The Campaign and Purim

I planned an event for last night (Wednesday March 23) not realizing that it was Purim. Technically, Purim didn't start until sunset, which as far west as we are in the Eastern time zone and with daylight savings time, was about 7:40. The event was 6 to 8.

Last December, I attended a training session in Wheeling for new candidates, run by a community organizing group called Our Children, Our Future. They said that to be successful, a candidate needs to start a year early, and have a committee of, ideally, twelve people to take care of the campaign. Then you have to call everyone you know personally and ask them for money.

I had already pre-filed to run when I attended this session. Actual filing had to be during a few weeks in January. I asked my friend Dee to be my treasurer. She agreed, and also put together a website for me. I've done everything else. People have offered me money, for which I am grateful, but I can't bring myself to call people and ask them to donate.

There are eight Democrats running in the primary; five of us will run in the general election. Five of them, including the incumbent, are friends, or at least acquaintances I respect. I've met one more, who seems nice enough, but hasn't run much of a campaign, and the eighth I have never met. People in town know him; their opinions of him are mixed.

I had an interview with the Mon/Preston Labor Council  the first Saturday in March. They were friendly, and I took their side on issues with no strain on my conscience. Then they asked me how much money I would need to win in the primary, and what was my organization like? I told them I had raised about a thousand dollars, and that there was no organization. Last week, Dan Doyle, the guy in charge of endorsing candidates, called to tell me they would not endorse me, because I had no organization.I perfectly understand that, and don't resent them or the people they endorsed (the five I like). Not that I wasn't depressed about it.

So I had a campaign event last night. Most of the other candidates, and the candidates for other offices, have had these at a sports bar near our house. One had his event at an out-of-the-way working class bar, and one had his event downtown at an Irish bar. I didn't want any of those places. Joe suggested Terra Café, a place on the river with good food, a little too "quinoa salad" for me.
I settled on Black Bear Burritos, a locally owned joint with good food, a branch downtown and one out by us. I chose the suburban location because parking is free.

In addition to Purim, West Virginia University has been off this week, meaning that lots of people are out of town. I didn't have signs or bumper stickers to give out. I tried to make a WANTED! poster with my picture in the middle, but I couldn't get the picture on it correctly. I finally asked Joe to do it, and then it was good. The event, called "Premiere!" because Joe doesn't like sports metaphors like "kick-off" was advertised by the local Democratic Party. I advertised with G2H2, the gay men's group we go out with every month, several Facebook groups for local activists, my main Facebook and Twitter feeds (mostly people who don't live here), and the LGBT Equity Commission at WVU, of which I am a member. We planned for sixty people.

We had more like forty people. They ate one-third of the food I ordered. I collected enough cash to pay for about three-quarters of the event. The local tax assessor came, two women from the Democratic central committee, two Bernie Sanders organizers, many people from temple, a woman from the LGBT Equity Commission, a parent whose son was in "Fiddler On The Roof" two years ago when I played the rabbi, and a few other local Jewish or gay or political friends.

Everyone got along well, people mingled and had a good time. I played "We're All In This Together" from "High School Musical" on Joe's boombox as the intro to my speech.

I spoke about how Joe and I came to Morgantown and were instantly accepted, how I teach at OLLI, and how Joe has become the go-to person for Jewish knowledge in eleven counties in West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. We were told that Morgantown was the college town  liberal bubble in West Virginia.

How is it then, I asked, that Republicans could grab four of our five local seats in the legislature, and vote for bills to allow home schooling by parents with less than a high school education with no reporting requirements, support charter schools, vote for a "religious freedom" law to allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT people and "right-to-work" to bust up unions, and a bill to allow anyone to carry a concealed weapon without any training or a permit despite the fact that law enforcement throughout the state opposed this. It's easy to attack this year's legislature this year. They did not pass a budget or fix the state's hopelessly non-maintained road system. Instead they passed a law mandating that state business be conducted in English (no one had proposed anything else) and that welfare recipients be drug-tested if the worker thinks they look suspicious, a lawsuit against the state waiting to happen.

I pointed out that the other Democratic candidates were sticking to a pro-union agenda, but were afraid to talk about social issues like guns, God, gays and abortion. I suggested that they lost last time because people were not inspired by their caution. I came out strongly for gay rights, women's reproductive rights, and sensible gun regulation. People said I spoke well, and had nice clothes.

People have said in the past "Too bad you didn't get to use all that acting training." Acting training helped me as a teacher, a politician and a public speaker.

I'm happy with how my event went. I proved to myself that I do have a base here in Morgantown, people I like and respect. At this point, I will probably come in sixth and not qualify for the general election. But like that other old Jew, Bernie Sanders, one of my role models, don't count me out yet.

Joe showed up late at the event after tutoring bar mitzvah kids. We packed up the five trays of food we didn't get to, and walked out to a giant, beautiful Purim full moon. The Chabad rabbi in town called Joe and invited us to hear the megillah last night, and come to dinner tonight. It feels good to be invited, but it was already late last night when we left Black Bear, and we have plans tonight. Still, even the Orthodox rabbi in town is our friend. On Purim, it is a commandment to bring food packages to the poor. We called a local homeless shelter, and they agreed to take our four trays of gourmet wraps and one of veggies and hummus. Thus we fulfilled, without thinking of it in advance, one commandment of Purim.

