Elk County, Pennsylvania

Maybe it was a mistake to do this. Last week, June 25 and 26, I did an overnight trip to Elk County, Pennsylvania, about a four-hour drive from Morgantown. Ridgway, the county seat, is roughly halfway between Pittsburgh and Buffalo. This was supposed to be my ninety-sixth county visit, but I missed Delaware, Ohio, Delaware, Pennsylvania, The District of Columbia and Dorchester, Maryland, so it is only the ninety-second. I visited Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, in February, two months behind schedule, because of a funeral in December, and because I was sick most of January. After that, the pandemic hit, and travel was pretty much over.

I visited my regular doctor at WVU Medicine on the twenty-second, and I asked for an antigen test, because what I had in January seemed a lot like a relatively mild case of COVID-19. Relatively, because I was sick enough to not leave the house for ten days, and for not more than an hour the next ten. The test came back negative, meaning I probably had something else, but people in the field told me that many of the tests are unreliable and that the antigens clear out quickly. All that means is that I could get sick all over again.

Pennsylvania has red, yellow and green classifications for reopening of Counties. Elk is green, meaning just masks and distancing. All counties are out of the red category, which was stay-at-home orders. There have been only nine confirmed cases in Elk County, and three probable cases. There are fewer than 32,000 people in the county. In Pennsylvania, new cases are down, as opposed. to West Virginia, where they are going up, mostly in prisons, and among high school seniors this year who visited Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and came back sick.

So Thursday, after our 7 A.M. trip to "senior hour" at Kroger, where many of the staff thought wearing a mask was a joke, we made breakfast, and I packed up. I may never go back to that Kroger. I made a reservation at a non-chain motel just outside of Ridgway, and bagged a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a banana for lunch on the road. Google took me up I-79 to Pittsburgh, through downtown and up PA-28, then on some scary back roads to Ridgway. I stopped half-way in a far northern township of Allegheny County, bought a bottle of iced tea and a bag of baked potato chips at a convenience store and found a park to sit in and eat.

Once in Elk County, I saw there were hunting lodges and resorts for hunters along the road. Pennsylvania has forest land set aside specifically for hunters. I visited Main Street and found the courthouse and the chamber of commerce tourist bureau, where a nice woman loaded me up with pamphlets and maps. I checked into the hotel, where I had to wait for a surly young man, not cute, to greet me. He had me fill out a form and gave me the carbon copy and a key. I thought I was in the last century. The motel was mostly empty, and the room was clean, but unadorned. There was a c.1960 room air conditioner on. I napped for an hour and woke up freezing. Thursday night, I turned off the air conditioner and put on the heat.

I headed back to Main Street to look for dinner. I thought there might be something at the downtown grocery store, but nothing I wanted, and I needed to sit somewhere. There was an Italian place "under new management" down the street. They had moved out half the tables, and the staff all wore masks. Masks are rare in West Virginia. Since I'm not eating meat, I ordered cheese manicotti, which came with a salad and an enormous piece of good bread, of which I only consumed half.

I walked to the edge of downtown, just two blocks, to find a historic house. The owner, O.B. Grant, owned a tannery along the Clarion River in the 1800s, and apparently cut down most of the native hemlock in the area to supply tannin for tanning hides. Near there, along the river, is a rail-to-trails. I walked down about twenty minutes each way. It's like our trail, along a former railroad line by a river, but not paved, even in town. There is lush vegetation, somewhat different from in Morgantown. I was just amazed at how in their short, cool, summer all kinds of plants cover every available inch of territory, intermixed with yellow and purple flowers. There was a sign on the trail to wear orange to protect oneself from hunters. I saw a few other people on the trail, including a woman and her dog, both clad in orange, with the dog illegally off-leash. The dog came over to me and said "Hi," as friendly dogs will do.

