pastry and juice. We ate that one or two days, otherwise we went out. I had told Joe I wanted to see someone who remembered when I was a substitute teacher in Los Angeles schools, or when I was a bar and bat mitzvah tutor at Temple Israel of Hollywood. 

The woman who checked me in at the clinic was named Karla, and I asked her if she was from around there. She was and had gone to Florence Nightingale and Luther Burbank for middle school and Benjamin Franklin High School, before her parents pulled her out to go to Catholic schools. I told her she was probably too young to remember me, but then she said "I'm forty-two and I thought you looked familiar." She told me some personal stuff which I don't want to share here. I was happy that someone remembered me from my work.

We arranged to be in Long Beach by 11, maybe thirty miles from where we were staying, We met up with two of my favorite couples, Jonathan and George, and Stephen and Thomas. I was friends with Jonathan and Stephen when we were all single, but by the time I met Joe, Jonathan had paired up with George and they had adopted a child, now a rising high school senior, and Stephen and Thomas were together. We walked along the ocean in Long Beach while catching up, and stopped for lunch. Later on, Joe and I went out for coffee with my friend Ted, also in Long Beach, leaving at 5 P.M. in the usual traffic to get back to our motel. Tuesday night we were in Alhambra with my friend Greg, who I used to hike with in Griffith Park, when our group did a much longer and more complicated hike. 

I went back to the clinic Wednesday, then we headed to South Bay, near the airport, for lunch with Deborah, one of Joe's rabbinic colleagues, and her husband and two children. We saw Dahlia, another rabbinic colleague, Saturday night in Woodland Hills, in the far western part of the San Fernando Valley. Joe was close with her in school, and one of my first dates with Joe was to Dahlia's wedding. Their two daughters are thirteen and eleven now, and learning to talk back to their parents.

We spent Wednesday late afternoon and evening with Rabbi Lisa Edwards and her wife, Tracy Moore (not the L.A. writer whose work we've seen recently). Lisa was the rabbi at Beth Chayim Chadashim for twenty-five years before retiring recently. She picked Joe to be her student rabbi for two years (after we were a couple, or else it would have been against the rules for us to get together) and she performed our wedding. We sat by their pool and snacked. I would have gone in the pool but for my bandaged arm. Our friends Jim and Michelle came by. Jim and I were L.A.'s version of Akbar and Jeff, "brothers or lovers, whichever offends you most." We're not brothers and we were never lovers. I sang at his wedding to Michelle. He's still active in BCC. We visited at their home Sunday for lunch.

We took a side trip to Palm Springs, a place where many gay men retire. Two couples, Joe's friends from San Francisco, moved there in recent years, and my friend Richard, a now-retired college-level ESL teacher, also moved there. We spent one night with Dan and Jerry in their mid-century modern house, remodeled. They claim they have more stuff to move in, but I liked it uncluttered and clean looking. We also met with Paul and Deek, longtime pals of Joe from San Francisco. They live in Cathedral City, next to Palm Springs. Friday, we saw Richard, who lives in a large complex that reminds me of where I lived in Florida forty years ago. We all went out Friday night to an early service at a synagogue in Palm Desert (past Palm Springs and Cathedral City). The rabbi there graduated a year or two before Joe, but I met him when I first moved to Los Angeles in 1984, when he was probably just out of college. It was a nice reunion, as Richard also knew him, and he was in school with Joe. We stayed over at Richard's and came back into Los Angeles Saturday.

Joe loved Palm Springs, and suggested we move there when he retires, possibly in three years when his contract at Tree of Life in Morgantown expires and he will be almost 68. I have my doubts. It was 109 F. there and had been 120. I've been to Palm Springs a few times (twice before with Joe) and it's nice, I guess, but I would like a more "real" city and not a collection of resort-style suburbs. 

 I loved seeing everyone, and we're sorry we didn't get to see everyone we wanted to see. BCC had services Friday, but it was only open to board members; they were hoping to have the full congregation back the week after. We didn't get to the West Side and missed Israeli dancing on the beach in Santa Monica with my former dance partner, Reva. We missed Jerry, Gordon and Neal, and friends from Morgantown and Fairmont who live in Los Angeles now. For old times sake, we drove Sunday night to the Farmers Market on Fairfax, near where we lived together, and had dinner outside with hundreds of people. We put at least 700 miles on our little car in a week. I slid right into freeway driving, and I felt "at home."

