Thursday, January 29, 2015

Liberation +70

Yesterday was the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau by advancing Soviet troops. January 27 is not an anniversary I usually note. This year, because it was seventy years ago, and the number of survivors is rapidly dwindling, it's been a bigger deal.

It occurred to me, maybe for the first time now, that this event happened only four years and nine months before my birth.  The same amount of time as a current eight-year old is removed from the events of September 11, 2001. Will these kids study 9/11 in school when they are older, or will it be pushed under the rug, as the Holocaust was for many of us?

My father was a World War II veteran. He fought in the Pacific. My sister and I asked him lots of questions, but he clearly did not want to talk about his experiences. In public school, we never talked about World War II. Even in high school, in both American and World History, our teachers expressed (probably fake) regret that we ran out of school year after World War I. At the fancy private university I attended, history classes talked about the rise of the Nazis to power, but skirted over the systematic murder of Jewish Europe. One of my fraternity brothers, a pre-med named Peter, had Holocaust survivor parents. They, like everyone else, would not tell him their experiences. He wrote a nearly book-length paper for a history class on the how the Nazis seized power. This was just before William Shirer's massive tome on the same subject.

I posted Tuesday on Facebook about how the liberation of Auschwitz was so close to the time of my birth. I got several responses from former public school classmates. One told me she also was not taught about The Holocaust; another said her father was with a US Army unit that liberated Buchenwald, and her father made sure she knew all about it.

I remember finding out in Jewish religious school that one of my friends was born in a refugee camp in Europe in 1950. I asked him why his family was still there nearly five years after the end of the war. He said "They had nowhere else to go." Since then I've met many Jews born between 1946 and 1950 in refugee camps in Europe. Many of them describe parents who refused to talk about their experiences, or had feelings of alienation when classmates went to visit aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, when they had none. One woman, born in Sweden and raised in Tel Aviv, told me she used to hear people scream in the night. She and her friends called these people "Mi Sham" ("from there") although, because no one would speak of their experiences, the kids didn't know where "there" was.

Many Jewish people I know still distrust the United States government because it refused entry to Jewish refugees from Europe, and because it wouldn't bomb the railroad entrances to the camps. Those on the left don't trust the government to run a war competently,or  stand up for civil rights for Jews, gays, African-Americans, or Moslems. They identify with oppression, with not having a voice.

On the right, friends have become hyper-Zionists. They believer the rhetoric of Moslem extremists, Iran and the Palestinian Authority needs to be taken at face value, because we didn't believe Hitler would actually do what he did, even though he made his intentions clear. A right-wing American friend living in Israel believes Israel or the US should bomb Iran's nuclear facilities because they threaten the US and Israel.

On my grandfather Sam Polk's last trip to Baltimore in 1974, he and I visited his cousin, Rabbi Mendel Poliakoff. The Rabbi's daughter had just gotten married, but it was the same weekend a closer cousin in my grandmother's family got married in New York. My grandfather wanted to express his regret for missing the wedding in Baltimore. For some reason, they got into a heated argument about Vietnam. I, veteran of anti-war marches, and not exactly a child at twenty-four, stayed out of the discussion.

"We have to stop the Communists, because we didn't stop the Nazis," said Rabbi Poliakoff. My grandfather answered "What if we are the Nazis in this case?"

In the Talmud, there are often discussions of interpretation of Biblical passages.
    "Rabbi X says because of thus and so it should be like this. Rabbi Y says because of that and this, here is a different interpretation. Rabbi Z says Rabbi X and Rabbi Y are both correct. The contradiction can be explained like this..."

Here too, the people on both sides, the hawks and doves, the liberals and conservatives are both coming from the same place. We live with the mistakes of the 1930s and 1940s, with the ghosts of ancestors and cousins we will never meet. We know or knew survivors, with their tales of horror. We read books about great heroes, political weaklings, mobs of people hating other people, our people particularly, and we want to make sure that doesn't happen again.