Sunset Thursday was at 8:52, one minute later than Morgantown. I headed back to the room by eight, skipping the ice cream parlor on Main. Unfortunately, there was an ice cream place just before the motel, an old-fashioned drive-in. I got some soft ice cream for $2.35. I handed the high-school-age woman a twenty and she rang it up, with the cash register showing $17.65 in change. I fished in my pocket. "Here, I have the thirty-five cents," I said. She was totally flustered. Trying to be helpful, I added "You can just give me back eighteen dollars." She had to go check that with an older woman, maybe her mother, who put. it all into her calculator, and verified that the register would be correct anyway, if she took my thirty-five cents and gave me eighteen dollars back.

I spent some time on the internet and went to sleep with the heat on in the room.

The motel said they had a "continental breakfast."  That wasn't true, so I feasted in the room on the half bag of potato chips and half a bottle of iced tea from lunch Thursday and a couple of prunes from a bag I had brought with me. I went out to look for. a house west of Ridgway, which I was unable to find, so I turned around and drove to St. Mary's, the largest city in Elk County, with about 13,000 people. Ridgway has just over 4,000. I found a historic chapel south of downtown, near a Wal-Mart, lots. of fast-food places and car dealerships. Back in town, I found some other historic places, and walked around a bit. It was sunny and cool, pleasant. From there, I drove north to two towns along U.S. 219, Johnsonburg and Wilcox. Johnsonburg has a beautiful downtown district, completely vacant. There is a branch library across the street. from the historic colonnade, the Brick Block, and just up the street, a smelly paper mill. Nearby is a state park with a lake, so I stopped there for a pic. People were out in boats. I took back roads to Wilcox, a town  at the north end of Elk County. I found a historic house there. I also saw a disturbing number of signs and banners with the name of the current President. A sign on a. business said "A Deplorable Lives Here." I took my picture and headed back to Ridgway down U.S. 219.

I parked on the corner of Main Street, where 219 turns east. There was a Chinese restaurant which I thought had a sign that said "Carry-Out Only" Thursday night. Friday they had a buffet set out for lunch for only $7.00. The person at the counter was a young man, maybe college-age, who spoke perfect Pennsylvania English to me, but spoke to the cook, probably his father, some form of Chinese. They had moved some tables against the wall to provide spacing. I forewent the chicken dishes I usually eat at these buffets, and filled up on noodles with vegetables, egg drop soup and mushrooms. It was enough.

I headed home via U.S. 219 to U.S. 119 just south of Dubois. In southern Pennsylvania, U.S. 119 is a back road, but the highway is a toll road, and I enjoy the scenery. Once you enter West Virginia, you are only seven miles from our house. I didn't take my "water" pill Friday morning, and only stopped once for the bathroom, at a Sheetz gas and convenience store near Indiana, Pennsylvania. While in Ridgway, almost everyone was masked, in Indiana they were not. Traffic was backed up around Greensburg when I came by. This route was shorter by fifteen miles than the way I went up, and took about ten minutes longer.

It's a little scary to be out, to sit in a restaurant, to stay in a strange motel. Pennsylvania has been better about masks and social distancing than West Virginia, and especially in a rural area, I felt as safe as I might being out in Morgantown.

Main Street, Ridgway Historic District

Elk County Courthouse

Ridgway Armory, 1904

A house on West Main Street, Ridgway, with a rainbow flag

O.B. Grant House, West Main Street, Ridgeway, 1870

wildflowers on an empty lot, Ridgway

along the rail trail, just south of downtown Ridgway

Decker's Chapel, 1856, St. Mary's

Downtown St.Mary's with an eternal flame memorial to soldiers from the area

View from downtown St. Mary's

John E. Weidenboerner House, St.Mary's 1881, built by a prominent citizen after a devastating fire in the town

