Sunday, November 23, 2014

Belmont County, Ohio

This trip was a joke on me. Joe agreed to go with me to my next county, alphabetically: Bedford, Virginia. We were supposed to go Monday to Wednesday, November 17 to 19. Then I looked at the weather report. Tuesday, the day we would be touring, had a forecast high in Bedford of 24 F., with 21 mile per hour winds. And Monday and Wednesday we would be traveling over the mountains in West Virginia, where it would likely be snowing. So we didn't go. Monday night we stayed in Morgantown,  saw the movie St. Vincent and then ate dinner at a Chinese buffet in University Town Center.

This weekend, the forecast was a high of 49 Saturday, with even warmer weather Sunday, but
rain all day. So, I thought I would go to then next county, Belmont County, Ohio, originally scheduled for December, on Saturday November 22. I didn't want to fall behind.

I took the back route across West Virginia 2 to New Martinsville. For some reason, although it was 32 when I left the house, the temperature got colder. Then it started to rain. And then there was ice all over the roads. An accident on the bridge across the Ohio River at New Martinsville held me up for a half hour. I was behind a truck salting the road on Ohio 7 heading up the river. I still didn't understand about the ice. I stopped at Dollar General in Powhatan Point to use the bathroom, check directions and buy a big bag of pretzels for a dollar.

I followed a back road, where I saw a car in a ditch. Then my car began to slide. That's when I got it. The car's gauge said it was 32 outside. I drove slowly after that. Southwestern Belmont County is mountainous, like West Virginia. It's dotted with well pads and access roads from fracking, disturbing the landscape. I hadn't gotten to my first historic place in the town of Belmont by 12:45. This man doesn't live on pretzels alone, so I continued on OH 9, instead of turning off to Belmont, to St. Clairsville, where I knew there was a mall off I-70.  I knew I could get a cheap and fast lunch at the mall. I had a slice of pizza, a small salad, and a diet Pepsi. Coming out, I could see that the traffic heading back to St. Clairsville was backed up. I decided to go back to the Ohio River and visit the old town of Bellaire.

I was on I-470 in Ohio, the bypass around Wheeling, West Virginia. Traffic stopped dead for a half hour. I saw trucks stalled on the road for no apparent reason. I thought maybe there was some kind of trucker strike, like last year. A Pittsburgh radio station talked about how traffic was stopped all over the region. Apparently, it was because of ice on the roads.

I finally reached Bellaire, stopping at a Dairy Queen for an ice cream and another bathroom. I tried to get Mapquest on my phone, but typically, I couldn't get internet service on my useless Samsung Galaxy S4 with Sprint service, when it works. I had written the addresses of the five historic places in town. I found two. My research found that once upon a time there were three synagogues in this town. The 1920 census showed 15, 061 people in Bellaire. In 2010, there were 4, 278. This is what the rust belt looks like.

I had planned to be out six hours, three to drive both ways and three to explore. With  all the traffic problems, the only place I really got to look at was Bellaire.

The joke on me was that Sunday was much warmer, and there was no rain. If I were into magical thinking, I would say I was punished for ditching Torah study Saturday morning to go exploring.

Here are some pictures from Bellaire, Ohio, Saturday, November 22, 2014, between 2;30 and 3:45 P.M. The temperature was around 45 F., and there was an on-and-off drizzle under cloudy skies.
Traffic backed up on I-470 in eastern Ohio

Village square in Bellaire. The high school is in the background

B&O Railroad Bridge from across the Ohio River into town

First Christian Church. This is near where there was once a synagogue. Maybe it was in this building?

United Presbyterian Church

Bellaire Public Library

Belmont Street, the main drag through downtown
Zweig Building and abandoned Ohio River Bridge, Bellaire, OH

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Israel

Note: I am in a same-gender marriage to Rabbi Joe Hample, spiritual leader of Tree of Life, a Reform synagogue in Morgantown, West Virginia. I am publishing this without showing it to the Rabbi. The opinions here are my own, not his. Nor do they necessarily represent the views of members of Tree of Life.