A gay friend on Facebook yesterday, not Jewish, expressed his fear of the rhetoric coming from Republicans and some Evangelical clergy. Ben Carson was widely reported saying that a baker forced to make cakes for a same-gender wedding might poison the cake. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said that, in the light of court approval of same-gender marriage, there should be a constitutional amendment to not allow such marriages. Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and other candidates have made anti-gay statements. My friend is afraid of what will happen if these people come to power.

What can we do seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz? I feel powerless. All I do is write this blog, letters to the editors of different papers decrying  anti-gay rhetoric, attempts to keep people from voting, the loosening of the few restrictions on gun ownership, or the apparent takeover of West Virginia by the management of coal, oil and gas producers. My big worry is not from the Moslems, here, in Iran, or Palestine. I worry more about a fascist takeover of the United States. In West Virginia, there is such a palpable hatred of President Obama because "He wants to take our guns away," or "He's making war on coal," or "He's a secret Moslem" or not as often spoken, "He's pro-choice and gay friendly," and, (of course), half African-American. Irrational hatred is frightening.

The whole world is on edge with the terror attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris, with attacks on Jews throughout Europe, apparently from Moslem youth, with the continuing uncertainty in the Middle East, and with what I see as inflammatory rhetoric from the Republican Party in the United States to outreach those who hate anyone they see as "other."


Thursday, January 22, 2015

Alan Gross and Cuba

There is a party tonight at a temple in Rockville, Maryland to welcome Alan Gross back from Cuba, where he was imprisoned for more than five years. I was supposed to go with my sister, who lives in the Washington area, and spend time with her. Unfortunately, I've been suffering all week from a cold. I felt a little better yesterday, not really well enough to drive four hours over the mountains from my home in Morgantown, West Virginia, in potential ice and snow alone at sixty-five years old. I'm trying to kill off the "shtarker" (big shot) in me, who thinks he is unstoppable. I am very stoppable. I wish Alan had thought that maybe he was "stoppable" before agreeing to go on his adventure to Cuba. It wouldn't be like Alan to be cautious.

Alan and I go back to fifth grade, when his parents moved to Baltimore from New York, buying what was at the time considered a luxurious house in the next neighborhood over from us. We turned up in the same class that year, and became friends. We also attended the same Hebrew school. We remained friends, even though we were not always in the same classes in junior high. In ninth grade, he and I and several other pals joined Chesapeake AZA. Alan's parents were great to me. I had sleepovers and dinners at their home, and spent one day each summer for several years on Alan's dad's boat in Chesapeake Bay.

The line that divided neighborhoods zoned for Woodlawn High, where I went, and Milford Mill, where Alan went, both on the west side of Baltimore County, ran between his street and mine. Alan ultimately became a wheel in AZA. I believe he was District president and became a life member. We drifted apart our last year of high school. He spent more time with AZA people, and had friends at Northwood High in Silver Spring.

I only remember seeing Alan once after my first year of college. A group of old pals planned a trip to Atlantic City. Alan said he would meet us there. He showed up with a beautiful girl with long black hair, named Judy. In my memory she talked about being a feminist and working for Planned Parenthood.

Alan contacted me, like so many old friends did, on Facebook in 2009. We caught up briefly with messages. I told him I was in Los Angeles and had recently married my boyfriend, a student rabbi. He told me about his two grown daughters and said "Judy Morgenstein Gross and I have lived in the DC area since 1970." I said "I met Judy. Congratulations on having the same wife for so many years." He answered "Judy is a very patient person."

That was the same Alan I knew back when. He was funny and personable. In my memory, we always had a good time together, even if he drove 100 miles per hour on then-deserted US 29 in his father's cranberry-colored Oldsmobile to Silver Spring, scaring me to death.

I sent him a message about a Chesapeake AZA group on Facebook in June 2009. He answered a few days later, apologizing for the delay. "I was out of the country," he said. I didn't hear from him again.