Apollo Theater, downtown St. Mary's

Mural with the paper plant behind it, Johnsonburg

Anderson Brick Block, 1890s, built as stores with apartments above, now completely empty, Johnsonburg

cast iron front building, Johnsonburg Commercial Historic District

East Branch Clarion River Lake, near Johnsonburg

Swedish Lutheran Parsonage, Wilcox, 1901

mid-century modern bank building, Main St. and U.S. 219, Ridgway

My Confession

I thought about my response to the demonstrations and the "Black Lives Matter" movement. But leaders of the movement said we should listen, not talk. An opinion piece in last Sunday's Washington Post said that white people, when confronted with racism, form book clubs. I don't do book clubs, but I do read. I lately finished Ta-Nehisi Coates' We Had Eight Years In Power,  with essays he wrote during the Obama presidency, with new commentary. I also read Matthew Desmond's Evicted, a non-fiction study of housing issues in Milwaukee, and a Pulitzer-prize winner.

I used to feel not guilty about race issues because my family didn't live in the United States during slavery, and although I grew up in racist Maryland in the 1950s and 1960s, my parents were from New York, and therefore removed from all that. Still, my parents got a good deal on a small suburban house in 1953. If you were a veteran, you could buy a house for just over $11,000, one hundred dollars down and seventy-five dollars a month for twenty-five years. The only other condition was that you had to be White. Black people didn't live on our street until 1968, by which time I was in college. The builder of our house was a "liberal." He would sell houses to Jews, when others building in that area would not. We had all new schools where we lived; people I knew in Baltimore City, just a few blocks from where we lived in Baltimore County, went to older schools. Jewish people fled the City as the schools integrated and eventually became all Black. My class at Woodlawn High  had six Black students out of 450. Forest Park High, just as close to our house as Woodlawn, but in Baltimore City, had twenty-two White students in my graduation year. My girlfriend at the time, Seema, went to Forest Park. Her single mother had to move from their rental apartment in Lower Park Heights when the building was sold, and they ended up in a new apartment building near where I lived. Seema would have gone to Woodlawn with me senior year, but chose to pay tuition to finish at Forest Park. I went to her prom, and we had a great time. She was friends with everyone in her class.

I did well on standardized tests, but I was never a good student. If I had been Black at Woodlawn, I might have had a problem. While in college, I took a test for a summer job at the post office. Two of us, both Jewish students from my neighborhood, scored best on the test and got work. The test was hard, like an SAT. People who worked at the post office could not have passed it. If you could do basic alphabetization and filing and had a good back, you could do that job. I was grateful for the work, but even then I knew some poor kid, Black or White, needed that job more than I did. A few years earlier, the post office had moved from a point in the city near the end of several bus lines, to the county, where bus service was scarce at best. I didn't have a car, but I had to drop off my mom somewhere before work, or she had to drop me. The other kid and I were able to carpool sometimes.

Two stories I remember from my mother. She moved to Baltimore at nineteen as a new bride. She took a job selling womens' hats at Hutzler's department store downtown. One day a Black woman came in and asked to try on a hat. My mother helped her with the hat, but after the woman left, her boss came over and told her that Black people were not allowed to try on clothes in the store. My mother was surprised, but she was new in town and didn't question it. In our new house, my mother got a job teaching school, and after a few years, started teaching at the school my sister and I attended. Never one for housework, or staying home, she hired someone to clean the house and watch us kids. Mom told me that she explained to one of these "colored girls" that. she could open a can of tuna or bring something for her lunch. The woman said "Where's my plate and fork?," and my mother said "Just take a plate and fork." The woman said "That's not how we do here. I have to have my own plate and fork." My mother didn't understand at first.

