Yechiel, our eldest son, has been visiting in Rochester as he flies from Israel to Lod Angeles. His 59th birthday, today as I write, prompted the stop. As we planned the time he asked to visit Letchworth State Park and we set out to comply. As happens with all plans things change and instead of five of us we ended up with three guys, including Josh, Yechiel and me in order of age. Josh has been to the park recently. Yechiel thinks maybe once when he was growing up here and I have not been in several years although it was a regular trip as the kids were growing. 

We started out with a wrong direction which took us to the Mount Morris Dam on the east side of the river, the park is on the west. This was serendipitous. The Visitor Center, staffed by one ranger, offered explanations of the reason for building a “dry dam” in this location. Dry as in there is no reservoir routinely backed up upstream of the dam, there are no turbines to generate power, just a dam to protect the region downstream from flooding. Four Corners in Rochester flooded about every seven years before the construction of the dam. 

We moved on to tour the park from the northern end beginning with the western view of the dam and continued down to visit, briefly each of the significant overlooks and the three falls. We hiked down to the view of the Middle Falls from a stone bridge built by CCC in the thirties over the river. 137 steps down and back up resulted in my near total exhaustion. During our next walk to view the lower falls I begged off and let Yechiel and Josh go to the next overlook without me – see the distant picture of them from where I stopped. 

Josh declared we had earned a hard cider, referring to a recommendation from the ranger to a hard cider place in Castile (note long I in Castile). We made a stop there in preparation for the drive back to Rochester. Highly recommend stopping at Three Falls Cidery in Castile both for the ambiance and the excellent selection of hard ciders. 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/5dmyzdG5jhMU7EdeA

Note I will be posting this on Substack as well, and I am considering moving this blog there.  Use this link to subscribe

In Jewish tradition we say life expectancy is 3 score years and 10 or by reason of strength 4 score years. So at age 83 it is time for a second bar mitzvah.

I have consulted the Rabbi and the Temple B’rith Kodesh Calendar and we have agreed that Parashat Bereshit is the ideal time for me to do that. A quick translation: Parashat is the weekly reading from the Torah that enables us to read the entire Five Books of Moses each year; Bereshit is the very first portion of Genesis and the word is most commonly translated as “In the Beginning” although a wonderful friend who is no longer living insisted it be read as “In the Big Inning”. This year that reading falls on October 18 a mere one day after my actual birthday. 

The event will probably include a small celebration on the preceding Friday night with some fun treats for attendees – this is called an Oneg Shabbat – Oneg for Joy. Saturday morning during the Torah service, I will be called to come up to read from the Torah. This requires some practice since only the consonants are written. It is assumed tht is sffcnt t knw wht th wrds r, in a language that I am not fluent in. After the service we will have an extended Kiddush (read that as grazing food and spirits and wine). 

The entire service will be available on zoom for those of you unable to make it to Rochester NY. Sorry, we will not arrange to provide remote Kiddush, maybe when we get together at another time and place.

In other news the motorhome remains unsold. I have lowered the asking price – $79,900. We have a “Rochester car” a Hyundai Hybrid that should not have to experience winter driving for many years. 

Missing from this blog – Jazz Fest 🙁 The extensive walking and large crowds are daunting. The festival has started and we took time today to drive to Canandaigua to see a performance by the Garth Fagan Dance Company. If you have forgotten, Garth received many awards for his choreography of Lion King. It was a wonderful performance.

Next Friday we will be attending the opening of the Fingerlakes Art Show. A Juried show and Rohma, our grandson’s partner, got a water color in. Hers was one of 90 accepted out of over 2000 submissions. We will be there to cheer her on when the Juror’s awards are announced. We will also get to vote in the Member’s Choice award. Here is a link to her web site and some of her work.

We are not sitting back and watching the world go by.

I’m running out of clever for titles. As we continue our preparation for travel we are deeply involved in following the collision that will start on November 5, the ongoing heartache of war in the Middle East and the rising tide of anti-Semitic hate in the world and in the US.   All of this is leading to loss of sleep, especially when piled on top plans for departure. 

I would think that getting ready to leave would be the least of our worries since we have done this almost every year since 2002, with some intermediate departures along the way. Somehow as our 82nd birthdays are approaching everything seems just a bit more difficult, both physically and mentally. A couple of days ago we stopped by the coach, in storage, to be sure the batteries were topped up – grateful for an effective solar system which I had installed many years ago – checking for leaks given the rain we have experienced and being sure there was no flat tire to deal with. All is good as of now.

