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.

Gabe Gelbart

I had heard of the death of a friend, Gabe Gelbart, a few weeks ago. I didn't know until this recent trip to Los Angeles what happened. I first met Gabe at Israeli dancing at UCLA in 1984. I was just turning thirty-five; he was in his early twenties, short, dark and balding. Gabe was from Argentina, but his family left for San Diego when he was young. He identified as Orthodox, and expressed some shock when I told him I was gay.  A few years later, he showed up at Beth Chayim Chadashim, the temple for LGBT people I joined in 1987. We both sang in the choir. Our paths continued to cross. We were in performance art classes taught by Tim Miller, who lost his NEA grant because his gay act was too prurient for certain Southern senators. Gabe's pieces focused on appliances. He would bring in a toaster, or a blender, and then concoct a performance piece. It was brilliant, but I guess you had to be there. We ended up in a writing class for gay men around 2007 that met in Gabe's house, an old Spanish-style house in Pico-Robertson, one of LA's Jewish ghettos. He was working for Disney, creating new theme parks in China.

In 2003, I attended a Jewish genealogy convention in Washington. Earlier that year, at 53, I suffered a heart attack and the death of my mother. I wanted to try something different that summer. I met a cousin at the convention who had traced my father's family back to 1732 in Poland. One branch of the family was named Gelbhard, and had gone to the town in Argentina where Gabe was born. I suggested to Gabe that we might be cousins, but he brushed me off, suggesting that the variant spelling meant we were from different families.

I ran into our mutual friend Richard "Doe" Racklin at Outfest, L.A.'s LGBT film festival,when Joe and I were visiting L.A. It was Doe who posted about Gabe's death on Facebook. He told me that Gabe had married five weeks before his death. He came home from a bike ride (a hobby we shared), told his husband he wasn't feeling well, and went to lie down. Later his husband took him to the hospital.  Gabe died, at 53, of a heart attack.

Gabe wasn't a close friend, although we traveled a similar path in Los Angeles. We looked enough alike and our interests were close enough to make me believe we were related, even if he didn't buy it. We both had heart attacks at fifty-three, very common in my father's family. He died. I'm still here. I can't explain that.

Los Angeles

I lived in Los Angeles more than twenty-five years, from September 1984 to January 2010, when Joe and I moved to Crescent City. I was almost thirty-five when I moved there, and past sixty when we left. We came to Morgantown in July 2012. When people in Morgantown say things like "Aren't you glad to be closer to home?" (I was born and raised in Baltimore) if I'm honest, I'll say "Home is Los Angeles." If I'm less than honest, I'll say "Yes, it is, " or going halfway, I'll say "I no longer have family in Baltimore, but it's good to be near my sister, who lives just outside Washington."

So we were back in Los Angeles from July 15 - 22. I guess the first thing you notice is the backed-up traffic, then the beautiful weather, the two things Los Angeles is most known for.

We stayed with six different friends in seven days, all close friends of mine from the time I lived there. We stayed in Altadena, north of Pasadena, with my friend Jim Potter and his wife, Michelle Huneven, then the westside of Los Angeles,with my dance partner Reva Sober, the east side of the San Fernando Valley (still in Los Angeles City) at the home of my longtime buddy Jeffrey Bernhardt, near downtown LA with Rabbi Lisa Edwards and her wife Tracy Moore, two nights in Alhambra,
 just south of Pasadena with my friend Greg Miller, and finally, with friends Dave Parkhurst and Maggie Anton Parkhurst, near the airport, southwest of downtown near the Pacific Ocean.

I had three places I wanted to be during our week: Israeli dancing at Wilshire Boulevard Temple West, Friday night services at Beth Chayim Chadashim, the temple where Joe and I first met, and where we later married, and the weekly hike in Griffith Park with my former crew of middle-aged gay men. I accomplished all of that and more. We ate at Moishe's Middle Eastern Restaurant in The Farmer's Market, where the three ladies who worked there recognized me,from when I was a regular, and we visited the new Grammy Museum in downtown L.A. With our friend Jay Jacobs, we lunched at The French Market Place, a coffee shop in West Hollywood where Joe and I had our first real date in December 2005, then saw a film called "It Got Better" the last day of Outfest, LA's LGBT film festival, about celebrities who have successfully come out. George Takei and Jason Collins, featured in the film, were on a panel after.

After our Griffith Park hike, complete with L.A.'s signature perfect sunny warm, dry weather, and a gorgeous sunset, a group of us went out for Italian food. This was the time I missed most since our move: twenty-five middle-aged gay men out at a neighborhood restaurant, eating and gossiping. I haven't been able to replicate that experience anywhere else.

We also found time to visit three of Joe's classmates from rabbinical school, Rabbis Sara Goodman, Dalia Samansky, and Deborah Goldmann. The three of them at graduation were not available for jobs outside of Los Angeles. They are all not entirely happy working several part-time jobs to keep afloat. Deborah and Dalia each now have two small children, all four adorable and smart, but limiting their career choices.