Many of the places we went as kids did not serve Black people. I was fifteen before I saw a Black person in a restaurant, at the bowling alley, or a movie theater. There were businesses on Pennsylvania Avenue and Gay Street in Baltimore for Black people. Price's Dairy, Gwynn Oak Amusement Park and Milford Mill Pool were near us; Black people could not go to these places. Our synagogue used to sponsor special days at Gwynn Oak, where you could get a sticker to go on most of the rides for a dollar. That ended when a five-year-old asked to bring his friend. The friend was Black and the Dad argued with the staff at Gwynn Oak about what harm would come from a five-year old being admitted to the park. The synagogue never went back. Milford Mill was a stone quarry that had filled with water when the workers hit an underground spring. An entrepreneur from Florida created a beach and eventually built an indoor and outdoor pool, and a snack bar with a killer juke box. There were dances on weekend nights. We weren't allowed to go to the dances because it attracted a rough crowd of White kids from the city. School dances in the city were for Black kids by that time. After 1964, Milford Mill said it was a private club. You could get a guest membership for five dollars, and pay a buck every time you went, only you had to be White. Baltimore County didn't have public pools. Druid Hill Park in Baltimore City at one time had a White and a Black pool, but, in integrating the pools, they closed the Black pool, and the White pool became all Black. Lochearn, which was the neighborhood immediately next to ours, opened a swim club, and we thought we would go there, until our parents found out that they would not accept Jews as members. Eventually, there were private Jewish swim clubs, and that's where my parents went. At fourteen and fifteen, I went to Milford Mill, because those were the only two years I could go with friends before I started working in the summer at sixteen.

I understand that I have privilege, and I've used that throughout my life, sometimes unknowingly, other times fully understanding that I could do what Black people couldn't. Even today, I travel around to different, overwhelmingly White counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. I dress down, travel alone, leave the jewelry on my dresser and put on a local accent (not that. different from Baltimore). People have looked at me funny, but when they ask where I'm from, I smile and say "West Virginia," and that's usually enough to put people at ease.

I'm in a position to hold Morgantown's police accountable about racism. We are not like Baltimore, where the police have always been awful. I try to treat everyone equally and I am willing to listen to anyone about the limited power I have.

If you have a Google account, you can comment here, or on Twitter, where I am BarryLeeWendell. My City Council page on Facebook, Barry. Wendell for Morgantown Councilor, Ward Seven, is open. If you are a Facebook friend, we can talk there.

The. Demonstrations and The Pandemic

On May 25, a police officer in Minneapolis held  his knee on George Floyd's neck, ultimately killing him. Other officers watched while Floyd. pleaded that he couldn't breathe. Floyd was on the ground, handcuffed and not resisting. The officers had. to know they were being recorded on a cell phone, but didn't think it would be a problem for them.

Once the video was released on social media, there were demonstrations, and at time riots in cities around the world. Rioters smashed storefronts and looted stores; a police station burned. Our American President accused "antifa" of organizing the riots, although some have said there were white supremacist groups behind much of the violence. In Washington, armed troops with no insignia lobbed pepper balls and rubber bullets at demonstrators and news reporters who were clearly marked. In Morgantown, there were major demonstrations several days last week. The Morgantown Police stayed away, thankfully. I didn't go, being afraid to be around so many people in the midst of a pandemic. When I finally did go one afternoon, there were very few people out and I didn't stay long. Judging from the pictures of the large demonstration in Morgantown, but more importantly in New York and Washington, I worry about people becoming ill from being in the large crowds.

Demonstration in downtown Morgantown

Demonstrators blocked High Street, our main street

May 31, before the street demonstrations here, I attended a "video demonstration" featuring the head of the NAACP locally, and three African-Americans, all state delegates, from different parts of the state. All of them have been harassed by the police, after being elected. Delegate Danielle Walker is in Morgantown. I was upset.

I asked the City Manager what stats there were on complaints about the department, the break down by race of drug arrests, and how many were sent to Municipal Court (a $15 fine for small amounts of cannabis, thanks to our Council) and how many to Magistrate Court. I also asked the ACLU if they had stats. I haven't heard back from the ACLU, but I got a response from the Police Chief and Deputy Chief. They have policies about being polite to everyone, banning chokeholds and other good things, no complaints lodged against them in the last year, and all cases going to Magistrate Court, which was a bit unsettling. Magistrate Court can give probation, but Municipal Court can't, which is the reason they gave me. Magistrate Court can also fine you $1,000 or six months in jail for carrying a small amount of cannabis.