Purim is also the anniversary, on the Jewish calendar, of my mother's death in 2003. I thought of her as I was dressing to go to the event last night, about how important it was to her, no matter what, to dazzle people with her stylish clothes. We got home after nine, lit a candle in her memory, and despite the lack of ten people normally required, I recited the Kaddish prayer.

Here are the pictures;

With med student Bradley and activist TIm

with fellow candidate Nancy Jamison

Friends (from left) Shirley, Maggie and Alexandra

Friends Ruth, Judy and Laura

Candis (Milford Mill '69, back left) and her daughter Lauren, Jamie and her two sons and another friend

with my friend, author Benyamin Cohen

with Jamie and Danielle, Bernie Sanders activists

Here's link to my candidate website: http://www.barryinthehouse.com .

More pics from Israel

Mosque on the sea at the entrance to Tel Aviv

Soldiers at McDonald's in Yafo.

Ruth Daniel Residence, where we stayed in Yafo. An American tourist was stabbed to death on this street March 8.

Graffiti and flyer in Neve Tsedek, between Tel Aviv and Yafo. The flyer is in memory of someone on the anniversary of their death. The stencil in English says "There is no pride in occupation."

A street in Neve Tsedek

Someone photographing an Ethiopian Wedding, Botanical Garden, Tel Aviv

Russian Church from The Botanical Garden, Tel Aviv

Café scene, Neve Tsedek, Saturday afternoon

Hipster hangout, Yafo

Yafo on the coast, looking at Tel Aviv's skyline

New housing, Tel Aviv, from Neve Tsedek

Carpets for sale in the shuk, or market, in Yafo

The view from our hotel, Yafo

Dinner at a "Tripolitan" (from Tripoli, Libya) restaurant with our friend Arieh David Scharnberg, from Humboldt County, California, now living in Yafo.

English-language ad for luxury condos, Yafo. Draw your own conclusions.

Poster for "Man of the Hour" a dance performance, Neve Tsedek.

Seaside mosque, Yafo

These are the pictures from Tel Aviv-Yafo (Jaffa) that I promised last week in my blog post "Israel."

Israel

We’re on the plane on our way back from Israel a week after we left to go there. It’s almost ten P.M. in Israel now, three P.M. in New York, our next stop.

I had my doubts about this trip-not that we would be stabbed by an Arab teenager in Jerusalem, or that I would object to everything Israel stands for. People asked if we would be able to get decent food there, and the truth is that the food there is healthier and fresher than the stuff we eat in the United States.

I was worried more about the traveling itself. Two eleven hour plane rides in eight days is not my idea of fun, and we were to switch hotels in the middle of the trip-three nights in Jerusalem and three in Tel Aviv. I didn’t register for the convention, since I’m not a rabbi, only married to one, and I wasn’t sure what I would do while Joe was praying, studying text, visiting all over the country and meeting with dignitaries.

What I did is what I often do when I’m in a strange city (not entirely strange, as it turns out, because I visited Israel in 1985 and 2007). I took my camera and wandered around. There is certainly plenty to see.

We arrived in Jerusalem Monday morning, the middle of the night in America’s Eastern time zone. We went walking in the cold rain, looking for something to eat. We found a little place run by young Orthodox Jewish men. I ordered my usual chicken and rice, in this case a skewer of marinated roasted chicken. We were served ten little plates of salad first: cucumbers, olives, pickles, hummus, beets, carrots, and other delicacies. I tried to explain in Hebrew that we had only just arrived in the morning.

I brought no winter clothes with me, assuming we would have only warm weather. It was in the 40s, raining and windy when we arrived in Jerusalem. The plane was delayed because there was a storm in Tel Aviv.

The conference actually started Tuesday afternoon. Joe and I spent Tuesday morning walking through the Old City, part of Jordan before the June 1967 war, now annexed by Israel. My politically-correct self didn’t want to go there, thinking of the Jews who feel we should rebuild the Temple. Never mind that there has been a mosque on the site for over a thousand years. We preach in Judaism about God being everywhere, yet people revere that spot as Judaism’s holiest. I suggest that like God, we don’t need a specific place, and should leave The Temple Mount  to the Moslems.The Old City was quiet on a rainy Tuesday in February, the shopkeepers, selling religious items to Jews, Christians and Moslems, patriotic kitsch to both Israel’s fans and those who hope for an independent Palestine, begging us to come into their stores.

One of my friends suggested that the emptiness of the place was not from the time of the year or the weather, but that people are afraid to travel to Israel because of a series of  stabbings by Arab youth, and some drivers deliberately running over Jewish pedestrians. Our hotel, in a residential neighborhood, and not one of the palatial hotels in town, was full. But the visitors were American Christians, not Jews. They seem to be less fearful than our fellow American Jews.

We visited the Western Wall, the retaining wall of the Temple Mount, the last piece of ancient work still intact there. It’s a ritual to write a request on a piece of paper and put it in a crack in the wall. There has been some contention at the wall. For a number of years, there have been separate men’s and women’s sections, since Orthodox Jewish men do not pray with women. But a group of women, called Women of the Wall, or Nashot Hakotel in Hebrew, have defied tradition by bringing a Torah scroll to their section, wearing traditionally male prayer shawls and reading from the Scroll. They have been roundly vilified by the Orthodox masters at the wall, and often arrested by the police. A new compromise is that a different section has been marked off for men and women to pray together, as a sop to the Conservative and Reform Jews who make up the majority of American Jews, and whose numbers are increasing in Israel.