I see from my visit the result of choices we all have to make. Dalia and Deborah, young, bright and ambitious, are trying to have families and careers and finding that difficult. I could have stayed in Los Angeles and maintained my single life, but I know that Greg, Richard, Jeff, and Jay, all creative and successful people, feel they should have someone with them.  I could have put limits on where Joe could work, or let him go off on his own. My choice was to go with him and hope that a town with a Reform synagogue that accepted a fifty-six year old gay rabbi with a partner would be somewhere I could get used to.

We attended the Men's Havurah (group of friends) Garden Party from our temple Sunday afternoon. I don't think anyone was under fifty. I knew many of the people there from the 1980s. My friend Steve, who always liked older men, met a guy who was fifty-five when he was thirty-five. They are still together, but the older man, now eighty, is in poor health and couldn't attend. I know the coming out stories, the past lovers, dead and still living, of these men. I knew the middle-aged guys when they were young and pretty, the happily married when they were on the prowl. There was a time at temple when there was a special group for men over forty, who felt uncomfortable with the young men who were active in the temple. Now the mainstream group is over 50, and the minority group is those in their twenties and thirties, who have a special coed social group (unthinkable in the old days) for themselves.

These men have been my friends for up to thirty years. I could have stayed in L.A. with them until we were all in nursing homes or dead. Instead I found a somewhat younger man who was starting a new career, looking to the future and not the past.

I loved being in Los Angeles. I was happy to see my friends, note how old everyone has gotten without saying it, as I'm sure they did for me, and hang out in the old places. There are incremental changes: the temple has a new building , our local Trader Joe's was torn down, the Fairfax Cinema is closed, the hikers go to a different Italian restaurant, but among the oldsters things aren't that different. And they never will be.

I asked Joe if we could visit a cemetery in East Los Angeles where three of my old friends are buried. He agreed, and brought a Bible, so we could read psalms at the gravesites. We visited my best friend Fred Shuldiner, a teacher at Orthodox Yeshiva High School, who died from AIDS at 49 in 1994. We stopped at the grave of  Sol, orphaned at an early age and nearly blind from birth, who always spoke of how grateful he was for God's blessings. Sol died of hear failure at 65 in 1997. Sue Terry has a spot for ashes in a wall. She was a crazy dog and cat lover, a self-described "helpaholic" who always cleaned up after temple events, making sure to be the last to leave. Her dementia went unnoticed because she was always off a bit. She died in a care facility at 74 last year. We did not attend because we were in Morgantown. Joe didn't question my request to shlep across town to see dead people; in fact he acknowledged that this was a mitzvah, a good deed, or a fulfillment of a commandment. Sue was a  friend of his; he did not know Fred or Sol, except from my stories. It was in the cemetery that I knew again, for sure, that Joe was the right man for me.

I don't know if we'll be back again. I can't stand flying any more, and we are building new lives here. Still, if anyone asks where my home is, I'll say "Los Angeles."

San Francisco

Joe and I have been in San Francisco for a week. He lived here for many years; I visited maybe ten times. Life there has changed. Here are some examples:

We met with my friend Art and his wife Carol for breakfast near where we have been staying. Art's parents were friends with my parents before we were born, so we go way back. Carol suggested a new place. We were early, before work for Art and Carol, so there was not a full menu. The early menu featured five-dollar donuts and muffins, lavash bread with roasted vegetables and a possible egg, something with "fennellated butter." Not real food in my book. The people who came in were young, white and Asian people. groomed to look disheveled, but not really. Years ago, when Art asked me to go to a coffee shop in Haight-Ashbury with him, he asked me not to be shocked at the place. Everyone there was dressed for Halloween. It was July. In the past, when we stayed with Glenn, Joe's friend, we breakfasted at Java Beach, a funky place with bagels and oatmeal and pastries. The clientele were aging hippies, old lefties, young surfers and the tatooed and pierced denizens of the area. The beach in San Francisco is not the rich part of town; by reputation it is fogged in, cold and moldy.

We met with friends and relatives. The biggest complaints were about the cost of housing. My cousin Emily, who teaches at Stanford and her husband, an acupuncturist, are paying $2000 monthly for a one room guest house in Mountain View. Real estate is astronomical; The Bay Area Guardian and The San Francisco Chronicle note that renters in price-controlled apartments are being kicked out by unscrupulous landlords. The new people in town have been called "heartless, "overprivileged," "techies from Ohio with no idea what the values of the City are." Anyone who isn't filthy with money from their job at Google, Facebook, Twitter or some other hi-tech company is being pushed out of San Francisco. That's the narrative, anyway. I find it ironic that in West Virginia, any town would sell itself to attract young, educated hard-working people to the area. In San Francisco "techies" is a pejorative,  like "illegals" in Arizona, "Puerto Ricans" fifty years ago in New York, or for that matter "Jews" in the early twentieth- century. "Hordes" who are flooding our town, who dress funny, don't speak the language, and undermine our values. That's what I'm hearing.