Just had an email from our planned first stop in Cleveland cancelling our reservation. Its a Harvest Host Winery and apparently they have upset their neighbors and sleeping in a vehicle is not permitted in the area. This set off a scramble on my part to find a place to stay near the city. Well an hour away is the best I can do. We will drive in in the morning and spend the day. Once I got started I had to make plans for the week or two following. After a stop in Columbus OH – less than a week before election day, our next reserved stop is Tom Sawyer RV Park in West Memphis AR for three nights of watching barge traffic on the Mississippi. Election Day it appears we will be in Dallas. That should be interesting. Plans after Tom Sawyer are still in unset Jello as far as timing. We will be watching the news to stay away from trouble spots to the extent possible. 

Circling back to the beginning, I worry, I lose sleep, for the United States, for Israel, for the world. Not least I am concerned about the rising anti Semitism which seems to be able to threaten us and our family very personally. 

More from the road.

So much to prepare for and the time is passing quickly. The High Holiday season, the Days of Awe, begin tonight and continue until sunset on Saturday the 12th. Holidays continue on the 16th through the 23rd. Carol and I plan to spend the 23rd driving to Cleveland, more preparation. 

After visiting friends from the past in Cleveland we had planned to continue on south to Asheville NC to visit with Leigh and Pat who we have known for more than 24 years.  It appears that Helene has obliterated that plan. Even if they got everything cleaned up and the water supply restored and the campground reopened, I would not want to take our coach on the remnants of the road system in the mountains. This is still subject to change.

This is only one impact of the storm on us directly. Our grandson Corey is a student at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, a tiny mountain town in the heart of the devastated area. He, his girl friend and several other friends got in their cars and somehow managed to get out of the mountains over makeshift bridges and washed out roads to make their way to Dan and Malena’s house to wait to see when the school will be able to reopen. 

That’s about it for the beginning of October. 

Hmm, just noticed that the blog is still on Pacific Time. I will see about changing that.

This is a difficult topic both to start writing about and to live with. It has been part of my life since I can remember being part of a mixed community going back to first grade. It was not always blatant and in my face, but it has always been there whether I recognized it or not. My earliest years were on a street in Rochester where three neighbor houses had a total of 21 Catholic children. My best friend from that group started trying to convert me before I was 10. The time period was the mid 40’s to the mid 50’s. I wasn’t bullied any more than anyone, but I found it easier to play with the Jewish children in the neighborhood. We knew who each other were even if our families belonged to different synagogues.

So what is this thing that has a meaningless name? Historically we were a group who refused to accept the common belief structure of the non Jewish people around us as the Christian world developed in the early centuries of the Common Era. The Catholic story convicted us of deicide which set us apart as an evil people. This was consistent until Vatican II when the Pope apologized. By then the idea was well set in people’s mind. Hitler sought to purify the “Aryan Race” and the Jews were the major target of his need to do that. There were other victims, particularly the Romish and Homosexual people. 

We owned a house on Sandringham Road in the town of Brighton. When I read the deed, in 1972, I found that there was a restrictive clause prohibiting the sale of the land to “Negroes and Jews”. This clause was not enforceable by the time we bought, but it was still in the deed. Family members were denied acceptance to UR Medical school in the 40’s because they were Jewish. I remember discussing the quota I faced in applying to Ivy League schools in 1959. The quotas were rising, but they still existed. If you think this is all past history, look at the current debate and Supreme Court ruling regarding admission quotas, Jews may not seem to play in the current rulings, but the very idea of such quotas dates back to the founding of these exclusive schools. Disclosure: I graduated from Brown University with a BA and an MBA from Columbia Graduate School of Business. 

These very schools are facing a significant antisemitic challenge today. The Arab world has refused to give Jews the right to land granted them after World War II by the United Nations. The grant was a division of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. Neither side was happy with the division, but the Jews agreed to make a country in the land they were granted. Within hours the Arabs rose up to drive them out and take all the land. The presence of Jews in “their” land was anathema. Nothing has changed since then. The slaughter of October 7 was a continuation of actions the Arabs have taken against Jews in the land going back in the 1930’s. They are an implacable enemy. 

I feel very sorry for the people dying in Gaza as a result of their leaders refusal to accept the continued existence of the Jewish state. If their leaders want to make it stop, it is within their power to say yes to a cease fire and an exchange of hostages for prisoners. Israel can stop bombing, but that will only encourage Hamas to continue their long game which is nothing less than the destruction of Israel and the massacre of millions of Jews, because once they are “pushed into the sea” they have no place to go. 

The pro Palestinian students either have not followed the logic or they are willing to demand the murder of millions of Jews because “From the River to the Sea, Palestine must be Free” is not just a slogan it is a promise of genocide. In all of this antisemitism flourishes. 

