Sherry Netherland

Her vanity license plate read "NYHotel." When I met her, nearly thirty years ago, she told me that she changed her name to further her comic career. She also didn't have much to do with her parents, who lived on Long island. I was with her sometimes when she introduced herself to new people. She would smile and say "Hi. I'm Sherry Netherland." Often the people would shake her hand and say "Nice to meet you." Then she'd look at me and say "They don't get it." And we would laugh.

From other people's comments, I guess we met at Israeli dancing at Beth Chayim Chadashim, a synagogue for gay men and lesbians, probably in late 1984 or early 1985. We hit it off right away. She was pretty, funny, loud and brassy. I like those qualities in a woman. If we had not both been gay, it might have been a match.

I left my day job in the fall of '86 and embarked on an acting career. I was too petrified to do stand-up, as Sherry did. I saw one of her shows. It was too early in our liberation for her to be an open lesbian. This was fifteen years before Ellen came out, and longer before Wanda Sykes. She had to be too safe to talk about her real life.

We rehearsed a scene together from a Christopher Durang play and presented it to a casting director through the Screen Actors Guild. I thought we were both brilliant. That wasn't enough to get us hired.

Sherry once gave me a great idea. She sent out pictures and resumés with a little plastic kazoo. She knew agents and casting people throw away lots of envelopes without looking at them, but she thought they would be curious if there was an extra something rattling around in the envelope.

When Beth Chayim Chadashim split in 1992, Shery went with the new congregation, Kol Ami. There was a lot of ill will at that time, but Sherry and I remained friends, event though I stayed at the original temple. Still, there were years when we didn't see much of each other. We got back together on Facebook. Joe and I went to see a show she directed before we moved away from Los Angeles in January, 2010.

From a distance, I read about her new house, all the plays she was acting in, directing or writing, her golf game. Then I got this message from her on Facebook on May 2:

"On April 9th I was diagnosed with lung cancer. (no I am not a smoker) I am not making this Facebook public but I wanted you to know because you are at services every week and I know you would include me in The mishebeyrach prayer. It couldn't hurt. I have no treatment plan yet. Lots of tests yet to go." [Mi Shebeyrach is a prayer for healing]

Sherry sent periodic updates to a group of friends and told us she would have an operation. She included a long list of contacts, things to do, where she would be after her operation, to whom to send get-well cards. She was very organized, and, I think, clear about the possibilities. She remained logical, upbeat and unself-pitying throughout.

This is the last email from her to her group, dated August 3:

  "Okay peeps, tomorrow at 9am everyone should think, "lung in a pan."  If my lung is in a pan next to me, I am essentially cured of cancer.

I believe in positive thinking and with the collective power of the very wonderful minds on this list I should be a-ok.

I am grateful for all the encouragement, support and good wishes I have received from each of you these past few months.  It has made this journey easier. I will spend a long time trying to find the right words to express these feelings.  Your love has kept me positive and that has been so important and of value without price.

There will be an email tomorrow from Lloyd (which will appear to be from me) with an update on how the surgery went.

love,
Miss Sherry"


After this, her friend Lloyd sent updates from the hospital. The original news was not good, but it seemed there would be some further treatment out of the hospital. That didn't happen, and Sherry died Saturday morning, August 16. She was 59. 

I call it "The Rules." The Rules are that people become ill and die, some too soon, some too late. The Rules are what will inevitably happen to you. It's The Rules that come with the gift of life. It doesn't make it easy. 

I cried for Sherry Saturday morning, my friend of so many years. My religion tells me I should thank God. There was a time when I could not have done this, and it is still a struggle. I have to remember that Sherry was blessed with beauty and brains, prodigious talent, a wide circle of friends. She made an excellent life for herself. I'm not the only one who will miss her.

Bath County, Virginia

In West Virginia, the good roads go to Charleston. Interstate 77 from Cleveland and Parkersburg, I-79 from Erie, Pennsylvania and Morgantown, and I-64 from Louisville and Huntington, crossing the mountains into Virginia, are the main roads. Interstate 68 heads east from Morgantown to Cumberland, Maryland, connecting eventually to Baltimore and Washington.