Rabbi Joe sermonized about Israel on Yom Kippur. He called for a separation of the Jews and Arabs in Palestine with the establishment of an Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza. It was brave of him to say that when the government in Israel seems to be opposed. Still, if Israel is to remain a Jewish state, the Arabs need to have their own government.

Since then, the world has seen the rise of militants in Iraq and Syria, failing governments in Yemen and Libya, and Arab attacks on Jewish civilians in Israel, particularly in Jerusalem. This past Tuesday, November 18, two Arabs attacked a group of Orthodox Jews at morning prayer in Har Hof, a West Jerusalem neighborhood favored by English speakers from the United States and Britain. People were shot, stabbed and hacked with a meat cleaver in the middle of their prayers. Ultimately, a police officer, an ethnic Druze, shot and killed the two attackers. The policeman himself died of injuries.

Israel annexed all of Jerusalem after the Six-Day War in 1967. Many in the Arab community, who were the majority in that area before 1967, are not happy to be in a Jewish state. They have the rights of citizenship, but Israel is clearly set up for the benefit of Jews. The definition of "Jerusalem" has been expanded to include all the land up to Hebron. Jewish-only settlements have been built on land the Arabs want for their own state.

Until the attack this week, I had the impression, from visiting Jerusalem in 1985 and 2007 and from talking to friends and reading about Israel, that religion was not an issue between people. There was a "live and let live" attitude. Tensions were worse between the so-called "Ultra-Orthodox" and "secular" Jews. I use quotes because many in both camps object to those terms. Some pundits think these killers were inspired by ISIS to kill Jews at prayer, and that is possible. Tension may be high because some Jews are demanding the right to pray on the Temple Mount, site of Solomon's temple, but the site of a mosque since the seventh century. After the 1967 conquest of East Jerusalem, the Temple Mount was placed under Moslem jurisdiction and Jews could visit, but not pray. Maybe it shouldn't be a big deal, but I don't see the point of Jews praying there if it affronts Muslim sensibilities. Our prayers, as Jews, have not depended on being at the Temple Mount for almost two thousand years. As a liberal, Diaspora Jew, I say "Let them have it."

Speaking of liberals, the rhetoric from friends on Facebook has been hysterical and not helpful. People are quoting from sources without investigating them. I mean from "TheRightScoop.com or well-known haters like Pamela Geller or Michelle Malkin. People I know buy whatever these horrible people are saying about how "Liberals hate Israel."I won't even repeat what they say about Islam generally. In the past, I've asked well-meaning people not to post from people like Mike Huckabee,  Glenn Beck, or Ben Carson. When I read something, I consider the source before I consider their arguments. If it's Cal Thomas (who appears in the Morgantown Dominion-Post) or someone who I know is racist and homophobic, or if it comes from an unreliable source like Fox News, I ignore it. Yes, CNN, The Washington Post and even the New York Times have been unreliable. My readings on Israel are likely to come from Ha'aretz, a liberal, English-language paper from Israel that provides a variety of opinions directly from Israel. I follow Ha'aretz on Twitter. My few Israeli friends are people who have moved there from the United States. I don't often agree with them.

What I've read about the community where these murders took place is that the people are at prayer. Thousands attended the funeral of the non-Jewish police officer who was killed. They are not asking for revenge. What they have done is mourn the dead, affirm their attachment to Israel, to the Jewish people and to their own families. I join with my fellow Jews in these endeavors.

