Tag Archives: Virginia Beach

bad TV, nostalgia, religion

How Pat Robertson managed to touch my life…

The featured photo is a screen grab from a news story about Pat Robertson.

Yesterday afternoon, I was dozing after lunch and noticed breaking news. Pat Robertson, an evangelist and wannabe conservative politician, has finally croaked. He was 93 years old. It strikes me as kind of awesome that Robertson died in June– the month during which we celebrate gay pride! I don’t know if there really is a being known as God, but if there is, I’d say this was pretty good timing.

Pat Robertson (nicknamed by his older brother, who used to pat his cheeks and say “Pat, pat, pat”…) was born Marion Gordon Robertson on March 30, 1930 in Lexington, Virginia. Lexington, as some of you know, is a place near and dear to my own heart. Both of my parents grew up within about ten miles of Lexington. My dad was a graduate of Virginia Military Institute, which is located in Lexington. Several of my family members either went there, or to neighboring Washington & Lee University, which is where Mr. Robertson earned his first college diploma. Bill and I got married at VMI, too… So yeah, Pat Robertson’s birth place is special to me.

And Pat Robertson died yesterday in another place near and dear to my heart– Virginia Beach. I grew up in Gloucester County, which is maybe about an hour’s drive from Virginia Beach (when there’s no traffic). We moved to Gloucester in 1980, when I was eight years old. In those days, we all watched television instead of hanging out on the Internet. Although I’m not a very religious person, Pat Robertson still managed to have kind of a profound effect on my life when I was growing up. It was all because of his television empire.

A very old WYAH sign off!

Gloucester was within the viewing area of Pat Robertson’s television channel, WYAH, which he purchased for $37,000 in 1960. WYAH was not a cable channel, but it was the place where Robertson’s Christian television empire, much of which was disseminated on cable TV, was born. WYAH– named for Yahweh– was located in Portsmouth, Virginia. I remember being kind of fascinated by the city of Portsmouth as a little kid, because before we moved to Gloucester, we lived in Fairfax, Virginia on Portsmouth Road. 😉

Although I grew up attending the local Presbyterian church, my parents weren’t super religious. I think church mainly served as a social outlet and place to perform music. My mom was a church organist, although she usually played at churches other than the one I attended with my dad. My dad sang in the church choir, but also in local ensembles. I sat in the pews with a lady whose husband was also in the choir and was a fellow VMI graduate. That was about it for church stuff for me, personally… but I was still heavily influenced by religion, because I happened to live in the Tidewater region of Virginia, where Pat Robertson’s independent TV channel was offered.

Example of WYAH’s ads… at the 3 minute mark, there’s an ad for the 700 Club. At 2:10, there’s an ad for Mother Basilea Schlink, a German Lutheran writer. I see she was from Darmstadt, which is very close to where I currently live.

In earlier blog posts, I wrote about how, back in the 1980s, I was kind of obsessed with television. Back then, things weren’t so syndicated, so local channels had more of a local flavor. In Fairfax, we had the big three networks, PBS (public television), and two independent channels– WTTG and WDCA– both of which were secular. When we moved to Gloucester, we had WYAH and WTVZ. WTVZ was secular, while WYAH was religious. But they showed similar programming– sitcoms that were in syndication, old movies, westerns, cartoons, and other lightweight viewing fare that was pretty kid friendly.

Cartoons on WYAH in 1986!

WYAH had a very annoying announcer with a distinctively high voice who introduced the afternoon cartoons– Tom and Jerry or Scooby Doo. Sometimes I’d watch them, if I didn’t have something else to do. As an 8 year old, I could go play with the other kids in my neighborhood, most of whom didn’t like me much, or I could watch Pat Robertson’s TV channel, WYAH, or WTVZ… or maybe play with my Barbies. A lot of times, WYAH won out, and I’d watch old sitcoms like The Jeffersons, Benson, Wonder Woman, Diff’rent Strokes, or The Brady Bunch.