Heading to the eastern side of West Virginia, or over the mountains to Virginia between 68 and 64 is harder. The roads are two-lane and often run through small towns. To get to Warm Springs, the county seat of Bath County, the logical route, on the map anyway, is US 250, which winds around the mountains and through National Forests to Virginia. How people traveled to Richmond from Morgantown before the Civil War is a mystery to me. Maybe hardly anyone lived in Morgantown then, so it didn't come up often. Still, three hundred miles over the mountains must have been quite a haul.

Most of Bath County is in George Washington National Forest. Warm Springs has one street with the county courthouse, the library, the police station, the tourist center, and a handful of houses. Everything else is rural. Hot Springs, the resort town five miles south, has a short main street. There are bars and restaurants on one block. The IGA Market is between the two towns and closes at 8.

The original attraction in Bath County is the warm springs from which the county seat takes its name. The Homestead Resort, a sprawling hotel with hundreds of acres of grounds, is at the center of Hot Springs. The hotel has restaurants, shopping, golf, tennis, skiing in winter, an elaborate water park and movies in the evening. It is run by Omni Resorts.

It's less than two hundred miles to Warm Springs from Morgantown, which in my system means it's a one-night stay, especially in an underpopulated rural area. The Homestead is the only chain hotel. There are other motels and some bed-and-breakfasts. In the county tourist brochure, the motels all said "call for information," and none of the bed-and-breakfasts were listed with PurpleRoofs.com, which lists gay-friendly B&Bs. Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but this is the rural South. Bath County voted 60-40 for Romney in 2012, not the worst in Virginia, but enough to worry me about how I might be treated, both as a semi-obvious gay man, and as someone who doesn't look quite white enough.

So I booked a night at The Homestead, $247 plus a $52 resort fee, and taxes. Total: $308 for one night, lots more than I usually spend. I had hoped Joe would go with me, but with holidays coming up and Sunday school starting, he couldn't do it. My fault for marrying a younger man with a job.

The hotel is beautiful, and in a lovely spot. It's traditional without being overbearing about it. I enjoyed wearing my few outfits of casual designer clothes and walking around the grounds. The early August weather was pleasant, cooler and less muggy than Morgantown. The tips of the leaves were beginning to change color already. Breakfast was bountiful, even if I didn't indulge. I enjoyed the locally-made yogurt and cream cheese, the fresh berries, a decent bagel and green tea. I skipped the eggs, pork products, grits, oatmeal, waffles and french toast.

The resort stuff is wasted on me. I don't play tennis or golf, didn't go to the pool. I did pay $17 to "take the waters" in Warm Springs. The building was supposed to be designed by Thomas Jefferson. It was almost falling down, but the idea of bathing in a spring appealed to me. I only used half of my allotted hour, afraid my blood pressure would drop far enough to make me pass out. I was relaxed and only mildly dizzy when I left.

Most of my time in Bath County, I tooled around searching for places on The National Register of Historic Places. There were seventeen, including the hotel, and an archaeological site where the location is not public. I found a few old houses, some at the end of private lanes or behind gates, and thus inaccessible.  The Warwick Mansion in Hidden Valley, part of George Washington National Forest, was the best and most visible of the historic places. If one wanted to explore Bath County on a budget, spaces to camp in the National Forest are ten dollars. I would have to be someone else to do that.

I enjoyed Bath County. I wish I had the money and the ability to relax to spend a week at The Homestead, but for me, an overnight stay was affordable and enough time there. The resort advertises that has been there since 1766. The building is twentieth century, but it's not hard to imagine that the African-American men who are waiters in the breakfast room at one time were slaves. There were a few African-American families at the hotel, one South Asian-looking family, and a guy walking the grounds in an IDF (Israel Defense Forces) T-shirt. Were I a better historian, I would find out when the resort abandoned a "White Christians only" policy.

Those days are, thankfully, over. Still, it's a little like I imagine Germany was twenty years ago, where the villainous government is gone, but some of the participants are still around.

It was fun being in a beautiful place, both the countryside and the resort, and a lovely drive. For me, it's a good change of pace from my usual love of cities.