Meanwhile, a video collective put out a release about a Black man who was badly beaten by the police in Morgantown. I read the article and found that the incident, eighteen months ago, was not in Morgantown, but in Westover, walking distance from downtown Morgantown, but with a different police force. I asked the collective to change the title of the video and they did. Now it says "...near Morgantown."

I've received a few dozen emails yesterday and today from people asking that we defund the Morgantown Police and spend more on social services. I only recognized two of the names, and I asked one of those to call me so we could talk about this. We do not have a big-city police department here, and, although the Morgantown Police are under City Council, where I am a member, the County Sheriff, West Virgina University Police and State Troopers also operate in our city. In the last two weeks, no one in Morgantown can say that our police interfered in the demonstrations. The police don't have the equipment that was used on demonstrators in Washington. We are not the kind of city where the police brutalize the public. Most of the letters say "I'm a Morgantown resident." I doubt that, and if they are, they have not been involved in any way with city government and do not understand what we have here. We do have serious drug issues and domestic abuse problems that the police deal with. We have tried to find an alternative to having the police take inebriates to the hospital; we do have people who intervene with addicts, and there is a needle exchange program. We are waiting for state approval to put up sharps containers. Our city is limited by state law and lack of money from doing more. Our police are not overpaid and the force is not fully staffed.

I had been visiting one county per month, in alphabetical order, within three hundred miles of Morgantown. I missed December to attend a funeral of a friend from synagogue, and I missed. January because I was sick almost the entire month. In February, I spent a full day and two nights in Harrisburg, in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.

I wrote here about my canceled trip in mid-March to Delaware, Ohio because. it was obvious that there was a health problem. We've rarely gone out since then. I've been running a bit almost every day. My former gym has reopened with restrictions, but I'm not ready for that. We get carry-out Saturday nights and sometimes for lunch.

This past Sunday was supposed to have beautiful weather, and I suggested to Joe that we visit Doddridge County, sixty-five miles southwest of here, originally on my schedule for a May visit. Doddridge has a population of less than 8,000 people, and more than eighty per cent of voters went for the current president in 2016. We walked around West Union, the county seat, stopping for lunch at Betty Noll's Restaurant, the only place open in the middle of town. We both had fried fish fillets with three sides. Joe had cole slaw, broccoli and fries; I had mac and cheese, corn and apple sauce. The food was good, if not exactly diet-conscious. We were able to see most of the town in about an hour of walking in the pleasant sunshine. Doddridge County is off U.S. 50 between Clarksburg and Parkersburg. The former B&O Railroad line is now a paved trail.

We walked into town less than a mile along the rail trail from a park off U.S. 50 to downtown. On the way back a gentleman stopped us on the trail He was in a bathrobe at 3 P.M. He lives down the hill from th trail and his family has been in the area since before the Civil War. He owns some gas wells on his property. He said he could tell we were not from West Union, he said. I asked how he knew that, and he answered diplomatically "You look smart." A friend in Morgantown also told me her ancestors lived in Doddridge before the Civil War. West Union was apparently a stop on the Underground Railroad.

After seeing the town, we searched for a restored covered bridge in Center Point, really out in the woods. We saw many houses festooned with banners with the name of the current President, one of which also flew a Confederate flag. Doddridge County is a center of fracking in the state. People say it is prosperous, but aside from the newer schools along U.S. 50 and a handful of big new houses along the country roads, it doesn't look it.

We were glad to get away for a day. Neither of us has been far from home since March. We wore masks, as did some of the people we saw, but Doddridge is one of two counties in West Virginia with no reported COVID-19 cases.

Update: the person I asked to call me about the police did call. I missed the call, and she, phone banking today for the election, said she will call back tomorrow. Also, the first case of COVID-19 in Doddridge was reported today (Tuesday afternoon) after a prisoner tested positive.

