Letters To The Editor

It's not like I haven't been writing the last two weeks. Yes, we were on vacation in Greenbelt, Maryland and with our friends Ellen and Spencer in Virginia Beach. My sister came back to Morgantown from Greenbelt with us and it's just been one glamorous party after another so far this month. I've gained a few pounds. This morning (Monday the 13th) I was back at the gym.

In my last post, I said I wasn't going to answer the editorial in the Bland County Messenger decrying the fluidity of gender, race and sexuality in our society. Then I couldn't sleep, so I did write a letter. Jeff Simmons, the publisher of the newspaper, asked if he could run my response as an op-ed the next week. Here it is, titled "A Visitor's Perspective":



Since moving to Morgantown just three years ago, my crazy retirement project has been to visit every county within three hundred miles, one a month, in alphabetical order. If a county is more than two hundred miles away, I stay over two nights. This is how I came to visit Bland County..

I was warned that there would not be enough here to keep me occupied, and indeed, the tourist literature usually makes it clear that Wytheville is the center of this region. Wythe County will probably be the last county I visit. I should be ninety-nine by then.

I was fortunate in the weather here, and the beautiful scenery. People were kind to me, like the women at the motel who came in and brought fresh towels and straightened up late in the afternoon after I told them they didn't have to  because I was asleep after lunch when they would have cleaned. The man at the Virginia Welcome Center spent time listening to why I was traveling, and helped me find a short stretch  of the Appalachian Trail to hike. The woman working at the library listened to my rant about what I read and don't read on trips, and the young man at the sub shop offered me extra napkins.

I'm sixty-five and not looking for a night life in any case, or fancy stores selling overpriced junk. I was fine with what was available here to do.

I picked up The Bland County Messenger today, and I was disturbed by the editorial, concerned about "moral relativism," the nature of truth, and what is a lie. In my trip this week, I only mentioned a spouse once, although I wear a wedding ring. My spouse is another man who is a few years younger than I and works full time. I often travel alone. We were fifty-five and forty-eight when we met ten years ago, and the idea of marrying each other was off our radar, until it became possible in California, where we lived in 2008. We did it because it was available to us, and like everyone else who marries, it was a way of affirming to our family and friends that we are a couple. I now think it was the best and most conservative thing we could have done.

As to the media changing people's perceptions of morality, I generally agree with your editor. We don't watch network television to not be influenced by advertisers and people who do not have our interests at heart. I cringe when I hear about celebrity couples who are "engaged" when they have children together. I lived in Los Angeles and saw streets filled with homeless people while others owned multiple houses and collected cars.

I strive for compassion for others. I wonder at the need for "American Owned and Operated" signs on establishments here. I saw how a woman working at a restaurant gave the skinny tattooed couple who came in for a sandwich a disapproving look.

I remarked to myself at the things I was able to hide here. I dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans today. I look youngish and healthy, but I wear support hose for my bad veins, and I have bruises on my arm because I take blood thinners. I'm basically Caucasian, but my racial heritage is ambiguous. I'm Jewish by birth and by choice. My grandparents were immigrants. And yes, I'm a gay man married to  another man.

I couldn't help thinking that I might not have been treated as well here had I been with my spouse, or if I spoke English with an accent.

There is no danger of Bland County being overrun by gay people, transgendered celebrities or foreigners. Still, I would hope that a gay, lesbian or transgender kid growing up here would be accepted as a part of the community, and not bullied, shamed or called a sinner.

This new morality isn't necessarily new. My parents found out I was gay forty years ago, They didn't take it well at first. My mom died before I met my spouse, but she told me she would attend my wedding to another man, if I ever found one.

I enjoyed my stay here and I do respect the people who live here. I have a blog post about my trip at http://www.yearthreemorgantown.blogspot.com.

Barry Lee Wendell


Lots of people congratulated me and Joe when the Supreme Court decision came down allowing same-gender marriage nationwide. There were howls of protest from our Republican Senator, Shelley Moore Capito, and our Republican Congressperson, David McKinley. There was a nasty letter from a minister in a church in a rural community not far from here. I wrote back, and that letter was published Sunday, July 5, in our local paper, The Dominion-Post. Here it is:


I've seen this movie before. During the 1964 Democratic primary in Maryland, when I was in ninth grade, George Wallace ran and won on a platform of segregation and states rights. Some churches quoted Scripture on why God wanted the races separated. Now it's the Republicans, not (mostly) the Democrats, screaming "States Rights" and many of the same churches quoting Scripture against the decision allowing same-gender couples to marry.