We approached the men’s section of the wall, nearly empty,  as it was not time for traditional prayers, and I think Joe wrote something to put in one of the cracks between stones, and said a prayer. I stood there, not praying, but I felt a vibration from the place. There is a Presence there, and I imagine Jews, Moslems and Christians all feel the same vibrations. We got lost in the Old City (easy to do) but eventually found our way out and headed back. It was nearly one and Joe had to attend the opening of the conference. He went off to his meeting, and I visited a supermarket near our hotel. I bought a roll, a container of yogurt (which turned out to be made from goat milk, and delicious) and an apple. I returned to our room to eat and sleep. A lot of sleep. The conference visited the new space along the wall, but at 6:30 Wednesday. We didn’t rush out to go.

The big news while we were in Jerusalem was how three hundred Reform rabbis from America visited the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and met with many of the members. This was probably the most important political thing that happened. The Netanyahu government is in coalition with the so-called religious parties. These are the Haredi (black hat) Orthodox and some of the settler groups in the territories who claim a  right to live there based on Abraham’s purchase of land close to 4,000 years ago. These religious groups make sure that Reform and Conservative rabbis cannot perform legal weddings or convert people to Judaism in Israel. They are against rights for women, for LGBT people, and for non-Jews. They maintain power by uniting with secular right-wing groups and  Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party. For a swarm of liberal rabbis from America to come to Israel to confront the Knesset about these issues was a huge deal.

The Reform rabbis meet every year, and every seventh year, they go to Jerusalem. This year we also visited Tel Aviv, the much bigger, more Jewish, largely secular city on the Mediterranean coast. Tel Aviv is often ranked as one of the best gay vacation spots in the world, and is a center for high tech. Our last night, we met the mayor of Tel Aviv and the American ambassador, who is based there. I found it refreshing to be in a modern city, a pioneer city, still a little rough around the edges. We stayed in Jaffa, or Yafo, walking distance from Tel Aviv, but older, and with a distinctive character. When I visited there in 1985, it was almost all Arab and in a serious state of decay. It seems to be better economically, but like formerly poor neighborhoods in New York or San Francisco, it has been invaded by hipsters, who will probably soon be pushed out by gentrification.

For Shabbat, they split us into groups visiting fourteen different congregations outside of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We visited Kehillat Hashachar, in the community of Even Yehuda, a town of 14,000, off the coast and north of Tel Aviv. There are twenty synagogues in the town, mostly Orthodox and subsidized by the government. This Reform congregation meets in the town’s museum. We were supposed to be there early on our bus, but we were only on time because of the horrendous traffic coming out of Tel Aviv on Friday afternoon. It reminded me of Los Angeles. The people of the synagogue welcomed us. Many of them spoke English, some had lived in the United States, some had come from other parts of the English-speaking world and the former Soviet Union. Many of the people had roots in the area going back to the 1920s and earlier. They had a lovely service with a singer, guitarist and keyboard, singing mostly American tunes to the traditional prayers. Joe and I could easily follow the Hebrew service and knew most of the tunes. Neither of us are able to converse easily in modern Hebrew.

The congregation provided a wonderful potluck dinner, all dairy and vegetable, with pastas, salads, and fresh fruits and vegetables. Joe and I sat separately to meet more people and compare notes.I explained to the people at my table that I am not a rabbi, but live in West Virginia with a man I am married to. They were surprised, but not judgmental. They have a woman rabbi, a natural-looking, 70s style “earth mother” type. What we heard from the people was gratitude that we Americans would come to their little synagogue. Reform Judaism is growing quickly in Israel, but it is still a novelty to many people. The members told us they liked it because women and children are welcome at services, the music is lively, and there is a spirituality and friendliness that appeals to them. Many of them expressed fear of the future of Israel. They disapprove of the West Bank settlements, the violence often committed against Arabs and the antagonism they feel from the right-wing and the Orthodox. I feel a lot of the same worries about the United States- the harsh anti-Moslem, anti-gay, fundamentalist politicians who don’t believe in diversity. It was good for them and for us, that we meet each other. We have much more in common than we would have thought. The Shabbat evening experience made me feel closer to Israel generally.

I have three friends in Israel. My friend Arlan, whom I met at BCC, the temple in Los Angeles where I met Joe, lives in Eilat, at the southern tip of Israel. Arlan and I have known each other more than twenty years ago. He and his spouse, David, moved to Israel ten years ago. David died last year. I thought I might visit Arlan. When we talked on Facebook, he suggested flying, as it is an eight-hour bus ride from Jerusalem. It was more than I could handle, so Joe and I promised we would visit there next time, we should all live and be well.