We shared breakfast, lunch and dinner with friends. Two male couples gave us the same story. They are our age (late 50s into 60s) and are planning their retirement. Both couples are moving to Palm Springs in the next year or two. "We feel more comfortable there. There are gay people our age." All four are caring for elderly parents.

At Sha'ar Zahav (which means "Golden Gate" in Hebrew), San Francisco's venerable synagogue for LGBT people, we ran into a discussion of what the future will be. Their long-term rabbi is leaving, membership is declining, and there is a dispute about what to do. Some say there is no need for a special synagogue for LGBT people, with the mainstream Reform and Conservative synagogues much more accepting. One man told me "It's not fun like it used to be." That's probably true of a lot of gay life. Sha'ar Zahav started as a freewheeling group of social outcasts committed to Judaism. But the temple now has a professional staff, a building and a Sunday school. The free-wheeling people have grown up, or moved away, or had children, or died.

At one of our dinners, I suggested that Sha'ar Zahav declare itself "The Mission District Temple." A temple member was opposed, going on a rant about how gentrified the neighborhood was becoming, how "souless, cruel and uncaring" those people could be. She called them "bullies." But the temple needs money, and they have it. Maybe an outreach to liberal Jews, intermarried, gay or not, but living in the neighborhood, could save that temple. If it wants to be saved. If the members are open to change.

Some of our friends think change is good. The more conservative economically welcome the rebirth of neighborhoods. Those who know history just shrug when someone says, "Our neighborhood isn't what it used to be." Nothing is what it used to be.

I have only flashpoints of memories of San Francisco. I was there as a supervised teen, freezing in July in a T-shirt and shorts. In my twenties I indulged in some of the sexual excess of the times. In the mid-eighties, when I spent two weeks job training in San Francisco, I saw a handsome man on the Muni wearing gloves in warm weather. I could see he was not well, and I watched him struggle to walk up a hill after he got off the train. He filled me with sadness, and also fear. He might not have done anything I hadn't done.

Those of us who took the bait and married our boyfriends no longer hang out at the bars and baths. We feel left out of current culture, which would happen anywhere we went. We don't keep up like we used to, don't need to be in on the latest trend. Our generation, always young, died early. We are left mourning our friends who lost their life to AIDS. Joe's friends here are unwilling to move somewhere where they will have to fight for gay rights, as we do now in West Virginia. Palm Springs is warm, cheaper than San Francisco, and a gathering place for the remnants of our era.

Two stories. In one, we are on the N-Judah Muni train heading back to the coast where we are staying. Most people on the trains are young, not rich. There are people who work downtown, some oldsters and some down-and-out types. The train is late, overcrowded. One of the doors doesn't work. Many are standing in the aisles. With all the money in town, why isn't more spent on transit? Some of our friends blamed pensions and healthcare for the municipal budget problems, but what municipal worker on a pension can afford to live here? And yet, there was money to bring a yacht race to town.

We rented a car to drive to the Peninsula. We had to redo our plan and get a car earlier. A woman at Hertz downtown was helpful to us, but there was an issue about both of us driving. She needed my ID and credit card in addition to Joe's. But she stopped and asked "Are you two married?" "We are!" we said. "Then it's okay. I don't need any more documents."  We are not accepted as a couple in West Virginia, except among a close circle of friends. No one would help us because we are married. In that way, it does feel "at home" here in San Francisco.

It was great to reconnect with old friends, particularly for Joe, who met some of his San Francisco friends in college in the 1970s. But we don't really belong here any more, no matter how beautiful and how gay-friendly it is. It was fun to go to The Castro, the center of gay life in San Francisco, but there is nothing we need there. Time has passed us by. Joe's friends have moved on without us, and we are making our way in a different culture, somewhere else.

Barbour County

Call me crazy, but one thing I've done since we moved here two years ago is visit one county monthly that is within 300 miles (500 km.) of Morgantown. As much as possible, these are in alphabetical order. July 1, I visited Barbour County, the first alphabetically in West Virginia, and, so far, the closest to home.  It's a pretty place, with a declining population. The main town, Philippi, has only a few thousand people, and not much life. There are signs about how the Confederates were chased out of town, but we saw Confederate flags on pickup trucks and in store windows. People seem unclear on the concept of West Virginia.
Here are some pics.

Audra State Park, at the south end of Barbour County on Middle Fork

US 250 covered bridge, at the north entrance to Philippi, the oldest and longest covered bridge in West Virginia

Barbour County Courthouse, Philippi

Adaland Mansion, north of Philippi, 19th century

Coal mine as seen from Adaland