Most of the stuff WYAH aired was already pretty tame, but any curse words were edited out. I don’t remember if they edited out the racist epithets that were occasionally on sitcoms in the 70s. For instance, on The Jeffersons, one might occasionally hear the n-bomb dropped, usually by George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley) himself. I don’t think they edited that, but if he said “damn” or “hell”, that would be silenced.

Love the ad for the party line, for the low price of 89 cents a minute!

What I remember most about WYAH, though, were the religious PSAs and ads for a huge variety of Christian religious organizations of varying legitimacy. The channel also offered many religious shows by evangelists, like Jack Van Impe, Ernest Angley, and Star R. Scott, who is a Northern Virginia based pastor.

On Saturday nights, WYAH showed The Rock Church Proclaims, a program featuring services at The Rock Church, which is a huge church based in Virginia Beach. In the 80s, it was led by John and Anne Gimenez. Sometimes, I’d watch the show, not because I was religious, but because I’d never seen a church that had a full band, complete with electric guitars and drums, and pastors who danced. The Rock Church is Pentecostal, and they do things very differently than the stodgy Presbyterians. Below is a clip from a Rock Church “praise break”.

John Gimenez liked to get down when he preached. Presbyterians didn’t do this kind of stuff… I kind of like the organ on this.

Of course, Robertson’s famous show, The 700 Club, was also aired. WYAH is the birthplace of The 700 Club. It’s still going strong.

“Men have a tendency to wander…”

As I was growing up, I didn’t really think too hard about how weird WYAH was, and how I was being influenced by all of the religious stuff on that channel. In 1987, there was a huge scandal involving Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, a couple who had gotten their start on WYAH before they founded the PTL cable network. I never watched PTL, though, because it wasn’t offered on our cable subscription. I remember during that time– I was about 15 years old– Jim and Tammy Faye were constantly in the news.

That scandal probably had something to do with Pat Robertson’s decision to sell WYAH in 1989. By the time I graduated high school in 1990, that channel I had watched all through my childhood, had become secular and was owned by a national company. Gone were all the weird religious programming, ads for religious organizations, books, and music, PSAs for religious groups, and censored sitcoms. Robertson also unsuccessfully tried to run for president in 1988, but he dropped out of contention when it became clear that George H.W. Bush was going to get the Republican nomination.

Pat Robertson asks you to listen.
Busting on communism…
Is your child having an abortion without your permission?

Years later, I learned more about Pat Robertson, as he continued to try to influence politics and continued to build his empire very close to where I grew up. He founded Regent University, and maintained his Christian Broadcasting Network, which was basically a cable version of WYAH, minus the Tidewater flavor. He sold CBN in the 90s.

Yikes! He said some pretty terrible things… and some things were really not very Christian at all.

As a young woman, I started paying more attention to the things Pat Robertson said… some of which I found surprisingly hateful. Like I said, even though I watched his channel, I didn’t pay much attention to the religious stuff. I just wanted my daily George Jefferson or Tom and Jerry fix. But as he got older, Robertson said things that were more hateful, polarizing, and just plain weird. He was famously homophobic, and said many crazy things that infuriated liberals and condemned people in the gay community.

He was kind of disarming, wasn’t he? He sounded gentle and decent, but then he used words like “homo”.

Robertson got right wing Christians involved in politics, marrying far right politics with evangelicals. He was a fan of Donald Trump’s– although Trump is about as unChristian as a person can get. Robertson joined in the chorus of idiot Republicans who claimed that the 2020 presidential election was stolen because Trump didn’t win. Later, Robertson turned on Trump. A lot of people saw Robertson as either laughable or damnable.

Toward the end, he really was a doddering old fool…

I’m sure Pat Robertson will be missed by many people. He did manage to do some pretty amazing things during his lifetime. And even though I despise his politics and am not into his brand of religion, I can’t deny that he did manage to touch my life and influence it, somewhat. I know people who attended his university, and most of my childhood friends who grew up with me in Gloucester watched WYAH, too. So… there is that.