My friend Bonnie was born in Israel, but her American parents came back when she was a baby. Bonnie used to teach Israeli dance, and she was my dance partner for many years. Her daughter has become Orthodox and now lives in north-central Israel with her husband and four children under age five. Bonnie moved to Israel to be near her daughter and lives in Modi’in, a completely new town of 80,000 between Tel Aviv and Haifa. She came to Jerusalem on the bus to meet me Wednesday, and we took the new light rail line, then a bus to Modi’in, then a new train from there to Benyamin and another bus to Zichron Ya’acov, a trendy resort town in the north, a kind of Santa Fe of trendy shops and restaurants. The weather was noticeably better, sunny and 65 F. It took three hours to get there and three hours back; we were in town eating, shopping, and seeing historic sites for another three hours. Bonnie left me at Modi’in, and I had to take two buses back to our hotel in Jerusalem after dark. I changed buses on the edge of Mea Shearim, the most Orthodox section of Jerusalem,  Not that I have never seen black-hatted men with side curls before, but I had never been on a crowded bus where almost everyone was like that, with the women in scarves or wigs and long skirts and lots of children.  I suppose I felt threatened, but I wasn’t really. I was just different. Eventually the bus left that area, and  was repopulated by the elderly and the young hipsters who inhabit central Jerusalem.

What I noticed in Israel was that people just assume I am Jewish. I look like traditional Eastern European Jews look, but I think there was less instant judgement of people by their looks than in West Virginia. I used to brag about Los Angeles, where I could pass for Armenian, Mexican or Filipino, and maybe “slightly” Negro, allowing me to travel freely anywhere incognito.. I find that in Appalachia, full of blonds and redheads and pale people, I stand out more and get suspicious looks sometimes. I try to defuse that by speaking perfect American English, with a not-hard-to-fake local accent, only slightly different from my native Baltimorese. It reminds me of BCC, where we were mostly gay and lesbian, thus taking that away as an issue. We didn't have to talk about it or defend it. In Israel, where being Jewish is the norm, even though there are wide differences politically and religiously among Jews, that most people are Jewish means it is already assumed.

Our third friend in Israel is Arieh David Scharnberg. I’ve become friends with him on Facebook, although we only met a few times when we lived in Crescent City. His father was the rabbi in Arcata, the college town seventy-five miles south of us. Rabbi Scharnberg came to Crescent City once or twice a month to teach and lead services.

Arieh is a model of a young hipster, tall, a little unkempt and working in the film industry in Tel Aviv. He lives in Yafo, not far from  where we stayed. We met him at our hotel Thursday night and walked to a Libyan restaurant nearby. The food was good, unpretentious and interesting. I had  meatballs made with chicken and spinach, Arieh and Joe had fish a in a red sauce. Arieh told us he moved to Yafo because it is a mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood, but what he has found is hostility from many of the Arab residents, and a process of gentrification, where Jews are displacing Arabs and newer buildings will not rent to Arab families. He worked against Netanyahu in the last election, and was disappointed in the results. He worships at a modern Orthodox synagogue, and asked us to join him. We didn't. The conference had a Reform Saturday morning service at theTel Aviv Art Museum. Joe went. I went back to sleep. Arieh is not certain he will stay in Israel. There are family issues in Northern California, and he may need to go back. I admire his commitment to Judaism, his grasp of the issues there, and his ability to express them.

Among liberals and leftists, and I count myself as one, there  has been talk about Israel as an apartheid state. I’ve even read this from Israeli commentators. The Netanyahu government has no intention of giving anything to the Arabs. New settlements for Jews are being built in the West Bank.We traveled from the airport to Jerusalem on Route 443, a short-cut through the West Bank. There is a checkpoint along the road, staffed with soldiers, and one can see Arab communities behind the walls along the road. The Arab communities have no access to this highway. I asked Ari, our driver, about this situation, and how he expected it to end. He didn't expect anything to change. He remembers the intifada, more than ten years ago, when things were more open, and suicide bombers from the West Bank came into Israel with the purpose of killing as many people as possible. He doesn't think the Arabs want peace. The walling off of Arab lands stopped the suicide bombers.

Joe went out to the West Bank as part of the conference to speak to both Arabs and Jewish settlers. Ask him what he learned when you see him. Much of the help in the restaurants and hotels are Arabs. Yasmine, who staffed the front desk at our hotel, is pretty, dresses modern-style with makeup and hair exposed. She speaks fluent Arabic, Hebrew and English, at least, and was unfailingly polite. A more traditional looking woman chatted up me and Bonnie on the bus. She is learning English and practiced on us. There are Moslem and Christian people throughout Jerusalem. My impression is that most people, like folks everywhere, want to make a decent living, and be with their families. Still, places like Modi'in are Jewish only, so I don't think the apartheid label is wrong. Our last night in Tel Aviv, we ate with a retired rabbi from Virginia, in an Arab restaurant in Jaffa. They had menus in Hebrew, Arabic and English,and although they may have looked at us askance, we were treated well and the food was plentiful and good. Our waiter wore an Armani Exchange t-shirt.

We loved our time in Israel, despite our frustration with some Orthodox rabbis condemning the Reform movement, with the politics of apartheid in the West Bank, the walls cutting off communities, and the segregation in many places. Still, it was something to not feel a stranger, even with our difficulty speaking the language.