Alan's sister Bonnie contacted me on Facebook a few months later. It turns out the cantor at the synagogue where she worked in Dallas, Texas was a friend of mine from Los Angeles. Bonnie asked me if I knew what had happened to Alan. I didn't know anything, so she sent me a link to a news article.

I investigated the whole issue from all sides. The United States' policy towards Cuba was the root of the problem. Not to say that Castros are nice people. But I believe the United States is, in many respects, not a competent superpower. My Grandpa Wendell had two brothers in Cuba. The regime ultimately confiscated the textile factories they owned, and the uncles left. My grandparents were in Cuba January 1, 1959, when Castro took over. Grandpa would be 120 and Grandma 119, if they were alive today. The Castros are still in power. It seems the Cubans wanted some kind of recognition and an exchange of prisoners. They didn't want to hold on to Alan. I think Judy Gross was correct to sue the United States government for not making an effort to deal with Cuba. We made a swap with the Taliban; we freely trade with China, Russia and Vietnam.

I was angry that Alan was a pawn, hostage to Democratic Senator Menendez from New Jersey and Republican Congressperson Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in Florida, who represent Cuban-Americans. Alan couldn't come home because New Jersey and Florida are swing states, and I thought it was despicable that Alan couldn't be freed because of that. I wrote to our representatives in West Virginia and to President Obama. I was not hopeful from their responses.

With the election over, President Obama was free to take action. He also figured out what I knew in 1980, when I lived in Miami: the most hard-core anti-Castro Cubans will never vote Democratic. So Alan was freed, and now we are opening up to Cuba.

I remember years ago, the pictures of Chinese workers bicycling to work in Beijing in their Mao outfits. Now Beijing is almost unlivable with pollution, and everyone wants a suburban house and a new Buick. I hope Cuba doesn't lose its soul to the worst of American values.

Meanwhile, I'm happy for Alan and Judy and their entire family. I'm sorry Alan's sweet mother Evelyn didn't live to see him come home. I wish I could be with Alan and our other friends from the old days who will be at his event tonight. If my sister sends pictures, I will post them.


Monday, January 19, 2015

Gay Friends

We found out sometime last year that there is a group based in Morgantown called "G2H2," or "Gay Guys Happy Hour." They meet monthly at a different restaurant/bar in town. Up to that time, we had not met many gay folks in town, certainly not other couples in our age group. People would say to me "There is a gay student organization." Yes, but they are all twenty and still worried about what their parents or roommates will say. So G2H2 looked to be our group. Only they meet from 6-8 on Friday evenings, and we have to be at services before 7:30. I went once without Joe and met some people, and we attended together once last summer when Shabbat was late. Still, we had to leave before seven.

The December meeting was on the Thursday night before Christmas, because the restaurant was booked for several large parties Friday. Perfect for us. We had drinks (non-alcoholic in my case) and stayed for dinner. We chatted up a couple in their early sixties  (older than Joe, younger than I) named Dave and Joe Bart. We had met them at one of the earlier mixers.

This month, the party was again on Thursday night, and although I was tired, not feeling great, and having an important medical test the next day, I went with my Joe. We were in a trendy new bar, with not much really edible food, and fairly high prices. We spent most of the evening with Joe Bart and Dave, and another man named Doug, who now runs G2H2 with Joe Bart. We all adjourned to Mother India down the street, where there is a plentiful buffet of recognizable food. Joe Bart and Dave invited us to their farm in Pennsylvania, just over the border, for dinner Saturday.

So we went. I took Robitussin and whatever else I could find to mask my deteriorating health. We have found lots of people in this area, including gay people, who live way off main roads, in virtually inaccessible places. I always imagine gays congregating in a "gay ghetto" in the center of a city. That doesn't work here. Joe Bart and Dave live six miles east of the first exit on I-79 in Pennsylvania, just north of the West Virginia line. The directions didn't include street names, just "turn left at the church" and "look for the red barn." We passed fracking wells and coal mines on the way. It was seventeen miles from our place in Morgantown.