I want to mention also the "ghosts" who inhabit Los Angeles, friends who died while I lived there and after. I still fell the presence of Sue, Sherry, Art, Fred, Avram and others who are no longer with us. I went through lots of changes in Los Angeles, and everywhere reminds me of something. I pointed out an apartment building to Joe where I rehearsed scenes for an acting class with someone I can't picture, an apartment building in Los Feliz where a wall crumbled in the Northridge earthquake, and I remembered the two young men whose names I can't recall that were in the performance art workshop I attended in the 1990s, and died of AIDS. 

I understand why we are strangers after nine years in Morgantown. We were 62 and 55 when we moved here, and people our age had lifetime friends. I was thirty-four when I came to Los Angeles and sixty when I left. From our temple, I had a community of gay men and lesbian women, singles and couples. That doesn't exist in Morgantown. I'm not criticizing our little town. I understand that people had their long-time friends before we got here, just as my long-term friends are in Los Angeles. 

I don't feel a need to go somewhere else to live, not even to Southern California. I grew up only 200 miles from Morgantown, and there is a familiarity (and familiar allergies) to what I knew in Baltimore. I guess my persona is split these days, and I can cope with that. I'm glad we got away and saw our friends, and I hope the world doesn't shut down again. 

                                             With our hiking group, Great Outdoors, in Griffith Park

                                             The view from Griffith Park across Glendale

          With our crew in Long Beach, l.to r.: Joe, Jonathan, Thomas, Stephen, Barry and George

                                                        On the ocean in Long Beach

             At Lisa and Tracy's pool. Lisa has the glasses. With Jim. The red on my arm is a bandage

                        Bagels and lox and fruit with Jim and Michelle in their garden in Altadena.

California 2019

What's not to like? We decided to be adults and stay in a motel, rent a car. We had maid service, breakfast was included, friends took us out to dinner or cooked for us. The rain stopped, as it usually does at the end of May. I glanced at e-mails about the water pipeline and annexation, looked at the Charleston newspaper, but not the one from Morgantown. Joe freed himself, at least a little, from his rabbi persona, and relaxed.

In San Francisco we stayed at My Usual Chain, where we got a free night, at the foot of Russian Hill and walking distance to Fisherman's Wharf. It's a touristy area. In Los Angeles, we stayed in Pasadena, where we have friends, but away from the noise of West Hollywood, the expense of Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles. Parking was free, but we drove 600 miles in a week just to get around.

I had several goals for the trip: generally to get away after the toxic City Council election, which I won by a large majority, to get Joe away from the crush of responsibilities, and his contract negotiations (even though both he and the congregation want him to continue as Tree of Life's leader). More specifically, Joe has a long-time friend in San Francisco who is ill, and I wanted to make sure Joe saw him again, and Rabbi Lisa Edwards, of Beth Chayim Chadashim in Los Angeles, who I met when she was a student rabbi, who mentored Joe as her student rabbi for two years, and who married us in 2008, was retiring, and the annual BCC brunch was honoring her and her wife Tracy Moore. So, a week in San Francisco from May 23 to 30, and a week in Los Angeles from the 30th to June 6.

We hiked, we danced, we saw lots of friends. I went off to the East Bay from San Francisco to see my cousin Eric, his wife Karen, their son David, his wife Julia and their daughter, not yet a year old. They all migrated from Long Island to Contra Costa County, and they had that look that people have when their life markedly improves.

Joe and I gave up lifetimes of friends to go first to Crescent City, which was at least still in California, then to West Virginia, closer to his birthplace in Buffalo and mine in Baltimore. For Joe, it was a career choice; for me, a chance to support my husband.

I learned some things that I can use as a Councilor in Morgantown. San Francisco planned years ago to cut auto traffic, tearing down an earthquake-damaged freeway and not building parking. People with money use Uber and Lyft to ride to and from work to avoid the lack of parking; tech companies run a private bus system while BART, Muni and the busses continue to crumble. There are bike stations around town, and electric scooters, proposed for Morgantown, but not implemented. I never saw anyone wear a helmet while riding an electric scooter, and although the speed is supposed to be limited, they seemed to go fast down San Francisco's hills. I would not want to see them here.

Homelessness is up in Los Angeles. Many freeway overpasses have people living in tents beneath them, a disgrace in a city with as much money floating around as Los Angeles has. A proposed school levy for Los Angeles Unified School District, where I worked for more than eighteen years, Proposition EE, which would have added nurses and counselors to the schools and reduce class sizes, was defeated while we were there. Rich people in Los Angeles don't send their kids to public school. People in Los Angeles told us the subways and busses are dangerous or unpleasant and they avoid them, which is too bad. There is now a good basic system to get around, and a new line is being built to Inglewood and the airport. While I have many friends in the Los Angeles area, and the weather is nearly perfect most of the year, it is a bit like in "Blade Runner," not an entirely functional place.