Doddridge County's grand Victorian Court House

Main Street, West Union

A house in West Union's residential historic district

Former Doddridge County High

W. Scott Stuart House, 1905

Lathrop Russell Charter House, 1877

a sign says this was a stagecoach stop in the 19th century, now a store

covered bridge, Center Point, 1888

Martin Wenglinsky

One of those companies that checks your DNA sent me an ad saying they could find my grandparents' World War II military records. Grandfather? My father was a soldier in World War II, not my grandfather. I clicked "grandfather" anyway and got the draft registration for my father, known then as Martin Wenglinsky. It showed his address in the Lower Park Heights neighborhood of Baltimore, his parents' address, in an apartment building off Grand Concourse in The Bronx, and the name and address of his employer, David Wendell, who lived in then-tony Ashburton in Baltimore. David Wendell was my grandfather's younger brother.

M. Wenglinsky and Sons was the family business, making pieces for mens' suits and wholesaling them out to manufacturers. "M." was my great-grandfather Mendel, who went by "Morris" in the United States, having brought his family to New York from Russian-occupied Poland around 1903. Someone tried to sandblast the name of the company off the side of the Cluett Building, but one can still see it at 22 W.19th St. in Manhattan. M. Wenglinsky had contracts with the government for clothing and supplies in both World War I and World War II. Mendel had six sons, and at one time, in addition to New York, there were factories in Paterson, New Jersey, London, England, Havana, Cuba, and Baltimore, Maryland.

My American-born father, I suspect something of a hipster, was not much of a student, not stupid by any stretch, but not well-disciplined. They gave up after he left his third high school, and he went to work in the family business. He told me that at some point he found out he was being paid less than anyone else in the plant, so he joined the union to make more money. When the union went on strike, he still went in to work with his father, but they had nothing to do. Someone gave him a package to deliver across the street, and the union people saw him and would not allow him to be hired back after the strike.

"No problem," said my grandfather, "you can go work for your uncle in Baltimore, and he'll teach you the business." Only Uncle Dave, who was much younger than my grandfather, had an infant son, and didn't want my father to learn the business. Apparently, they never got along well.

So, it's 1942, and my father is twenty and renting a room in a row house in a working class Jewish neighborhood, and I know that 1942 was not a good year to turn twenty in the United States. He was drafted, sent to Needles, California to train for desert combat, then shipped off to the Pacific.

My father was not much of a talker, and I was able to get very little from him about his war experiences. When we were children, we lived in a suburb full of kids, and most of our fathers were veterans. On summer nights they would sit outside and talk about the war with each other, but would clam up if any of us kids were around. 

It's hard for me to imagine how lonesome he must have been in Baltimore, and how terrifying it would have been to be drafted during World War II. At twenty, I was in college and protesting the war in Vietnam. It was when the shootings at Kent State happened, and the patriotism my father had evaporated from my thoughts. 

I might write more about this another time.

From Memorial Day Weekend

There's been a lot of talk about reopening the economy, and even in Morgantown, our Acting City Manager is opening offices, with precautions, of course, and expects the City Council, of which I am a member,  to resume meeting in person. We have a workshop in June where fifteen or so of us will be locked up for a day and a half to talk about the future. I have my doubts about attending. The woman who will run this event, Julia Novak, who has a consulting firm, asked us a few weeks ago to speak to  her about our thoughts on the city. I spoke to her by phone Thursday and expressed my doubts about attending at all, that several of us had misgivings about spending money for this when city revenue is sharply down, and that the former cohesiveness of Council is fraying. She took all of that in. Some of the people on Council had not contacted her, as she requested.

As usual in my life, there is a point to my being on Council that I hadn't counted on. Our City Manager left last week for a job in his native Michigan, the Police Chief is resigning at the end of June, and we have an unprecedented financial and medical emergency in the city. Most people would poo-poo this, but I can't help feeling that, despite my reluctance, God has chosen me to step up to the plate and be a leader, exactly when I don't want to be a leader.