It's still religious bigotry. Reform Judaism, the Episcopal Church, Unitarians, some Presbyterians and other churches choose to bless same-gender couples. Those that don't scream "God's law!" and "Biblical marriage!" Please read the Bible. Multiple wives, concubines, buying a teenage girl from her father. That's Biblical marriage.

I've been married to another man for more than six years. All this ranting and raving will not change that. We are religious people. If you are a politician in Morgantown, and you are dissappointed in the Supreme Court decision, or think the state should decide who can marry, let me talk to some engaged couples so I can vote on whether or not they should be allowed to marry. If you think you represent me, and you oppose my marriage, you don't represent me. Please stop sending me your newsletters and requests for support. If you are clergy and you oppose my marriage, let me know where your church is and I promise not to ever go there. And stay out of my religious life, where you have no right to interfere.

I'm retired and my spouse's job is secure. The people I worry about are those same-gender couples who have bravely stepped up and declared their love for each other, risking their livelihood against bosses who feel they have the right to interfere in the most intimate part of an employee's life.

Barry Wendell


There was a letter today from a woman near Morgantown. She quoted Leviticus about "abomination."
I found out from a quick internet search that she is a widow, probably in her 80s, and that she and her late husband attended a Nazarene church. I felt sorry for her that she has nothing better to do then worry about other people while she is (I presume) eating her morning bacon and eggs. Bacon is also an abomination in Leviticus.


I still have to write about our trip and the week since we've been back. We are now, as of the evening of July 11, in our fourth year here in Morgantown. This may necessitate a new blog. Stay with me.

Shopping

I joined a new gym the first of the year, and I've been going regularly. My old gym was for people over sixty, and most of the men wore jeans and tee shirts to work out. The new gym is open to anyone, and I am in the top one percent by age. People wear gym clothes: Under Armour or Adidas. The younger and more built, men and women both, wear short shorts and tank tops. Many show off tattoos on their bulging muscles. I've been going in wearing ten year old shorts that I use for bicycling. They are tattered. I pair them with plain cotton workout shirts I bought over a year ago.

Since I am often unshaven when I work out in the morning, and I don't really know the people I see at the gym, it occurred to me last week that they probably think I'm some old homeless guy. I had to fix this.

I visited T. J. Maxx, a chain of discount leftover clothes at greatly reduced prices. It is at University Town Center, northeast of Morgantown, off I-79. The center has big-box stores: Target, Walmart, Sam's Club, Petco, Dick's, Giant Eagle. There are chain restaurants like Cheddar's and Olive Garden. There is a Best Buy, a Barnes & Noble and a Regal multiplex. The center is spread out and up a hill. It's almost impossible to walk from one store to another. When we moved here, temple members told us they never go there. Of course, it's mobbed, and traffic going in and out the one entrance is always backed up.

At T.J. Maxx, I found three mesh work-out shirts, three pairs of workout shorts, three casual shorts, three pairs of semi-dress slacks and three short-sleeve shirts. The work out clothes were from Adidas and Reebok, the other clothes Geoffrey Beene, Perry Ellis, Calvin Klein, Levi's and other designers. I paid $280. List price for the clothes I bought would have been over $800.

Back home, I went through drawers and closets looking for clothes to get rid of. Five bags. Mostly raggedy, but some I just don't want to wear any longer. I decided if I could find a picture of myself wearing an item in Los Angeles, so at least five and a half years ago, I should give it away. I made exceptions. We are moving next month (if all goes well). It's appalling how much stuff, including old clothes, we have. We are much better off than we think we are.

Last night (Wednesday) Rabbi Joe conducted a funeral in Fairmont, about fifteen miles south of here, for Jack Golden,  the co-owner of Golden Brothers Department Store in downtown Fairmont, started by his father and uncle. He and a first cousin were the second generation owners. Jack's five children live near Washington or in Florida; three spoke at the funeral, in addition to Joe. The store was several stories tall. Jack was usually on the second floor. They gave credit before credit cards, gave discounts to people on welfare, clothed coal miners and dancers in their day. Jack asked customers what they needed, and made periodic trips to New York to buy what his customers told him they needed. He knew many of his clients by name. One daughter reported that Jack said "You don't have to wear designer clothes to be stylish." Golden's  closed in 1979.