The house is beautiful and modern, set far off the road. They have a barn and goats. Doug from G2H2 was there, along with his mother, a Presbyterian minister, and Bill, a Jesuit priest. They had all been to see the opera at a movie theater in Morgantown, streamed from The Met in New York.We'll pause here for the "a priest, a minister and a rabbi walk into..." joke.

Anyway, we were totally comfortable with everyone there. We had food and drink and bonded with two dogs and one of the two house cats. They asked us if we had met many people socially in Morgantown, and we almost cried. "This is the first time we've been invited socially to the home of a gay couple in this part of the world." True. We've dined with many of Joe's congregants, and they have been just lovely to both of us, more than we would have imagined before we came, but we really have no gay friends.

I should say "had," because we now have Joe Bart and Dave. Our house is tiny and a disorganized mess, thanks to my lack of Executive something-or-other and Joe's life in a more ethereal world. Still, we will get more organized, clean up and cook dinner for our friends, as soon as my now full-blown cold is over. The test from the doctor Friday resulted in good news, a great relief.

Hopefully, this is a sign that we will be more comfortable with our lives in Morgantown over the next few years.


Thursday, January 15, 2015

The 2015 S.A.G. Awards

I joined AFTRA ( American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) early in my acting career. All you had to do to get in was pay them three hundred dollars. Supposedly, being in a union meant you could get an agent and work. A friend of a classmate came to a showcase from my acting class. She was an assistant casting director for "General Hospital. " She thought I did well in my scene, and suddenly I was on television. One line. April 25, 1987. That day of work and six hundred dollars got me into the Screen Actors Guild, S.A.G. I worked a few times under S.A.G. I doubled for Wallace Shawn on a now-forgotten movie, I was in the gallery at a trial on "Matlock," and a balloon vendor on the first episode of the failed series "Flash Forward." Not a distinguished career, exactly.There hasn't been much chance of work for me since we left Los Angeles five years ago. Still I keep paying dues. There's supposed to be a death benefit from the Union ( now merged into A.F.T.R.A. - S.A.G.), and they send me DVDs of nominated movies for the annual S.A.G. Awards. They also send me a code to watch episodes of nominated television shows and some movies online. In 2011, I was on the nominating committee, and I got to vote among fifty-five or so movies for which actors deserved a nomination.

This year, I received four screeners. I didn't look for performances online. I received "Birdman, " which I had already seen in Silver Spring, Maryland over Thanksgiving, "Boyhood," "The Imitation Game," and "The Theory of Everything." These movies were all nominated in the category "Outstanding Performance By A Cast in A Motion Picture," along with "Grand Budapest Hotel," which I saw last April in Staunton, Virginia. There is no other category in which I saw every nominee, and I probably won't spend much more time on this before votes are tallied next week. Maybe I'll only vote in that category.

I enjoyed all of these movies, and recommend them to anyone who asks. "The Imitation Game" and "The Theory of Everything" contain bravura performances from Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne respectively, and they are both nominated for "Best Performance By A Male Actor in a Motion Picture" but I feel that everyone else in these movies is just supporting them. In "Birdman" there is more of an ensemble, but still mostly Michael Keaton and Edward Norton, nominated respectively for Best Performance By A Male Actor in a Leading Role and Supporting Role. So I plan to vote for "Grand Budapest Hotel" for "Outstanding Performance By A Cast In A Motion Picture." I'm guessing it won't win because it was a quirky movie and came out early in 2014. The huge cast includes Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Adrian Brody, Saoirse Ronan, Tilda Swinton, and Léa Seydoux, among dozens of others. It was one of the most satisfying movies I've seen in the last few years.

The year I was on the nominating committee, two of the biggest movies were "Bridesmaids" and "The Help." They were both notable because they were about women, with the men in supporting roles. This year, almost all of the movies are male-centered. Even in the Best Female Actor in a Leading Role category, in the two I saw anyway, the movies were more about a man than the nominated woman. I mean Rosamund Pike in "Gone Girl" and Felicity Jones in "The Theory of Everything." Their performances were great, but the movies were more about their men.

