Memory Lane Meanderings Continued - High School in TA

 I wanted to wrap up my reminisces of Terra Alta and my high school years, and we'll start by first talking about how we got there.

I mentioned that Mom had been a live-in caretaker for an 88-year-old man named Webby in the community of Mannheim, just across the Cheat from Rowlesburg, beginning around March of 1986.  Webby was ailing and in steep decline, and would pass away only a couple of months later - it was a shame because he was a nice man and I saw first-hand how he suffered then and it was heartbreaking to see.  Any rate, Webby's son-in-law who lived just up the street, Earl, had a mother who at that time was around 93 years old named Myrtle, and he needed a caretaker for her too and thought Mom would be perfect for that.  So, a couple of weeks after Webby's passing, Mom went up to Myrtle's first - Myrtle lived a few miles north of town on Salt Lick Road, closer to the community of Terra Alta than to Rowlesburg, and being I had to finish out a school year I decided to stay at Earl and his wife Dot's house in Mannheim until I finished school.  When my freshman year finished, I moved up with Mom to Myrtle's house on Salt Lick, and at first it was not a good experience, but in time I would settle in and it would lead to three of the best years of my life.  

The first impression of our new place up there on Salt Lick was how remote it really was.  While only a few miles from Terra Alta, it seemed like a world away.  The house was situated on about 10 acres of farmland that Earl owned, but Myrtle's POA was Earl's younger sister Opal, who lived closer.  Opal would come down about once a week to take Mom and Myrtle to the store, and that outing proved to be a highlight during those summer months.  I did have a little break in the monotony then as that summer we had both a VBS at the Baptist church I was part of in Rowlesburg, and later in the summer I was given a week at a church summer camp in the central part of the state near the town of Cowan.  However, the isolation of our new house initially was a bit rough for me to get used to, and I was wondering how I would survive the summer months there.  Thankfully all of that would soon change, as starting school at East Preston that September for my sophomore year turned out to be a good thing.  Once I started school there, I got involved in the high school band, in the German club, as well as also keeping myself busy with church as I launched into activities with my new Baptist church in Terra Alta - within a short time, I was also teaching a Sunday School class and would also come to be involved in leadership.  Church and school band were my social life essentially then, but a lot of other important things would begin to happen as well. 

The school year of 1986-1987 went off without a hitch, and I really found my place and was able to fit in well.  The following summer there - 1987 - was much better as I was able to really explore a lot of things.  What I remembered most about the summer then was how I could get out of the house, explore the surrounding area, and I got back into wildcrafting again as well as beginning to experiment with cooking.  That, and my musical tastes as well evolved somewhat as I began to really get into Stravinsky, Copland, and some other serious music along with my big band hobby, and I also forayed into gospel music as well - Black Gospel particularly.  Summer 1987 was good, in other words.  However, my junior year of high school - 1987-1988 - would also be an important year then as I was also introduced to the Armenians and Assyrians, as well as developing a very strong interest in Byzantine and Russian history.  Much of what would shape me as an adult would happen during the three years I lived on Salt Lick, and also Myrtle grew on me as well.  "Myrt" as we called her became a sort of new grandmother to me, and I really bonded closely with her during those years and that could be a whole other story in itself.  Summarily though, my high school years were good.

When I got to the summer of 1988, then I was able for the first time in about 10 years to go visit Dad - he got me a plane ticket and I was able to go to Georgia with him for two weeks.  I had my first summer job there too, as I was helping Dad with his business - he was in home construction, and I learned how to install drywall and a few other practical skills while earning a few bucks in the process.  It was also my first trip to Silver Springs in Florida, and little did I know that just four years from that point I would actually be living there, as my future mother-in-law had a home there.  However, at this point I was still in high school, getting ready for college, and all that was on my mind was the future I planned to have.  A part of me misses some of that great optimism and excitement I had then, and I even envy high school seniors today who have that same feeling - you feel like the world is yours and that you want to grab any opportunity out there.  Of course, when reality sets in later, it can be sobering, but the optimism and hope are nice feelings.  Let me reflect on that a bit as it has a lot to do with this period in my life.