Fairmont has an elegant bridge leading into town across the Monongahela River. There is a beaux-arts domed courthouse. Downtown is beautiful, but mostly empty. Madison Street, the main street for merchants, is more parking lots than anything else. The synagogue in town closed and was torn down. South of town, a few exits on I-79, is a mall and some "Town Center"-style shopping areas. University Town Center, where I shopped at T.J.Maxx, is maybe twenty miles north of Fairmont.

Jack Golden's funeral was at an old-fashioned funeral home around the corner from where Golden's used to be. His Elks Lodge performed a beautiful short ceremony before the actual funeral, and the Lodge hosted a reception in their historic building, a short walk from the funeral home. Being there was a taste of what Fairmont once was.

I have an early memory of getting dressed up and riding a streetcar with my mother to downtown Baltimore. The last streetcar in Baltimore ran when I was six, so before that. Baltimore had four department stores on one corner: Hutzler's, The Hecht Company, Stewart's and Hochschild-Kohn. I don't think any of them exist anymore, certainly not downtown. Reisterstown Road Plaza, the suburban center on the Baltimore City-County line, near where I grew up, had a Hecht Company and Stewart's, both beautiful stores in their day. Both gone. There were a variety of clothing stores, like Hamburger's and Calby's, that had all the clothes we bought for school. I got to know some of the salespeople, and the grandson of the original Hutzler was my counselor at day camp when I was nine. My father helped create clothes for Joseph Banks, London Fog, and other companies that used to actually make their clothes in Baltimore.

 I'm just exercising an old person's right to wax nostalgic about how things used to be.  It doesn't do any good to complain about how times have changed, or to feel guilty about shopping at a national discount chain in a poorly sited and designed impersonal shopping area outside of town. It's just the way it is now.

 Still, I like my new clothes, and as I was walking into the gym in my new threads yesterday, a pretty young girl smiled at me and said "Hi."

Berkeley County, West Virginia

It's been a few weeks since I took this trip. Since then, we've been to Philadelphia and back, are planning a move in May, and are preparing for Passover. Busy.

My plan since we moved here in July 2012 has been to visit one county per month, within three hundred miles. I missed January because I was sick half of the month, and in February, I waited to find a time when I had two days free, the weather would rise above freezing and it wouldn't be snowing. Those three things never happened. The first week in March we had a short stretch of decent weather, and that is when I took off.

Martinsburg is the county seat of Berkeley County. If you are on I-81, you drive south from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania to Hagerstown, Maryland, to Martinsburg, and then to Winchester, Virginia. 

It's one hundred fifty miles from Morgantown to Martinsburg. I stayed one night free with points from our expensive stay in New York with the same chain.

Like much of this part of the world, the Civil War plays a major role in the town's history. One of the main landmarks in Martinsburg is the B&O Railroad Station, now restored. It was rebuilt after the Civil War. Confederate troops coming south from Antietam, just over the Potomac in Maryland, burnt it to the ground. The Union had pressured Berkeley County to join West Virginia and not secede, mostly because of the railroad. The Eastern Panhandle, as it is called here, is cut off from the rest of the state. To get from Morgantown, one drives eighty miles through Maryland before returning to West Virginia.

Martinsburg is a "boomberg," a term I picked up from Joe. He learned it from a professor of demography in rabbi school. It means somewhere far from a major city that is growing rapidly with commuters. In Martinsburg, the MARC, Washington's commuter train network, runs trains from Martinsburg. This has caused the county population to explode, unlike most of West Virginia, where the population is shrinking. There are new apartments and town homes springing up all around Martinsburg.

I spent the afternoon of my arrival looking at historic places in town. The next morning, I drove out into the countryside to look for more history. I came home that afternoon.

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Martinsburg Shops

Boyd Avenue Historic District, Martinsburg

Winchester Avenue, Boomtown Historic District, Martinsburg.

Burwell House, Ridgeway

Campbellton, Gerrardstown

House Resolution 99

Here in West Virginia, we have one of the worst state legislatures in the nation. The Legislature was never much good, but this year, the first time in many years there was a Republican majority, it has been nightmarish. While promising jobs and a fix for our state's awful road system, they have filed bills to limit abortion, overturn the efforts to make our water safer, gut mine safety regulations, overturn the Affordable Care Act, shield mine operators, nursing homes and used car dealers from lawsuits, and allow anyone to carry a concealed weapon without a permit. No jobs and no improvements to the roads.