It's will be five years next week since we left Hollywood. I don't regret leaving the celebrity-chasers behind, but still, movie awards season is much more important to me than the NFL or college football playoffs.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

FIRST WEEK

It's been a productive week, this first one in 2015. Joe and I both decided to eat less, with the hope of losing weight. I'm down three pound so far, which makes me happy.

I had two doctor appointments January 5, one a checkup with my regular MD, a pretty Southern young woman, a resident. I've noted in the past that she always wears makeup. I don't know why that surprises me. The second appointment was with the cardiologist, a charming, handsome, Italian-American with a drawl and a sense of humor. Lately, I see a technician and a nurse practitioner before I get to the real doctor. They always ask a bunch of questions, which elicit in me a sense of gratitude for my good life. "Are all your needs being met?" "Do you feel safe in your household?" The nurse was a young woman named Amalita, with an Italian accent. I didn't want to talk to her at first, but then I noticed she was wearing something lacy under her white lab coat. I asked if her mother was Amalia, and she told me she was named for an opera star her mother admired. She was charming and beautiful.

I finally admitted to Dr. Renzelli and Amalita that, yes, I did sometimes have chest pain, not like my heart attack nearly twelve years ago, but more a tightness, coupled with breathing hard. I noticed it riding my bicycle up some of the steeper hills in Morgantown. And sometimes, when I walk to the convenience store in the morning to buy newspapers, I stop walking back up the hill to our house, because I feel out of breath. I don't know that a totally in shape 65-year old can do better than I do.

They've been worried about me. I have a stent in my left anterior descending artery that was designed to last eight to ten years. February 9 will be twelve years since it was installed. So I'm going to do a stress test Friday next week to see if everything is working the way it's supposed to. If not, they have to go back into the artery and unclog it.  I don't have any illusions at 65 about life expectancy and things that can go wrong, but if there is a blockage, and they can clear it, I'll be better off.

Tuesday Joe and I went out in snow and cold weather to run a bunch of errands. We bought Bubbie's Pickles at Mountain People's Co-op, sourdough at New Day Bakery, checked my post office box, picked up Joe's dry cleaning at Massullo's, bought groceries at Kroger, stopped at the bank and the gas station, and found me a new gym.

The gym is in the shopping center with Kroger. "Brad" greeted me at the door. He's a big blond hunk, maybe 25, wearing a three-inch long silver cross on a huge chain around his neck. He's a graduate of the program at the gym I just left, and spoke fondly of two of the faculty there, one of whom couldn't say "Hello" to me in the twenty-eight months I worked out there. I signed up for a year, with two months free. I asked about working out a few times with a trainer. Brad mentioned two graduates of The Human Performance Lab, probably my two favorite ex-grad students. I'm sorry they don't have better jobs, with their masters degree in Exercise Physiology. I'm meeting with Ariel, a thin, pretty, talkative native West Virginia woman tomorrow. We were actual friends at HPL.

Joe and I came home from more than two hours in cold weather, and I fell asleep for over an hour. We had been talking about going to a trivia night at a local restaurant that people in the congregation go to. I was exhausted and not feeling well, so I let Joe go alone.

Now we are in the grip of the Polar Vortex. I took the car yesterday to buy papers in the morning, and ran out to the street to pick up the mail in the afternoon. That was it for outdoors. It snowed on and off all day. Today, it's clear and pretty out, but in the three hours since sunrise the temperature has only gone from -1 to +1 F., and the wind chill is steady at -10. It's supposed to go up to 19 later this afternoon. Our intrepid cleaning woman is driving over the mountains from Garrett County, Maryland to be with us this afternoon, so I'll be heading to the mall to get out of her way. I may go to a swing dance class tonight at the University. It will be my first time there.

Both Joe and I are working on our health and our social life this year. We've taken steps in the last week. All that's keeping us from being out more socially and walking outside is the bitter cold weather.