In my last post, I was hoping that everyone could be tested for COVID-19, so we would know exactly where we stand. After Joe Severino, a young reporter for Charleston's Gazette-Mail (and a former WVU student who reported on City Council) wrote a series of articles about a group of African-Americans who were infected at a large church service in early March, and for some reason couldn't get tested, the state started two days of mobile testing, open to everyone with or without insurance. The dates in our county were yesterday and today. Joe and I didn't go. We've been cautious about going out and we're not sick. The test I want, to see if there are antibodies, is not widely available, and my friends who know say those tests are not yet reliable and don't mean you have immunity from reinfection.

Meanwhile, our local mall opened this week, and restaurants are able to open if they limit capacity and take precautions. We ate outside two weeks ago on a warm, dry day (we've had rain nearly every day the last few weeks) and the staff was cautious and prepared.  There were only four or five tables, where usually there would be ten. Still, a raucous family of five sat behind us, and they and everyone who walked through the area did not have masks. Reports from friends who have been to Lowe's and Wal Mart say that very few people are masked, and someone said they were confronted and mocked for wearing one. It's Saturday afternoon, and Joe and I will probably get Chinese or Indian carry-out for dinner from a downtown restaurant. Even if we are allowed to eat in, I'm not ready. In the Eastern Panhandle of our state, near Harper's Ferry, Charlestown and Martinsburg, the number of cases has increased dramatically. They border areas of Maryland and Virginia where nothing is open, so people have migrated in. Democratic legislators in the area have called for the Governor to close things up again in that part of the state, but he assures them that he and his great friend, the President, know what they are doing.

It's increasingly clear that the President has no idea what he is doing, and our Governor is giving in to pressure from certain businesses, like allowing tanning salons to reopen. Our whole country seems to be derailed, and while the Governor was cautious at first, he seems reckless now.

The only place I've seen obituaries for people who have died is in The New York Times, which we get delivered late Saturday night for Sunday, and in Rolling Stone, which this month featured obituaries for singer-songwriter John Prine, and for  Adam Schlesinger, of the band Fountains of Wayne, who died from COVID-19. Schlesinger's symptoms in early March are similar to what I had in January, only they took a sudden and dramatic turn for the worse and he died at age fifty-two. Maybe I had that and maybe not, but I have to think there is some kind of purpose to my life continuing. I take that as a challenge to be better, more of an activist.

I'm not optimistic about the future of the country, or really, of our species. I should be doing more. I gave some of my $1200 government money to political candidates who might make a difference, and I argued on Facebook with people on the left who say they can't vote for Biden because he is pro-Israel. Our synagogue had a presentation this week online with Rabbi Joe, Imam Kip of the local mosque and Pastor Zac of First Presbyterian Church, about how to lead the congregation from a distance. Of course, all three were frustrated, but when Mavis Grant-Lilly, a local activist and the moderator, asked what surprised them, Imam Kip gave the most honest answer of the night, when he said "I'm surprised by the lack of intelligence of people...even those in positions of power." Pastor Zac said he was surprised that people are so impatient when they know lives are at stake. Rabbi Joe and I sent a picture of ourselves in masks to Morgantown's Communications Director to forward to the County Health Department, saying we wear masks because pikkuach nefesh, saving lives, is the most important commandment in Judaism.

What I've learned from Joe and others is that our first priority is saving lives, and the economy is way behind that. Because we don't eat meat at home, only out of the house, I have not eaten meat other than fish since we've been locked down. With the callousness of the meat industry toward its workers, and the "meat at all costs" attitude of the President,  this would be a good time to stop eating meat altogether. And before the pandemic, I had picked out a new car for us to replace our 2012 Suzuki, but now, I don't think I will ever buy a new car. We have not both been out at the same time since early March, so two cars is a luxury. Maybe it's a good time now to push for that Green New Deal, for Medicare For All, for a much reduced consumption of everything. As we say in Judaism "Therefore Choose Life."