Now a large group of legislators has filed a resolution, HR 99, to call for an amendment to the United States constitution stating:

 "Only a union between one man and one woman may be a valid marriage in the United States. The states and their political subdivisions may not create a legal status for same-sex relationships to which is assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities or effects of marriage"

Twenty-eight state delegates signed on to this; two are among the five delegates from Morgantown.

I would note that both the City of Morgantown and West Virginia University, represented by these people, have non-discrimination ordinances which include LGBT people. The Morgantown City Council voted to support same-gender marriage last year.

Here are the letters I wrote to those two. Both are Republicans.

To Cindy Frich:

 I am your constituent and I am in a same-gender marriage conducted in California in 2008 by clergy of my religious denomination, and affirmed by the courts as valid in West Virginia. You have cosponsored HR 99, which, as you know, calls for a United States constitutional amendment prohibiting any legal same-sex relationships. In addition to being a colossal waste of time, as this will clearly go nowhere, it is a narrow-minded and hateful resolution. If you want to be seen that way, that's up to you. I will do everything in my power to see that you are not re-elected.

You promised to fix roads and provide jobs. All you've done in this session is introduce bills to allow every highly disturbed, undiagnosed individual in the state to carry a gun anywhere they want without a permit. You have set this state back fifty years in this session alone. I am disgusted.

Barry Wendell

To Joe Statler:

 I am your constituent and I am half of a same-gender marriage conducted legally and by clergy in my religious denomination in California in 2008. Our marriage has been confirmed as legal in West Virginia by Federal courts. You have cosponsored a resolution to the US Congress for a constitutional convention to ban any legal recognition of same-gender relationships. In addition to being a colossal waste of time, as this will clearly go nowhere, it makes you look like a bigot. If that's how you want to be perceived, then so be it. I will work to make sure you are not reelected.

Morgantown and WVU are both tolerant and gay-friendly places. This is one of the few counties in the state that has had any economic growth in the last twenty years. People like you are working to give this place the kind of "backward" image that plagues most of West Virginia.

I also saw the letter in today's Dominion Post criticizing you for siding with mine owners to overturn safety regulations for miners. If you succeed in that, then you are potentially a murderer as well as a bigot.

Barry Wendell

At this point, the resolution is in the House Judiciary Committee. The session ends soon; it may not get out of committee.

I don't expect to hear back from these delegates.

Update: I did hear back from Joe Statler by e-mail:

"Thank you sir I appreciate your comments believe me sir I do not judge people on their life styles and I do make mistakes"

Just like that - no punctuation.

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."

The Gym and The Holidays

Back in Baltimore, we lived in a segregated society. In the days of smaller businesses, we had our own doctors, pharmacists, dentists. If Jews exercised, it was at the Jewish Community Center. Most of our classmates at school were Jews. Despite that, there was always a Christmas pageant, Christmas carols, Easter, and in some classes, until Madelyn Murray, we had to say The Lord’s Prayer and read from a Christian Bible. In high school, we had our own Jewish youth groups. Fraternization with Christians was frowned upon.

In college, my friends were most likely to be Christian, at least in name. Those of us not from super wealthy families at the private university I attended tended to hang together. None of us were particularly religious, anyway.

In Los Angeles, most of the “white” people were Jewish. Everyone lived in their own ethnic ghetto, with Jews being the most powerful group in the city. We had two synagogues for gays and lesbians, among over a hundred synagogues in Los Angeles County. It was a good place to  immerse oneself in Jewish culture and redefine it in a personal way. Public schools closed for Yom Kippur.

In West Virginia, the Jewish community is small, and probably shrinking. There is a bubble of liberal Judaism in the South Park neighborhood of Morgantown, but throughout the state, Jews are invisible by choice. In Morgantown, the local paper does feature articles about Chanuka and Rosh Hashana. This year West Virginia University’s homecoming parade and football game coincided with Yom Kippur. Morgantown High’s homecoming parade was on a Wednesday night, Rosh Hashana. A congregant told me that students and teachers were advised that they would not get an excused absence the next day for Rosh Hashana.

This brings me to the gym. I joined in the summer of 2012, right after we moved here. The gym is through WVU, designed for people over sixty and people with a heart condition. I was a perfect candidate. There are four people working in the office. Graduate and undergraduate students are out on the floor, chatting with the oldsters and taking our pulse and blood pressure periodically.