There were ads around, in English, in parts of both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, advertising expensive condos in Israel, clearly aimed at wealthy Jews in New York, Los Angeles, London and Johannesburg. Many of these people, I imagine, would use these million dollar condos as a second and third home. Some of the older, much smaller apartment houses in both cities were being torn down to build the new buildings. Maybe it's wishful thinking, based on my support for Bernie Sanders in the United States, that this gentrification (ilut, a new Hebrew word) will bring together the groups that are at odds in Israel: the Orthodox, the young hipsters and the Arabs, to try to preserve their neighborhoods.  Just a thought.

Although I started this post Sunday on the plane from Ben Gurion Airport to Newark, I'm just finishing it and posting pictures Thursday afternoon. If you see me or Rabbi Joe, ask us questions about this trip. I'm grateful to Joe for insisting I go with him. He is correct that it was important that we travel together in Israel. I hope now that we can do it again.


These are pictures from Jerusalem. I will post more pictures... soon.

A dance troupe on a street at night

A Middle eastern combo playing at a hair salon at 9:30 P.M.

The King David Hotel

A street scene

The park near the Old City

Near the Old City

Early spring tree in bloom

In the Old City near Jaffa Gate

A street in the Old City

Above the Kotel, the Western Wall

Below the Temple Mount, a Moslem holy site for 1500 years. We chose not to go there.

Ruins of the Roman main street, now in The Old City's Jewish Quarter

posters on a wall

The Jerusalem light rail line was under construction on my last visit in 2007

A plaza in West Jerusalem

A new park near City Hall

Putin Pub

Park

Russian Church, Central Jerusalem

Eric Whitacre

Eric Whitacre is a superstar among composer-conductors for choir. He's tall and thin, with shoulder-length blond hair and a trendy beard. Handsome in a contemporary way. He's famous for running a "virtual choir," where people can access the music from all over the world, and send him a YouTube video of themselves singing their part. He then puts everyone together in a video.
The music feels other-worldly, with many odd chords, sustained notes, and not always a lot of melody. We sang one of his pieces in the choir I joined in Crescent City. I found it hard to sing, and I didn't like it until it started to come together, and then it was sublime.

My friend Faith is a vocal student at West Virginia University, and she posted on Facebook that Eric Whitaker was coming to conduct a concert Saturday afternoon at 3:30 at WVU's Creative Arts Center. The timing wasn't great because Joe and I were leaving the house at 4 A.M. Sunday to fly to Israel and I hadn't packed.

Still, I decided to go and walked 1.5 miles to the CAC in windy 66 ○ weather. Lucky I did, because there was a basketball game at two at the Colosseum across the street and traffic and parking were impossible.

Whitacre attended University of Nevada Las Vegas, and the choir director there at the time (probably twenty years ago) is now the director of the CDC. That was the connection. In an interview at the start of the concert, Whitacre said he couldn't read music when he started college, although he played several instruments. He said he joined the choir because there was a pretty girl who sang in it. It took him seven years to graduate.

He answered some questions. John Lennon is his favorite male pop vocalist. He said that to be successful in music, one needs to be "honest" and "vulnerable" and "show up on time." He said he decided to do music because he couldn't imagine working in an office.

As to the music, there were eight short pieces, one with WVU's Chamber Choir, five with high school choirs, and two with everyone, including random kids from school choirs that didn't perform.

All of the pieces were gorgeous, and not easy. The singing was great, much better than I expected. I thought about the kids in these choirs, from little towns in the middle of nowhere, in places where football and basketball players are celebrities and boys who sing are bullied. Even in Morgantown, thousands of people were at the
WVU-Nebraska basketball game, while this concert audience was mostly choir members, their families and friends. I thought about what a high school choir director makes in salary compared to the WVU basketball coach.

I loved being at this concert. Witacre was charming and modest, and conducted the high school choirs with compassion and grace. I cried for the kids and their teachers, who create and understand great art, even as it isolates them from their peers.

At the end, I felt emotional from being in the presence of great art and young artists just coming into their own lives. I walked home by six, as it was getting dark. Joe and I had dinner out, then came home and packed. We slept a few hours, drove in the dark to Pittsburgh Airport, and we are now at Newark Airport, waiting for our flight to Israel.

The Greatest Hits of 1960

I've been teaching at West Virginia University's branch of Osher  Life-Long Learning since the fall of 2013, usually one class in the fall session. I started with a two-part class about The Brill Building, based on the book Always Magic In The Air, The Bomp and Brilliance of The Brill Building, by Ken Emerson. He features seven sets of songwriters who worked in New York in the late fifties and early sixties, including Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, Carole King and Jerry Goffin, and Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield.

I've taught six-week classes about the history of Motown and the British invasion in the late sixties. My last class, this past fall, was called "The Beach Boys: Light and Dark." That one made me an emotional wreck. Even I didn't know how much "Dark" there was in their story. All of my classes have been well-received and reviewed. I have something of a following.

I normally don't teach in the winter, partly because classes are postponed if public schools are closed, which last winter was eighteen days out of thirty scheduled. This year they made the term four weeks instead of six so there could be time to make up missed classes before spring session starts. I decided to teach so I could be present during my election campaign. Today is the fourth week, and we have held every class on time. We lost classes early in the week last week and two weeks before that because of snow storms. They are being made up.

I have a book that lists the top 40 songs of every year from 1900 to 1999. The author, Joel Whitburn, has an obsession with pop music, which I suppose I can relate to. I picked 1960, and decided to cover Whitburn's biggest hits at a rate of ten each week. This has been great fun for me.