I never hated Pat Robertson. He was an interesting character. I wish he hadn’t played a part in destroying the separation between church and state. I wish he hadn’t championed Donald Trump, whose disastrous time in the White House has seriously fucked up American politics. And I wish he hadn’t said so many hateful, awful things about the LGBTQ community, which includes people I love. But, I’m sure that some people are mourning him today, and as an admittedly less than devout Christian, I do have some regard for them as fellow human beings. So… I suppose I can wish for Pat Robertson to rest in peace, wherever he is– be it looking down from Heaven, or looking up from Hell… or just rotting in a casket.

As I close today’s post, I realize that my sisters in law– Bill’s sister and her wife– were celebrating their LEGAL marriage yesterday, the day of Pat Robertson’s death. They got married in Florida in 2015. Seems very fitting to me that Pat Robertson exited the mortal coil on their anniversary! It’s almost like an anniversary gift from God! Isn’t that awesome? I think so.

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dogs, memories, nostalgia

Repost: Beach Days…

And here’s a repost that was originally posted on May 24, 2018… Just a few memories of growing up near Virginia Beach, Virginia, and some other stuff. I miss the beach so much. I also miss really good seafood. And I especially miss Zane, the ray of sunshine wonder beagle, who has been gone for a couple of years now…

I grew up about an hour from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  The county I lived in was also richly blessed with brackish rivers that were full of jellyfish.  I’m surprised I never learned how to waterski, since I definitely lived in an area where it would have been easy to do. 

When I was very young, I used to love it when my parents or my sisters would take me to Virginia Beach.  Because I was so young, I didn’t understand why the waves were so much bigger there than they were at Yorktown or Gloucester Point beaches, both of which were on the York River.  Although the water was salty, it was full of jellyfish and I’d always get stung.  I never had to worry about that in the Atlantic Ocean.  There, the water was too rough for the jellyfish…  It wasn’t too rough for the sharks, of course, but I never worried about that.  I never worried about sunburns back then, either, though I definitely got my fair share.

Yesterday, I was hanging out in the Tidewater Flashback Facebook group and it occurred to me to ask the people in that group if they could refresh my memory.  You see, because we lived about an hour or so from Virginia Beach, we’d always go there just for the day.  Mom and Dad would very occasionally book cottages near Nags Head, North Carolina if they wanted to stay longer than a day.  Virginia Beach has public beaches, but my parents always went to a beach that was intended for military patrons. 

I remembered we paid to park in the lot after showing our I.D.s, then had access to the clubhouse, which had cabanas and rafts to rent, showers, and a nice snack bar.  I couldn’t remember the name of the property, but did remember it was near a tower and it had a lifeguard on duty.  I asked the people in the Flashback group and they said I was thinking of the Naval Officers Beach, which was affiliated with Fort Story. 

I think there are still beaches for military folks near Virginia Beach, but that particular property closed some time ago.  I was fondly remembering my time visiting that beach.  I think the last time I went was sometime in the early 1990s.  I think now, they have cottages for rent there.  They look pretty nice.  Maybe someday, we’ll get back to Virginia and rent one.  Or maybe not.

I also remember going to the Fort Eustis sand pools when I was a kid.  They had two of them for years, but then closed one.  In 2007, they closed the other one because a child drowned.  Someone in the Flashback group said they were working EMS that day and remembered the tragedy.  It’s a pity, because that was a fun place to visit.  They were basically freezing cold manmade lakes with floating docks you could dive off of.  There was sand on the “beaches” and the shower houses were kind of gross.  I still remember a lot of fun picnics there with friends.  Germany actually has some lakes like that, too.  Maybe sometime, I’ll convince Bill to visit.  He doesn’t like to swim as much as I do.

I’ve been feeling a little out of sorts lately.  Zane’s right front paw, which he had surgery on last year, has been giving him trouble.  It looks like the scar tissue is irritated.  He has another lump on his side, which could be a lymph node or another tumor.  He’s acting fine, though.  In fact, he’s as chipper as ever.  I still worry about him because he’s my baby.  I woke up before 4:00am and immediately started feeling anxious.  I know I should relax and enjoy him.  There will come a day when he truly will be in trouble and my concerns will be legitimate.  It’s probably a good thing I didn’t become a nurse. ETA 2022: Zane died of lymphoma on August 31, 2019. I miss him.