I think the regular workers were surprised that I was the husband of the new rabbi in town. The University has a non-discrimination policy for LGBT people in place, so there was no kickback. One of the men who works there, who rarely comes out of the office, has almost never spoken to me. The woman in charge, and the two other men who work there were friendly enough. They are all religious Christians, probably Evangelicals. I haven’t discussed their specific religious beliefs in great detail.. One of the men does discuss his faith with others at the gym, and when he is in charge, the radio music in the weight room mysteriously changes from classic rock to a Christian station. I wasn’t always comfortable with the talk of football and hunting among the students and workers, but I understood that this was a gym.

What changed was the court decision in the Fourth Circuit that led to the legality of same-gender marriage in West Virginia. I felt that the two men in the office who were moderately friendly avoided me after that decision.

The students are exercise physiology majors. Two of the grad students admitted to me that they hadn’t read a book all the way through since eighth grade. None of the ones I spoke to, either in 2012 or 2014 voted in the election. None of them read a newspaper. I told  some of them about the marriage decision, and most were supportive. Only one actually lit up with a big smile and said “Congratulations!” The kids do know about both professional and WVU sports teams.

One of the old guys who works out regularly is a right-wing loudmouth. He comes in and pontificates loudly about his hatred of President Obama, and once called Hillary Clinton “a twit.” No one ever disagrees with him. I did once, and we got into a heated argument. Someone pulled us apart. We are too old to actually get into a fight; we are both heart patients. I felt like I was blamed for the altercation.

We have free speech and freedom of religion in this country. What people don’t get is that there are consequences. I don’t need to be in a place where I’m uncomfortable. Yesterday,I told the woman who runs the gym, who was rarely there when I was the last few weeks, that I wasn’t coming back in 2015. She was surprised when I gave her my reasons. She didn’t think I would mind hearing Christian radio, or that I would be snubbed, or find someone’s ongoing right-wing rants offensive.

I went in yesterday, the first day of Chanuka, and gave the staff members who were there and the two grad students (the undergrads are gone, finished for the semester) bags of chocolate coins from Israel. They just looked at me. The Christmas tree is up in the office, and one of the men asked me to attend the Christmas party Friday. Maybe I’m picking a fight where there doesn’t need to be one, but, no, I don’t want to be at your Christmas party.

Maybe the problem is just West Virginia. Christianity, particularly the anti-gay type, is the State religion. Maybe I should stay and continue to educate people. I’d rather keep looking for a more comfortable gym. We may move to South Park next year, close to the synagogue, and the one liberal neighborhood in the 250 mile stretch between Pittsburgh and Charleston.

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.

65

I'm sixty-five now. I keep having to repeat that. Soon I will believe it. On my actual birthday, I taught a class to people over fifty (mostly over seventy) about the music of the British invasion of the Sixties. This week was 1968. I played music and videos from The Beatles, "Hey Jude" and The Beatles (aka "The White Album"). I played The Rolling Stones singing "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and some excerpts from Beggars Banquet. I lost them with a video of Cream playing "White Room" and excerpts from Wheels of Fire. A woman I'm friendly with raised her hand and asked "Why are we listening to this noise?"

I tried to explain, as I did to family and sometimes friends in 1968, "This isn't 'Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I've Got Love In My Tummy.' It's not aimed at ten-year-old girls like most Top 40 music. You have to listen more intently. It might take time to get used to it." So I guess I haven't learned anything in the last forty-seven years. I got the same blank look I got in 1968. Someone in the class brought cookies because they knew it was my birthday.

I had lunch at Subway with a seventy-five year old man in the class. He grew up in New York, and although not Jewish, he knew lots of Jews then and even now in Morgantown. His wife died some time ago, and he asked me "Are there available women at your temple?" I mentioned two widows in their sixties who might be available. "I know them. I don't want anyone like that. Look at me. I'm in great shape for my age." (He's not.) " Isn't there anyone younger?"

At that point, I silently thanked God for sending me Joe, gray-haired, balding (not as bald as I am) and only seven years younger than I am. Old enough that we have things to talk about, and young enough to be my "young man."

There was a class about Yiddish theater with a movie in the afternoon, then I ran some errands and went home to crash. Tappuz the cat slept with me.