Medical Check-In

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great Outdoors

We've been at home for five weeks now, at least. Joe has classes and services and runs a  a bit of Sunday school. I'm working on a list of about 212 counties I thought might be better places to live than Morgantown. What I've learned from my list is that this is where we live now, and starting over, unless it is specifically in a gay retirement community, is not a good idea. Just today, I looked at Island County, Washington, county seat Coupeville, largest city, Oak Harbor. The weather is mild there, the current President received fewer votes than his opponent, but not by much, and Washington is a gay-friendly state. Still, there is no synagogue there, which is a deal-breaker, and really, we are not going to pack up all our stuff and move back to the West Coast. We are just not going to do that.

I attended a funeral on Zoom from Los Angeles last Sunday, led by the interim rabbi at Beth Chayim Chadashim, where I have been a member since 1987, and the cantor, a friend, who has been there at least eleven years. There were sixty cameras on, and I knew probably 57 of the people from my time in Los Angeles. I think the man who died, Bruce Weil, had a heart attack, because he had not been ill. I met him more than thirty years ago, and although I always thought he was older than I am, I think he was a year or two younger, so late sixties. He was an argumentative sort of stereotypical New Yorker, but also kind and generous. I found out that he had cared for a woman I knew in L.A, who was not well when we left town ten years ago, and died after being committed to a nursing home. I also know that he donated money to the temple for our anniversary a few times. I never would have gone to Los Angeles for this funeral, so I'm glad it was on Zoom. I loved seeing so many people I know online, my real long-time friends. We have congregants here we are close to, and there is a gay social group where we have made some friends we dearly love, but it can't be the same as people we've known for thirty years, and it makes me sad to be away from these people.

A lot is going on in the City of Morgantown, where I am on the Council. Tension between some of us on Council and the City Manager have arisen over a lack of information, and Council is being blamed for decisions we did not make. The Manager has taken a job in his native Michigan, and given  notice, and just this week, the Police Chief tendered his resignation. The City  is being sued for what seems like an exorbitant amount of money. Lots of work and not a lot of fun.

I'm teaching a class at Osher Life-Long Learning that just started, also on Zoom, about pop music in 1968. It's not the same as being live, but it's not bad. The people at OLLI have helped me with the technical stuff. If you want to know what I played this week, go to You Tube and type in "The Great Hits And Albums of 1968 Week One," and videos of all the songs should pop up.

We have been running to the grocery twice a week, although not all of the employees and customers wear masks or socially distance. Grocery shopping feels reckless. We picked up Indian food for dinner. I noticed that our next-door neighbor had pizza delivered tonight. It's the macho in me, which I have tried to kill off several times, that won't let me have people bring food to my door. I don't want to feel like an invalid, although my life will be at risk if I get Covid-19.

Today was the first warm day in a few weeks, and I asked Joe to go to WVU's Core Arboretum, on a hillside overlooking the Monongahela River about a mile and a half from here. The spring wildflowers, early this year, are still blooming, and we ran into our friends Zack and Annie Fowler and their two kids, keeping a distance from them. Zack is the Director of the Arboretum, and he pointed out an owl he named Aldo living in a hole in a tree. We also saw, masked, West Virginia House of Delegates member  Barbara Evans Fleischauer, who had a question for Joe about a program that might happen at the synagogue in the fall. So although we complain that we don't know people here, we do. I put up pics from Core Arboretum at the end of this post.

I've been doing a run and walk through the neighborhood, and today I broke a record by doing it in seventeen minutes and thirty-eight seconds. I'm not sure of the distance, but it might be two miles. Thee is one hill I can't (and shouldn't) run, but I can now run the rest of the course. I do the same course every time, and thanks to the changing season, I can see different things blooming over the last few weeks, and leaves starting to sprout. I say "Hello" to a few dogs along the way, all fenced or chained, and many of the ones who used to bark angrily at me no longer do.

So this is our life now. We still have an income, we can still pay our mortgage and we have health insurance. We had $2400 deposited to our joint checking account. I plan to spend mine to help certain political candidates. At this point, I think that is the best thing I can do.

Here are the pics from Core Arboretum:

Hard to see, but there is an owl in that tree