We’re going to France again tomorrow… back to Ribeauville.  We’re staying in a studio sized apartment because the big one we usually take is spoken for.  It was a last minute decision for us to go.  I just wanted to get out of town again.  I find it’s good for my sanity.  Hopefully, the dogs won’t bother anyone this time like they did last time.  I have some ideas of new things to do and places to see.  Even though we’ve been to this part of Alsace several times, we still haven’t seen and done it all.  Ribeauville is close enough to Stuttgart that it almost feels like it’s part of the area, even though it takes a couple of hours to get there.

Of course… it would be nice if we were near a beach.  I mean a real beach, not a river or a lake.  I would love to take a trip to Croatia and hang out for a week, eating good seafood, lying in the sun with 80 SPF sunscreen, and just chilling out.  But this is the year of the concerts, so I guess I’ll just have to be contented with lots of shows.

Maybe later, I will think of something to rant about… or maybe I’ll finish my latest book.  For now, here’s a boring post, except for those who remember the Tidewater area the way I do.

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true crime

In Spain, you can be sentenced to prison for being an asshole…

But in America, we let any nut with a chip on his or her shoulder wield weapons.

Okay, so maybe this is an oversimplification of things. However, I couldn’t help but take notice when I read a news story about YouTuber ReSet (otherwise known as Kanghua Ren) who made over 2000 euros on a video he made in 2017. Mr. Ren, who was 19 years old in 2017, filmed himself offering an Oreo cookie filled with toothpaste and a 20 euro bill to a homeless man sitting outside of a supermarket in Barcelona, Spain. The man, who was probably really hungry, ate the cookie and vomited.

Chinese born Ren, who acknowledged that maybe he went a bit too far in carrying out this prank, then quipped, “This will help clean his teeth– I don’t think he has cleaned them since he became poor.”

The video got plenty of views, which helped Ren make some money. He had made the video, in part, as a response to challenges set forth by his followers, who evidently wanted him to raise the bar on being an asshole and taking advantage of vulnerable people. However, a lot of people found his dirty trick completely reprehensible.

The homeless man, in his early 50s and identified as Gheorge L., was born in Romania and was once a shepherd before he wound up in Barcelona. He has a daughter. Mr. Ren offered her 300 euros not to file a lawsuit after having filmed himself visiting her father again, offering him another 20 euro bill.

Clearly, Gheorge’s daughter was not moved by the offer of 300 euros. Mr. Ren was forced to answer for his callous behavior in a Spanish courtroom. Noting that Ren had done other videos depicting himself being cruel to vulnerable people, Judge Rosa Aragonés found Ren guilty of violating the moral integrity of the homeless man. She sentenced Mr. Ren to fifteen months in prison and handed down a 20,000 euro fine, which is to be paid to the homeless man.

Because this is Mr. Ren’s first offense, and the sentence is less than two years, he is unlikely to go to prison. However, he has also been ordered to shut down all of his social media channels, including YouTube, for the next five years. I guess this means Mr. Ren will have to find another way to make some cash.

It’s interesting to read about this case, especially in the wake of the most recent shooting in the United States. On Friday afternoon, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, 40 year old DeWayne Craddock, who had just resigned his position as a city engineer that morning, brought a weapon into his former workplace and started firing indiscriminately, killing 12 people and injuring others. Craddock, who died in the shootout, was reportedly a “nice guy” who had quit his job for “personal reasons”. And yet, there he was with a gun on Friday, ending the lives of 12 people, including Keith Cox, who led seven people to safety before he was killed. Before he went on his rampage, my guess is that most people didn’t think of Craddock as an “asshole”.

In Europe, a person can wind up in trouble with the law simply for being an asshole. Granted, what Kanghua Ren did could have been dangerous. It’s not recommended to eat toothpaste and his victim did vomit after eating the Oreo cookie. But ultimately, what he did was mean spirited and cruel, and that was what he was punished for. He wasn’t punished for potentially poisoning someone.