In 1960, I was in fifth and sixth grade. We had "Pre-teen Center" dances at Campfield Elementary School every Friday night during the school year. It started out being square dancing for kids, but   the kids preferred pop music, so we did some square dancing and then danced to pop music. I usually danced with Margo King, who I think of as my first girlfriend, or Nanette Birmingham, who sat next to me in sixth grade.  Two of the songs I remember were chart hits for Jimmy Jones, now nearly forgotten, in 1960. They were "Handy Man" (later covered by James Taylor) and "Good Timin.'" I also remember the fuss over Elvis returning from the Army. People in the class have their memories, too. One woman, originally from Philadelphia, had posters of local heroes Bobby Rydell and Fabian up in her room as a teenager.

One difference from my past classes is that I am only using YouTube to play music. It seems my vast collection of recorded music on vinyl, cassette and CD is officially obsolete. I don't download music or subscribe to streaming services, but everything you want to hear is on YouTube. (As I'm writing this,  I'm listening to Radiohead's "In Rainbows" from 2008) on headphones attached to an antique portable CD player).

My students are mostly a bit older than I, and we all get a kick out of clips of artists, some looking terrified, lip-synching to their own records in front of a bunch of giggly girls and pompaded boys on Dick Clark's Beech-Nut Hour. The kids are all chewing Beech-Nut gum and wearing buttons that say "IFIC, short for  "flavorific," how the gum is described.

Some of these artists look impossibly young, but Brenda Lee and Kathy Young were fifteen, Brian Hyland sixteen. Some of the artists were already famous, like Elvis Presley, some, like Brenda Lee, Connie Francis, Paul Anka, Chubby Checker and Roy Orbison were just getting started, some, like Dion, changed styles completely after 1960, others like Percy Faith, who had the biggest hit of the year with "Theme From A Summer Place" seemed old-fashioned for the times, yet kept going, doing the same thing, for many years.

I've learned about "The Nashville Sound," having a string orchestra and chorus behind a country music vocalist, a more "urban" sound than one would expect. I've also seen how the separate chart for "R&B" music was about to become obsolete, with crossover artists like Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and Ray Charles.

It's sad sometimes to watch videos of these young artists, knowing that some of them died in drug overdoses, or car accidents, or that, like all of us, are not the brash young people they were. This class has given us all a chance to go back to "those thrilling days of yesteryear" and remember who we were then, who we idolized, who we danced with, who was our crush, or even how our (mostly late) parents screamed "Turn that noise down!" at us.

I'm teaching a four-week class in April and May on the top hits of 1961.

Depression

On my chart at Kaiser in L.A., it said I had chronic moderate depression. I don't really take it seriously. I think of it as part of life. Yesterday I saw my cardiologist for a second followup to my new stents from the end of September. The numbers looked good, but the doctor asked about doing a new echocardiogram. If the echo isn't better than the one before the stents went in, he may want to put in a defibrillator. Monday, I had a basal cell carcinoma removed on my face. Medical issues could be a lot worse. I don't like to be reminded that I am no longer young.

The doctor asked how I felt and I said "Lousy." Part of that was that my face was still swollen from Monday, but what I said was "I'm a sixty-six year old gay man. How could I not be depressed?" The doctor thought that things are better than they were, but at thirty-eight, and not gay (as far as I know) he hasn't been through what those of us who are older have dealt with.

And of course, in West Virginia, we have our elected officials, who just today (February 11) are scheduled to vote on "The Religious Freedom Restoration Act." This bill would allow people to object to the state for making them do something they object to because of their religion. Rupie Phillips, a delegate from a rural place in southern West Virginia, and a Democrat, admitted that this bill, which he supports, is a response to the Supreme Court making same-gender marriage legal in all states. The bill would allow denial of public accommodations to gays, particularly in couples, because of religious principle. It will probably pass, despite opposition from Chambers of Commerce in Charleston and Morgantown, West Virginia University Faculty and Student Senates, and many national hotel chains.

It was reported in the Charleston Gazette-Mail today that two women applied for a  marriage license in Gilmer County yesterday and were screamed at by Deputy County Clerk Debbie Allen. "Abomination!" she said. I'm waiting to hear if this clerk is fired, but I doubt it. There's lots of hand-wringing about why young people leave this state in droves, but who wants to live in a place like this? Gilmer County has a state college and a population of less than 10,000 people. It is about eighty-five miles from Morgantown to Glenville, the town in Gilmer County.

Our four Republican delegates in our district pretty much think like this. We have one liberal Democrat, much beloved. Had she lost in the last election, I would have insisted to Joe that we move to Pennsylvania, only ten miles from downtown Morgantown. Her reelection, and all the people we have met from temple who hired Joe in the first place, and have been kind to us, give me some hope that there is an element of really good people here. That's who I wish to represent as delegate.

