Cross Country #2:   Why? Pott Kos

I’d had the van checked out by the dealer and his pronouncement was "it’s perfect, Doc!" Reminding me of many a patient expiring after being given a "clean bill of health." The heating contractor was much more positive, finding a $500 leak in the boiler.

Goldie: I laughed when my husband said that to break up the ride to Warren Ohio he’d organized an overnight in Pottsville. We would be going only 35 miles north, to visit good friends in this coal mining town.

My laughter turned into appreciation of his wisdom as we experienced pure South African hospitality, warmth, humor, total sharing and a peak behind the curtains of life in a town I’d been ready to stereotype as boring.

Barry: Walking on a street lined with mansions of former coal barons and brewery owners and prosperous physicians, I was struck by friendliness of the people. My friend Les waved to or chatted with everyone in a way reminiscent of our walk a few months earlier on Sea Point beach front in South Africa.....only the scenery had changed.

Goldie: Talking to Jean I discovered that imprisoned here is a Russian Jew currently on death row for murder....I’d actually consulted on the very case only two weeks earlier. She also shared with me a letter to the editor of a local newspaper from a non-Jewish woman who’s son had died when hit in a drunken driving accident. Her note starts with appreciation to the tiny Jewish community for their loving emotional and economic support of her in a time of trauma and loss.

I was struck by the optimism of this community as it shrinks to 50 families and yet is planting a carefully researched biblical garden in the synagogue’s front lawn.

Barry: The dress code in Pottsville is baseball cap, the vehicle is a 4x4 or truck. This is prime gun territory with hundreds of miles of deer-filled forests, even some bears and only a few miles from the notorious Higgens pigeon shoot (an annual festive occasion where pigeons are released, shot at and when they are only wounded, children run out on the field and break the pigeons’ necks.) Thinking of the tragedy in Colorado, no way these guys are going to give up their guns.

Goldie: Which reminds me of an amazing book Barry found in the garage yesterday. Titled "The History of Berks County" (where we live), written in 1925, it gives a view of how people saw the manifest destiny white America in terms so dramatic to me I must share them.

Describing Native Americans it speaks of them as: Savages, Red Skins, who built no monuments, did not improve the land in the way we civilized people have, they leave the land untouched. Then the author speaks of Americans, saying something to the effect that we have improved (!!) nature by chopping down the forests, buildings highways and factories and houses.

Leaving the Dubowitz’s with what South African’s call "padkos" with South African grapes and Provita crackers, we almost immediately drove past the gaping wounds in the earth left by two centuries of mining and more recently strip mining.

Barry: We had to by-pass the town of Centralia, largely abandoned because a fire in the coal seams smoulders underneath it. The cemetery is the only part of the town that is maintained.

In tiny town of Ashland, PA we were greeted by a sculpture of a woman atop a hill in the center of town. Goldie’s feminist nature was immediately piqued by the rare phenomenon of a public statue of a woman in small town America. This weekend is mother’s day, and this sculpture proved to be an image of Whistler’s mother as portrayed in his famous painting, dedicated to motherhood by the Boys Association of Ashland in 1938.

Settling into the drivers’ seat, Goldie turns the key and says "uh, oh....it’s Van NoGo!" Our affectionately named Van Gogh wouldn’t respond, not even a kvetching of the alternator, nothing. Happily within moments we fixed the loose battery terminal and resisting the urge to call the dealer off we went to visit our family in Warren, Ohio.

We were met by typically wonderful mid western hospitality. Bernie and Louise Schultz organized a dinner at a local resort and we were joined by a dozen relatives, several of whom came from Cleveland. Goldie shared some stories and we enjoyed getting to know one another.

So tomorrow I go off to Cleveland and the Gestalt Training Center.

Goldie: Time with the family in Warren was just so joyful and interesting. Richard Rose, age 16, taught me about his favorite music genre which discourages drugs and alcohol, he’s very active in his USY region and spoke glowingly about Hebrew High School in this area. I know my teenage sons will enjoy meeting him some day, as much as I did today.

So tomorrow I’m off to Chicago to work with Project Kesher at their international gathering in support of Jewish women in areas under economic and political stress.

Both: We’ll post again in a few days!