Joe thought we should go someplace fancy for dinner. We did, although I wasn't hungry after all the cookies, and I was tired. There was one other occupied table with an older couple and a young woman. I didn't know them. At least that's what I thought, but the older woman said "Hi, Barry. Happy birthday!" I couldn't place her, but it turns out she is in my class. She couldn't come that day. I should have remembered her.

Some of the food was good. My entrée was just average. Everything was expensive. I couldn't wait to leave. I'm always glad to go out, but I was tired and not feeling that well. I was reminded of my mother insisting we go out someplace fancy for my twenty-first birthday. I was a hippie college student then, a senior, and seriously depressed. Depressed enough that I wouldn't go to a shrink because I was afraid they would hospitalize me. The thought of getting dressed up enough to go to a nice restaurant sent my stomach into spasms. I hadn't eaten much that day, and I was in pain. I barely got through dinner then. An allergist years later explained that my stomach ailments, always around my birthday, were a seasonal allergy. Now you tell me.

I look at now and I have to do the Jewish thing. I have to be grateful for all the gifts in my life. I have a handsome, good, hard-working man at home who loves me. The times have changed enough that I can thank the waiter for not asking if we want separate checks and he'll answer "I'm young, but I'm not that young." I'll introduce my husband to a male-female couple, and they'll say to him "We've heard so much about you from members of your congregation. They just love you." As of two weeks ago, the state accepts our marriage. Most of the people aren't happy about it, but we've already changed people's minds about same-gender marriage, even here.

I have a body that works, with a little pharmaceutical help. I've dodged polio, teenage drivers, Vietnam and AIDS. I survived a heart attack, and done many dangerous things I hope no one finds out about. I'm still here. Sounds like a Sondheim song :" I've lived through George and George W., Nixon-Agnew. " I should leave lyric writing to Mr. Sondheim.

I understand mortality. I'm four years younger than my father when he died, and ten years younger than my mother. I get it. Still, I look in the mirror and say "Not bad." I remember and study the past, live in the present, and still have plans for the future. Joe is throwing me a dinner and dance party this weekend.

Re: Marriage

In my last post, I mentioned that the Supreme Court, by refusing to hear appeals by states to overturn lower court rulings in favor of marriage equality, opened the door to our marriage being recognized in West Virginia. The circuit court gave West Virginia's anti-gay attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, two weeks to come up with a reason to stop same-gender marriage. Last week, Morrisey folded and same-gender marriage is now allowed in West Virginia. The papers have had pictures of couples, often two women with children, signing up for marriage in some of West Virginia's more rural counties. A pastor in a rural town not far from Morgantown railed impotently against the new rules. He swore he would not marry a same-gender couple in his church. As if anyone would ask.

I wrote a letter to the editor of The Dominion-Post, which they published Wednesday, October 14. Next to it was a letter from someone in a town of 380 in the eastern panhandle, complaining that the courts had overstepped, because the states have the right to define marriage, according to his reading of the Constitution. That issue was settled with the demise of laws against interracial marriages fifty-some years ago.

Here's my letter:

It didn't seem like it would be a big deal. We married in California in 2008 just before Prop 8 passed there, ending the spate of marriages that  had lasted a few months. Our marriage remained legal in California, and when asked, I always said "I'm married," even when we moved to West Virginia in 2012. We've made lots of friends here, but I still  felt hostility, particularly when I asked Senator Manchin and Congressman McKinley to support same-gender marriage and they wouldn't. Just this week, Senate candidate Capito said she believes "marriage is between a man and a woman." Attorney General Morrisey has never even pretended to be a friend to gay people. Still, when DOMA was defeated, I was able to put my spouse on my health insurance, saving us $6500 per year.

Despite my jadedness, both Joe and I have been walking around smiling since marriage equality came to West Virginia. We feel more "at home" here.

What has moved me are the pictures and stories of people in rural counties as well as the cities signing up to marry. They usually say "We're just like everybody else." But they're not, and we're not. We've all been through a lot.  We've had to come out to ourselves, risk losing our families, our friends and our religion to be who we really are. Those of us who are married and marrying have found love and are running with it, and the court has recognized our right as free people in the United States of America to marry the person we choose.

Many people in West Virginia oppose same-gender marriage, they say, because they are conservatives. To me, marrying my boyfriend six years ago was the most conservative thing I could have done.

It's been a great week in West Virginia. Thanks to Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, the Morgantown City Council and WVU President E. Gordon Gee for supporting us.