Many people in West Virginia said "Be careful!" when I told them we would be in Los Angeles for a week, but the only time I was scared was navigating the freeways in our rented Ford Escape. And maybe I was frightened when we hiked up Eaton Canyon north of Pasadena, crossing a stream several times, and, in my case, falling in once and banging up my already injured wrist. Lots of people were hiking up the canyon, even though signs warned us that it was dangerous. Most of the hikers were in their teens and twenties.

We met with two women rabbis in Los Angeles who graduated with Joe, each with a husband, a house, and two children born in the ten years since ordination. One flies to a smallish town in Texas monthly to be the rabbi; the other works as an educator at a synagogue. Both stayed in Los Angeles for their husbands' jobs. Joe feels they are underemployed, but I can see how they care for their children, and I doubt they regret their choices.

And I don't regret our choices either. Yes, we gave up a lot. Some of Joe's friends in San Francisco go back to his college years, and I saw when I first met them that they grieved losing Joe from their circle. I had several communities in Los Angeles, from BCC, from Israeli dancing, from Great Outdoors, a gay hiking group, from the schools where I worked, and the temples where I sang and the one where I worked with bar and bat mitzvah kids. I divided my close friends into two categories: "stuck" and "moved on." One of my gay friends married a beautiful and accomplished woman, who moved him into a social circle that was more appropriate for his own accomplishments. Another gay friend married a man, bought a house and adopted a child, now a teenager. My "stuck" friends never found the right guy, although they are smart, not bad looking, and financially stable, if not wealthy. I thought of them when I met Joe, how easy it would have been to say "I'm not leaving my life here," and then letting him go. I was old enough to make a rational decision, although there may have been more emotion there than I care to admit.

Beth Chayim Chadashim has hired an interim rabbi, a course recommended when a long-time and much-loved rabbi like Lisa Edwards leaves. Maybe after a year or so, a new rabbi won't be compared,  perhaps unfairly, to the former rabbi. Many people asked me at BCC's brunch if Joe would like to come back to Los Angeles to be the rabbi  in a year. We've talked about the possibility, and I know Joe has spoken with Rabbi Lisa. Sure, it would be easier to live in California: the weather, the politics (compare Shelley Moore Capito to Kamala Harris or Jim Justice to Gavin Newsom), the people we love and who love us.

But we've been in West Virginia for seven years now, and Joe is revered at Tree of Life, and I've been reelected to Morgantown's City Council. Traffic here is backed up for one mile on two streets, as opposed to being backed up on 45 miles of eight-lane freeway. Nine years ago, at sixty, I took a giant leap with Joe to move away from the people I knew; he had leapt five years earlier when he left for rabbinical school. As I approach seventy, I'm feeling more settled, and more risk-averse. Morgantown has become a much more gay-friendly place in the years we've been here, and we have helped make that difference, even if we are two generations older than the LGBT activists who are continuing to transform our town.

To travel across the country is hard now, and I don't know when or if we'll get back. I would love to be closer to my cousins, to see my long-time friends more often, for both of us to be more comfortable in our surroundings than we are in West Virginia. But Morgantown is our home now, and I can't complain about the people we've met, especially at Tree of Life and in liberal politics, where we have love and respect.

Yes, it was great being in beautiful San Francisco and Los Angeles with our friends and family, but I understand that our life now is here in Morgantown.

With my Polk family cousins in Walnut Creek, Contra Costa County

Windows on Castro St. in San Francisco celebrating the memory of Harvey Milk

Joe's friend Randy from college, his husband Greg with us in the Castro District, San Francisco

With our friends Glenn and Caroline in the Outer Sunset, San Francisco

Lunch in San Mateo with Joe's long-time friend Paul and his husband

Near the entrance to Eaton Canyon County Park, Altadena, CA near Los Angeles

At BCC's brunch at the Skirball Museum in Bel Air, Los Angeles

After a hike in Griffith Park with thirty mostly older gay men, Twenty of us dined at an Italian restaurant in Los Feliz, Los Angeles. Photo is with John, Mark and Rob, long-time friends, and Steffan (seated), a new friend.

With my long-time friend Jonathan at Dominguez Gap Wetlands in Long Beach,  Los Angeles County

With my Israeli dance partner of Many years, Reva at "Dance With  Orly"