The calendar has been filling to the point that there seems little open time before we load the coach and head west.  We have said repeatedly that Yom Kippur, which falls on October 12 this year, marks the earliest possible start across the country. With no specific dates to be anyplace until a rally in Coachella in December our departure date is still open. We need to plan a stop in Asheville NC which will put a pushpin in our map and calendar. This would most likely be preceded by a stop in Cleveland OH which is just about a five hour drive from Rochester. None of this is in stone – yet.

Our calendar is filled with social engagements, community events and medical appointments. Looking forward to the first two in that group, the last item not so much. Carol has been busy with her “list” trying to make sure we get to see everyone before we get back on the road to California. 

Watch for another post I am working on, contemplating on an altogether different subject.

When we arrived in Rochester on the coach I wrote this:

Unloading the coach and moving the unloaded stuff into the apartment was time consuming and frustrating. We are prone to loosing things from time to time, but a pound of ground beef? Yup someplace in the coach, the car or the apartment there is a one pound package of ground beef slowly decomposing – gross! 

Today we returned to the coach to run the generator for a while as is necessary to keep things working. As I reached into the Jeep console for the keys I realized the usual keyring was missing. I must have decided they did not need to go to Canada and wait around there for two weeks and taken them into the apartment, Baad Idea. I did have a key to get into the coach, just not to open any of the compartments to turn on the chassis batteries which is necessary to open the slides, and other things.

As soon as I opened the door I knew not everything was wonderful. My nose led me to the refrigerator which stood with doors partially open for storage. Looking inside I found the missing pound of ground beef, or its decomposed remains. I cannot imagine how we left that in the refrigerator after we turned it off, cleaned it and prepared it for storage. I know that I had looked in there several times just to be sure. I have the drawers and shelf in the apartment to clean up. I will plan a return trip in the next day or two to put everything in order. YUCK!

After 24 years of RVing I found a new way to make things miserable in the coach. I do not want to imagine what my next RV problem will be.

In the past I have been asked for a map of the trip. I always figured that most people could enter our locations into Google Maps or Earth and see where we were. However I thought today I would show you the entire trip directly from the planning software I have been using for several years. Here is a link to the WHOLE Trip. I could also give you Google’s version of where we have been Timeline. It is almost as good as the actual map. 

Facts: Miles driven 3,225. Diesel Fuel Purchased 416.59 Gallons – we started with about 3/4 of a tank (100 gallon tank capacity) and topped off in Pembroke NY. That came to $1,324. The inevitable question is how many miles per gallon – 7.74 but we burned probably 11 gallons in the generator. Cost per mile is $.41 not bad for moving almost 40,000 pounds across the country.  Maybe the most shocking number is what we paid for campgrounds – $1,075 and we stayed for free for 7 nights. We averaged $51 per night in campgrounds. That includes 4 nights in an Elks Lodge for $35/night. This is where inflation is the most visible. It is about double what we might have seen 10 years ago. 

I was tempted to compare it to traveling by car, but I don’t have real facts and travel by plane is a very different category of travel. 

Another way of saying that is “Man Plans, G-d Laughs” or “On to Plan C?” Originally we planned to leave on October 10. Then the car was creased in a parking lot while we were enjoying a meal. That pushed us back to the 11th, still doable. Then Carol’s doctor wanted one more test, now scheduled for the 13th, so we planned on departing on the 14th or 15th. Just spoke to the collision shop and the new bumper has not come in. Once they get it they need two days, the earliest would be Friday the 14th, the earliest we can leave would be the 15th which would get us to C’ville just in time for my 80th birthday on the 17th. I’m not betting on it. I’m pretty sure we will be there for Carol’s on Nov 2. I really want to get out of Rochester before any hard freezes so I don’t have to winterize the coach.

We have plenty to do here so boredom won’t be an issue. We have been moving stuff into the coach the past couple of days. I just hope we don’t need any of it in the coming week. 

Rohma and Josh have spent time with us each weekend and it has been a delight. This past Saturday they prepared dinner in advance of going to the RPO for a wonderful concert together. See Carol’s FaceBook post for more details. https://www.facebook.com/anncarol.goldberg

I’m keeping up with my responsibilities at Jojoba Hills by email and zoom and the occasional phone call.. Its fun being 3 hours ahead of everyone until they start replying late into the evening their time. I never get to see those messages until the morning. I must admit I am really impatient to see the redone Friendship Hall Annex and our site, not to mention  our friends, but it will all have to wait until we can leave here.