I often miss a lot about my younger days, especially when I look at how much older I truly am now.  Many of the people who were part of my life then are now long gone - they passed away in increasing numbers over the past 25 years or so.  I've lost many friends, family, teachers, and even a few classmates from those days, and it is at times a sober reminder that I am not immortal either, at least in this body.  I remember so many good things about those years - one perhaps was the excitement of getting a lot of mail then.  While I had limited funds to actually order and pay for things, I did have a pen, a good knack for writing, and eventually I even found an old beat-up typewriter I put to use.  At that time I was into my newfound Christian faith, and was determined to become "super-Baptist."  So, I was writing practically every Baptist denomination I could think of, and ended up with a banker's box full of literature.  I think I was probably one of the first kids in my high school to actually do a Social Studies fair project on American Baptists, and I placed.  I almost placed a few years earlier when I was a freshman in Rowlesburg, as I made quite the impression on the judges with my work on American big bands I did.  Had I not contracted the flu then and missed the finalist display I placed in, I could have probably won that - but I still placed, so that is what mattered.  My Baptist project did well too, as I ended up with I believe a second-place in that, so I didn't complain.  The Social Studies fairs then were a way to basically put into a focused project your personal interests, and in doing so it meant you were also applying knowledge you gained.  In college, I would do this more, as a stack of term papers, portfolios, and a dissertation all bound in volumes behind where I am sitting now testify.  This provides a good point for a segue way, so let's chase that momentarily.

Over the years, I have often been accused of being a packrat or a hoarder as I keep anything and everything of significance.  Had water damage and some other things not happened in Kirby, I would have probably saved a lot more than I did too.  I save every letter, every card, every calendar, every journal, every school project, etc., and I have them all organized into binders in bins either in my closet here now or under my bed.  The cumulative amount of that I have saved currently fills about 15  8-gallon bins, and additionally I have taken to publishing bound volumes of school projects I have done over the years as well as even these blogs.  While it does sound a bit hoarder-like, in reality it isn't as I only preserve those things of significance - there is a lot of rich memory in old cards and letters, and more technical information in tax, school, employment, and medical documentation I have hung onto as well. While living here in Baltimore, I don't have the access to the bins as conveniently as I used to have, as it is a bit of work dragging them out and adding stuff to them, so any recent documentation over the past couple of years I am organizing in a file box to put into the designated binders later.  I have also inherited a lot of Mom's and Dad's records as well since they passed on, and have those organized also.  All of those bound record volumes will be placed in a large cabinet once I am settled in a more permanent housing location, and they will stay there for a long time to come.  At this point, I wanted to explain how a file system works for me.

I am a big believer in having a sort of personal archive of any and all documentation, and my go-to choice of housing is a large, fire-proof metal cabinet.  A fire-proof, weather-proof cabinet serves as a sort of informal vault, and when I was in Hagerstown I had two of them for just this purpose, as well as two others for my music collection.  The unfortunate circumstance of our move necessitated leaving them behind, which was a tragic loss in all honesty, but I had little choice.  In the future, there are stipulations for a cabinet system like this I will implement.  For one, the cabinets must be on wheels and readily mobile - if I have to rent a house for much longer, this is a wise idea because it will eliminate a lot of logistic headaches.  I am also planning on at least two of these in the future - one will be for the record binders I have tax histories, employment and medical records, etc., stored in, as well as placing my small safe in it too.  The second cabinet will be strictly for photo albums and journal books, as there are many more of those.  Being I am now the unofficial custodian of all of Mom's and Dad's old pictures, as well as a growing collection of my own, they need to be housed properly.  I want to eventually created digitalized records as well, as I would love to scan everything onto flash drives to store safely in case I need them.  As I begin to transition from blogging and journaling to working on the life story project, I am also planning on eventually creating content sheets for each of my binders and really organizing them properly.  This will be a monumental project in itself, but it needs to be done.  I also want a section in one of the cabinets for all my family and local history books too, as right now they are on a bookshelf but they deserve to be kept separate as they are deeply personal.  My family and local history books, my blogs, and my own published work currently occupies 80% of a four-tier small shelf behind me, and while I am not anticipating many more volumes to be added to that, they still deserve their own space though.  Those local and family history books are integral to writing my own story, which is why they deserve premium housing.  I want to eventually do a tutorial article here about how to organize a file system based on my method, and I think that would be a good resource especially for those who are interested in their own family histories.   I divulged a lot of my personal planning here, and if you are reading this and are wondering where the hell I am going with all that, it does connect to the memory lane strolls too - those "strolls" would not be possible without meticulous record-keeping, in all honesty.  One's memory - even for the best of us - can only go so far and you need to access work that directly relates to the topic, and in constructing background information for what I share with you here, it is reliant upon many local sources of which I may do a historiography on later to give an idea of how to research local history as I have.  And, that leads to some further thoughts.