I'll put up pics later today.
And here they are:

Warwick Mansion, Hidden Valley, George Washington National Forest

Hidden Valley, George Washington National Forest

Mustoe House, near Carloover

Homestead Resort, Hot Springs

Bath County Courthouse, Warm Springs

My Sermon August 1, 2014 at Tree of Life Morgantown

My parents were natives of The Bronx, in New York City. My father arrived in Baltimore at eighteen in 1940, and served four years in the US Army before returning. My mother came to Baltimore at the time of their marriage in 1947. My parents’ families go back to Poland and Russia, where they had different names than the ones used now. I lived in Baltimore until I was almost twenty-three, except for one summer at the beach in New York, and another in Europe after college. Since then I’ve lived in New Orleans, back in Baltimore, briefly in Atlanta, then six years in Miami and twenty-five in eight different apartments in Los Angeles.

I lived with Rabbi Joe at my last address in the Los Angeles area. We moved together to Crescent City, California at the beginning of 2010, and to Morgantown just over two years ago.

Our  parsha this week is Devarim, the beginning of Deuteronomy and the book’s name in Hebrew. Moses speaks words (Devarim) to the Israelites as they are about to enter the Promised Land. He already knows he is not going with them. Most of the generation that left Egypt has died. He is telling the young folk the story of the lives of their people. I’ve just given you a hint of the story of my people. Moses’ emphasis is on the role of God in what has happened, the good and the bad.

Do I think God had a hand in the events of my life? Yes. I see God in how things have worked out for me. Can we, as Jews, trust that God is with us? I trust it, even if I can’t explain why my life has been this good.

Rabbi Joe conducted two unveilings last weekend for people in the Jewish community, Harold Klein and Hilda Rosenbaum. They both lived a long time. They had loving families, and a close group of friends. One might say they were blessed. Yet this stand is dedicated in memory of Hilda’s daughter, who died at age seven. Can you call someone “blessed” who lost a young child? At the cemetery where Harold Klein is buried , I noted a gravestone with a marble angel next to it, for a child who died at less than a year old. Another tombstone was for a 26-year old who died in Vietnam. Were these families blessed? 

When is a life a good one? When does one get to say their life has been blessed?
I can only say for myself that I have avoided most of the awful things that happen in many lives.

You may have heard that there is a war raging between Israel and Hamas. The news Wednesday is that Israel bombed a U.N. School, killing sixteen. Israel says it didn’t mean to hit the school. After the last war, Hamas demanded concrete, banned by Israel because it could be used to make explosives, in order to rebuild. Israel relented, and instead of building housing, Hamas built tunnels to attack Israel. This is not a way to create trust.

Ali A. Rizvi, who describes himself as a “Pakistani-Canadian writer, physician and musician” wrote an article for Huffington Post Monday Called “7 Things To Consider Before Choosing Sides In The Middle East Conflict.” One of his questions is “Why does everyone keep saying this is not a religious conflict?” He quotes Deuteronomy 1:8 from this week’s parshah. The Reform translation says “ See, I place the land at your disposal. Go, take possession of the land that The Eternal swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to assign to them and to their heirs after them.” In Deuteronomy 2, verse  34, describing the battle against King Sihon of Heshbon, Moses says “… we captured all the towns, and we doomed every town-men,women and children-leaving no survivor.”
Rizvi also includes verses from the Quran that are critical of Christianity and Judaism, to show that there is a religious element to the Hamas side of this conflict.

I have long found Deuteronomy problematic. We talk a good game about Judaism being a religion of peace, just as Moslems say Islam is a religion of peace. Yet , in their pure and ancient forms, they are not. I believe the current conflict is about the direct threat to Israel from Hamas rockets and tunnels, but the lack of effort by the Netanyahu government to make peace on the West Bank, to stop the spread of settlements, comes from the more religious elements in Israel, an important bloc. Clearly they have no intention of giving up land to an Arab state, and I believe they look to this weeks’ parshah for justification. Of course, they don’t have a Moses who hears God’s voice directly. They’re making it up.

What can we do? As American Jews, we have a stake in the future of Israel. As moderns, horrified by the last century’s experience with Holocaust, expulsions and ethnic cleansing, we have to make our voices heard. We must work here to help create a just and lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors, to leave American politics out of this conflict, and do what is right for everyone.

We are left with the unOrthodox task of picking what we want from the Torah. We do not believe in annihilation of our enemies, as described in Deuteronomy, but, as Moses did, we can tell the stories of our people to the next generation, and make a decision to understand the past and resolve to work for peace for the future.