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.