I feel helpless. The Islamic world is spinning out of control. Israel, like the United States, has become more divided, more ruled by ugliness, money and thuggery than in the past. I ask that we take a step back, listen to the other side, be charitable and pray for peace with respect for everyone in the world.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

The Election

My initial dismay at the national and West Virginia election results has become more rational. Nationally, the Republicans wiped the floor with the Democrats. Here in West Virginia, we will have a majority-Republican House of Delegates for the first time in many, many years., and although the state Senate election resulted in a tie, a Democrat was convinced to change his party affiliation to Republican to give the Republicans a majority. I wonder if he was paid to do that, and if so, how much?

I don't know if the Democrats could have gotten around the hatred that has been fomented against President Obama by Karl Rove, Roger Ailes, the Koch Brothers, and locally, coal mine operators like Bob Murray of Murray Energy, who owns mines here in West Virginia. When we arrived here in 2012, the state was awash in "Stop Obama's War On Coal" signs and bumper stickers and even license plates that say "Friend of Coal."

Our junior Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, came up with a simple law, along with a Republican from Pennsylvania, to close a loophole that allowed anyone to buy a gun at a show without any kind of check. He was subjected to a blowback of hate from the gun lobby. I think he must have been shocked at the ferocity.

With all this as background, it's no wonder that Natalie Tennant, from all reports a good person, the Democratic Senate nominee to replace retiring Jay Rockefeller, ran against Obama and the EPA. In a debate on public radio with Republican nominee Shelly Moore Capito, Tennant stated over and over that she was raised on a farm and owns a gun. For her part, Capito only stated, over and over, that Tennant supported Obama.

In West Virginia, with its palpable dislike of outsiders and racial minorities, it's hard not to think Obama's race had something to do with this. Capito had been in Congress, and no one could point to anything she accomplished in the last few terms. She presented no agenda except stopping Obama and the EPA.

It didn't help that the Supreme Court wouldn't hear the case for maintaining the ban on same-gender marriage in West Virginia. President Obama, at least in his second term, has been a supporter of gay rights, and I'm sure that rankled people here and in other states. West Virginia passed a law against same-gender marriage a few years ago, with only three dissenters: two here in Morgantown and one in Huntington. One of the two in Morgantown, the first African-American mayor, was defeated in this election. In our district, we have gone from three Democrats and two Republicans in the legislature to four Republicans and one Democrat. Voters here could press one button to vote "all Democratic" or "all Republican." People should have had to vote for each office. Republican campaign materials tended not to state which party the candidate belonged to.

I voted for Tennant, maybe because singer-songwriter Carole King came here to support her.  I'm not sure that King, a well-known liberal, a Jew and a New Yorker by birth, was helpful to the campaign. She got me to vote for Tennant, but I'm not a typical West Virginian. I was sorely tempted to vote for The Mountain Party, whose views are closest to mine. Their problem is that they have no chance of winning.

I read Kathleen Parker in our local paper, The Dominion-Post, this morning (November 13). She blames Democrats for alleged lies about The Affordable Care Act. She is upset that people lost their insurance despite promises that they could keep their insurance. That was always conditional on those policies meeting certain standards, which many of them didn't. I don't believe it was the big issue she states it is. I think she knows that and is just looking for something to throw at President Obama. She's delusional if she thinks, as she says, that the Republican victory was about "restoring that trust" in government.

I think the Republicans won by limiting voting among African-Americans, who vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, by nefarious reapportionment schemes, difficult ID laws, and not accepting new registrations, even though they were filed timely. I credit the Supreme Court with allowing "dark money" to pollute elections, and overturning The Voting Rights Act, allowing mostly formerly-Confederate states to impose new restrictions on voting that would adversely affect African-Americans.

There is no denying that Democrats could have done a much better job of presenting themselves. They could have stood up for the ACA and promoted clean air and water, even in West Virginia. In our district, Democrat Glen Gainer ran almost no campaign against Tea Party favorite David McKinley, a climate change denier.

If the Republicans are proud of their victory, I'm fine with it. They got it from Democratic timidity, racism, homophobia, cheating on the rules, and money from only the top 1% of our economy. Maybe a majority of voters are fine with that. I'm not.