In the United States, it takes a whole lot to deprive people of certain rights. One right far too many Americans enjoy is the right to bear arms. Lately, the shootings have become so common that I no longer really feel shocked when I hear or read about them. Something is causing ordinary people to simply snap and start murdering people.

Christi Dewar, who was employed at the Virginia Beach utilities office and had worked there for thirteen years, said that Mr. Craddock was well dressed and soft spoken. She had no reason to fear him. She said he was a bit introverted, but gave no signs of being the type or person who would go on a shooting rampage. But on his last day living, Mr. Craddock came armed with handguns, high capacity magazines, and a silencer device. He cracked off at least fifty rounds at his former co-workers before he was finally taken out himself. Dewar says that she thinks all of the government buildings need metal detectors and security guards. She says she would happily tolerate daily searches if it means never having to go through another shooting. I would rather not give up more of my personal liberty in the name of stopping gun violence. I don’t think metal detectors and security guards will necessarily protect anyone. Security guards are people too, and if someone is that determined to kill, they’ll still kill… even if it means killing someone else who has a gun.

Seems to me a better solution is to stop making guns so accessible to everyone, make it easier for people to access and afford mental health care, and make eliminating classism and racism a priority. Also, I think there should be more emphasis on not being an asshole. Here in Germany, a person can be fined for flipping someone off, particularly if that person is in a position of respect, such as a police officer or government official. Of course, that doesn’t mean people don’t shoot the bird on the Autobahn. I have seen it happen. But there is an emphasis on not harming other people here– and not being uncivilized to others.

It’s been nice to live in Europe for the past few years, even though I’ve been watching my country disintegrate from afar. It makes me heartsick, and worried about what it will be like when we do move back home. I mean, yes… you can have neighbor disputes in Germany. You can have issues with your co-workers, your landlords, and other people. You can even end up being murdered in a particularly passive aggressive way in Europe. However, random acts of violence against perfect strangers is a lot rarer here than it is in the United States. There are a lot of pissed off, fed up, angry people there who are on the verge of snapping and have lost their senses of decency and humanity.

Anyway… while I’m not sure I think sending a prankster like Mr. Ren to prison is all that constructive, I do think it’s commendable that he’s been held accountable for being mean spirited. Maybe Americans can learn something from Mr. Ren’s case. It’s entirely possible that Europeans have simply had more time to become civilized than Americans have. Maybe, if the Earth is still around in 1000 years, America will be more like Europe is now. Or maybe Europe will be more like America is now. Glad I won’t be around to find out for sure.

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musings

Happy June!

Don’t look now, but Joe Walsh and I have the same hairdo… right down to the color. I guess we both quit trying to mess with Mother Nature.

Once again, I’m kind of devoid of topics to write about today. I could write about the tragic shootings in Virginia Beach. That would actually be kind of relevant, since I grew up about an hour away from Virginia Beach. But, to be honest, I didn’t get a chance to read much about it. Sadly, it’s getting to the point at which these shootings are almost becoming kind of normalized. I don’t feel quite as shocked by them as I used to, so I don’t know much about what happened, other than twelve people losing their lives and some people getting injured. I wonder what it’s going to take before something is done about the crazy gun toters in the United States. It’s getting totally ridiculous.

I could write another political post, but I’m in kind of a good mood and don’t want to spoil it. The weather is gorgeous today and we have enjoyed a beautiful outing to Bacharach, capping off a great week in which we saw the Eagles and enjoyed a couple of days in Cologne. Tonight, Elton John is playing in Wiesbaden. We saw him about three weeks ago in Stuttgart, so we’re avoiding the city tonight. May was a nice month for the concerts alone… realizing that Joe Walsh and I share the same hairstyle.

There are other things I could write about… several things that are weighing on my mind. Unfortunately, I have come to learn that some people can’t respect other people’s space or privacy. So… I will probably have to write about what’s on my mind later. For now, I think I’ll go hang out with Bill and enjoy what’s left of our Saturday. I love this time of year. So much to do and see, and we don’t have to go far to do or see it.

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