The election campaign is going slowly for me. I have not raised much money. I answered questionnaires from the teachers' union, the statewide AFL-CIO and the local carpenters' union , and also a state-wide anti-abortion group. I didn't agree with the anti-abortion group's agenda, but I sent them a note with their form suggesting that "pro-life" should mean restricting guns, making maternity and parental leave mandatory, increasing SNAP benefits, favoring comprehensive sex ed including birth control, and talking about th responsibility of men in causing a pregnancy. I've been to a number of Democratic Party events and Bernie Sanders events as well. Tonight, I'll be at the watch party for the Democratic debate sponsored by Morgantown for Bernie Sanders. There will be time for people to ask questions of the eight candidates running for five slots in the Democratic primary May 10.

We are headed to Israel at the end of the month for the CCAR (Reform rabbis) convention in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. When I was last in Israel, in 2007, I was with a congregational tour from our temple in L.A. I wished that I could have been with Joe on the tour, as he spent a year in Jerusalem as part of his rabbinic training. I worry some about terrorism, but more about my health, the logistics of getting there and back, and my role, since I won't be attending the conference.

I've been reading opinion pieces from Israeli Jews, stating that the West Bank occupation has turned into an annexation, and an apartheid state. There is not even a pretense that there might be an Arab state in the West Bank, or that Arabs in that area, who are not citizens, have any rights at all. Arabs in Israel proper have citizenship, but there is no official acknowledgement that they are part of Israeli society, not  even an "Arab History Month." Yes, I understand that they could have had a state in 1948, 1990, and 2000, but wouldn't accept peace, that Gaza was given back, and Hamas has created a terrorist state. I understand Israel shares a border with Syria, where a Holocaust of sorts is going on. Still, it's hard for me to defend everything Israel does. Of course, I shouldn't have to. I've always loved the United States, even if the George W.Bush administration embarrassed me. I stii love Israel, just not the current government. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of being in Israel at this moment.

Meanwhile, we've had more snow most of this week, and temperatures in the teens the last few days. The sun came out today for the first time in a long time, even as the temperature dropped. I am a sun-lover, even as a ne skin cancer survivor.

The Omer period is one of semi-mourning in Judaism. I have my own Omer period, February 6- to March 27. It commemorates that period in 2003, when I was living in Los Angeles. I flew to Baltimore February 6 for my mother's seventy-fifth birthday. I suffered a heart attack on the 9th and stayed with my mother after five days in the hospital, for a week. I came back to L.A. on the 22nd and went to work on the 24th. I came back to Baltimore March 16th. My mother was in hospice care. She died March 18th and the funeral was the 20th. I returned to L.A. after observing shiva, the week of mourning, on March 28.

It helped me to get this off my chest. I will feel better. I always do. I have to remember to look at how far I have come, continue to struggle with today, and be hopeful about the future.

 I wrote this Thursday (it's Monday now). I do feel less depressed, although the weather has been worse. Other delegates have said even more bigoted things than Delegate Phillips, but it has only made me more determined to win this election. I've been inspired by the one Jewish delegate in our legislature, Mike Pushkin, from Charleston, who pointed out that baking a cake for someone you don't like is an inconvenience. I won't share the rest of his thought. And Steven Skinner, our only openly gay delegate, from Jefferson County in the Eastern Panhandle, having to tell the troglodyte legislators that he didn't choose to be gay.

I feel better about going to Israel, although both Joe and I are concerned about stamina and logistics. We will be active voices for change in Israel, as we are here.

Buckingham County, Virginia

I wasn't sure about doing this trip. This is my forty-fourth county in this series, and I sometimes think "Enough already." Then, I'm trying to run a political campaign for state delegate, and Joe and I are going to Israel for the CCAR (Reform Rabbis) convention at the end of the month.

Buckingham County is between Lynchburg and Richmond and an hour south of Charlottesville. It's the geographic center of Virginia. To get to eastern Virginia from Morgantown means going over the high point of the Appalachians in winter. I learned when Joe went to Charlottesville with me in December 2012, that the weather can be fine in Morgantown and deep into Virginia, but it can be snowing, windy and cold in the mountains on the way. I don't know how people ever got from Morgantown to Richmond before the Civil War. Maybe there were passenger trains at one time, but before that?

The 2010 census reported 17,000 people in the county at a density of twenty-six per square mile. I found two motels in the county online. Both had terrible reviews. I broke a rule I made about staying in the county I visit, and booked my usual chain motel in Farmville, in Prince Edward County, twenty miles south of Dillwyn, the only town in Buckingham County. I had eleven places to find from the National Register of Historic Places. I came on the weekend because the weekdays are filled up with meetings about the election.

I followed Google maps to get here. They took me on back roads in Garrett County, Maryland to get to US 48 (Corridor H in West Virginia), a lovely four lane divided highway that at this point goes nowhere. It was in the low 20s F. with blowing snow. I stopped at a gas station just before 48 and got a bottle of iced tea and a pre-made turkey and American cheese sandwich on white bread. Local cuisine.

Farmville is a college town, like Morgantown. Longwood University is there and Hampden-Sydney College is nearby. I found a little coffee place and had a trendy salad for dinner.

Today was my day in Buckingham County. The National Register lists "Buckingham Court House" as a historic spot on "both sides" of U.S. 60. Buckingham Court House is the name of the village where the courthouse is located. There are a handful of homes and offices, some dating back to the eighteenth century. The original courthouse, designed by Thomas Jefferson, burned in 1869. The "new" courthouse dates from 1873. There is an Egyptian-style obelisk on US 60 with an inscription praising Confederate soldiers who "...fought for a just cause."

Buckingham County Courthouse, 1873

Buckingham Court House village, across US 60 from the courthouse

an inn, now used as a bed-and-breakfast and event center, west of Buckingham County courthouse

an 18th century house (porch and roof later?) just east of Buckingham County courthouse

The monument to Confederate soldiers and cannon across US 60 from Buckingham County courthouse

The James River forms the northern border of the county. I drove up State Road 56 looking for a house named Perry Hill. I found a sign saying "Perry Hill" and followed a long driveway up to the house- a privately-owned home. I turned around in the drive at the back of the house, and had started back. I thought I would take a picture from down the road and not disturb the owners.  A man came out and shouted at me from the house. He wanted to know why I was there. I told him I was looking for historic houses. He asked where I was from and I said "Morgantown" which seemed to work, because he asked me to come back. His name is Mark. He is in his early sixties, I guess, and was wearing sweats. He apologized for the shabby clothes, but said he was fixing up the basement. He told me the house was from 1851, built for a man who had fought with Admiral Perry in the War of 1812, hence the name. Mark lives in Richmond; this is his country home. He has a grown son who tried organic farming on the land for a time, but couldn't make it financially worthwhile. We talked for a half-hour or so.

Perry Hill.1851, Saint Joy

The view from the front of Perry Hill. That's lavender planted in rows.

Up James River Road, there is a sign for a state park ten miles west. That would be James River Park, and much of the road was crushed gravel and not paved. At the Visitor Center, exhibits explain the importance of James River to commerce in early Virginia, how it runs from the mountain peaks in Alleghany County (visited February 2013), through the town of Buchanan (Botetort County, last summer), past Charlottesville (December 2012) to Richmond, where it becomes a tidal estuary heading out to the ocean by way of historic Williamsburg and Jamestown to present-day Norfolk. 

View across James River from the state park

Green Hill Pond, James River State Park

It was already after noon, and I was hungry. I thought I would head to Dillwyn, the only incorporated town in Buckingham County, just north on US 15 from US 60, east of Buckingham Court House. The census gives the town population as 447. I looked for a place where cars were parked, and that was Pino's Italian Restaurant. I almost didn't go in, because there was a car in the lot covered with stickers expressing how much the driver hated President Obama. There was also a sign in the window advertising some big church revival meeting. I went in anyway, and the place was homey-looking, the waitress friendly and upbeat. A big guy at the next table shot me a look. I smiled and said "Hi!" and that was the end of that. I had a mini-pizza with mushrooms and a salad. It was good, but I'm supposed to be watching my salt and fat content.

I visited the library in Dillwyn and asked the two librarians where they would go in Buckingham County if they had a day here and had never visited before. The two of them, a pretty young African-American woman and an older stylish European-American woman looked at each other and laughed. They couldn't think of anything. I told them I had been to Buckingham Court House and James River Park and the younger one said"You've pretty much seen it." They said they go to Appomattox (30 miles), Charlottesville (also 30 miles)  or to Lynchburg or Richmond (each at least an hour) to do anything. I asked about the antique trains across the street, and they thought they might run on Saturdays, just not today.

Dillwyn Town Hall

Buckingham Branch Railroad Station, Dillwyn

old passenger car, Dillwyn

I tried to find some of the other historic places in the county, but they were hard to find- country houses on confusing back roads. I found Guerrant House, now with another name, north off US 15 near the hamlet of Arvonia, and the Buckingham Female Collegiate Institute Historic District, in Gravel Hill, northeast of Dillwyn. The school there operated from 1837-1863. There was also a plaque honoring Carter G. Woodson, who was once a coal miner in West Virginia, and was the first African-American to earn an advanced degree from Harvard. Woodson founded African-American History Week (now month). He was born in Buckingham County.

Guerrant House, probably early 19th century, Arvonia

In the Buckingham Female Collegiate District, Gravel Hill

In Buckingham Female Collegiate District

I had seen a local drive-in in Dillwyn and stopped for an ice cream cone before heading back to Farmville. I purchased no-fat, low-salt, low-sugar, vegan stuff for dinner in my room. It was enough.

A friend said on Facebook today "Come back from racist Virginia." I did see some Confederate flags around, and there are monuments to Confederate soldiers in Farmville and Buckingham Court House. Some of the desk clerks and guests at my motel are African-American, as were some of the people eating at Pino's Restaurant and shopping in the grocery store. It looks more integrated than Baltimore when I was growing up. I remember watching on the news around 1960, about how Prince Edward County closed all its public schools in defiance of Federal orders to integrate. Not that long ago.

I also noted that the major industry here is forest products. There were factories along US 15 north of Dillwyn that processed wood into chips. I saw them loaded into trucks and rail cars. There are many acres of devastated land where every growing thing was ripped out to provide wood, and there were trucks carrying logs along the highways. In places, there are replanted trees, almost always white pine, although the natural forest is hardwood and a different pine mix. Like West Virginia, the land loses where there is money to be made from extraction.

I'm back home tomorrow, probably via I-64 over the mountains to avoid possible bad weather. Today the temperature ranged from 21 F. in the morning to 46 in the late afternoon. Average, according to weather.com, is 26 and 50, noticeably warmer than Morgantown (21-40) at this time of year.