When other people publish work, it can be a valuable resource for providing a background to your own, and your work in turn may fill in some gaps for someone else.  I rely on a pretty extensive shelf of family histories, local histories, and books on topics of local interest to supplement my own thoughts, as it does help.  There are some things, for instance, I may have been too young to recall details on, so works like that help tremendously.  Also, the availability of online resources is good too, and I have greatly utilized those.  If an online source has some significance, I tend to also print it out and GBC it as its own book as a good fingertip reference if necessary, and I have amassed a few volumes of those as well.  Given I am the type of person who wishes to capture everything about a topic, I do research extensively, but admittedly at times I do cut corners where I maybe shouldn't.  I am now thinking as I write this that perhaps a good guide would be in order to provide some tips on what I do to preserve research and such.  Others have done this with a degree of success, and perhaps maybe it is time I think about a more technical and practical resource as well.   I will explore that again at some point.  

At any rate, I suppose this wraps up both a memory lane meandering as well as a few insights as to how I organize information, so I feel this is a good place to conclude.  Thank you for allowing me to ramble, and we will see you again soon. 

Memory Lane Meanderings Continued - Between Kirby and Terra Alta

 One of the most integral things a person has is their memories.  I am going to spend a large part of the remainder of this year talking about some places.  I talked already about my early childhood in Kirby, and the Little Falls Chapel in Falling Waters my late step-grandmother attended, and today for some reason I wanted to just talk a little about my high school years in Terra Alta now.  This is a pivotal part of my early years, as Terra Alta was my high school period and I had a generally fond and memorable life there, including essentially adopting a whole new family (or, maybe they adopted me, who's to say?).  Any rate, I am also doing this because in a couple of years, I will be finished blogging and will be embarking on getting my life story project typed up (the draft has already been handwritten in several books so I just need to get it in print now).  One of the reasons I am doing it this way is due to a bit of uncertainty about the new chapter of life I am about to embark on - soon I will be starting a new position, and with that more than likely a move to somewhere else, so I don't want to do a whole lot with bigger projects until I eventually am settled into a more permanent place.  Where I am at now in Baltimore is meant to be temporary, as I came here to work for a season at a Jesuit high school in town and that mini-chapter of life has ended now.  As everything comes together in the coming weeks, I will elaborate more on what is happening.  But for now, we are just going to revisit some of my past years, and introduce you to some of the places I grew up.  I hope you can enjoy the ride. 

There is a bit of a back story on Terra Alta before I arrived there, and I feel that is an appropriate way to open this story.  In the summer of 1985, I had successfully completed what was two of the worst years of middle school I had ever experienced - I felt out-of-place, and faced a lot of harassment and bullying then both from popular kids as well as the more rough crowd, and I didn't feel like I fit in anywhere then.  Things had started to improve for me in the second half of my 8th grade year, but it wasn't much to really jump for joy over.  At that time, we still lived in Kirby, but during that summer after my 8th grade year completed, we faced a lot of things - bone-crushing poverty due to a drastic change in our life circumstances was a primary issue, and instinctively I started to gradually pack up stuff beginning in July 1985 because I saw the end coming.  For food during that particular summer, we relied on three things - I had gotten into making homemade drop biscuits from scratch that fed Mom and me, and supplemented that diet with food we got from the local church's food bank (thank God for First Methodist Church in Romney, as they really helped us then - I still want to send them a small financial gift one day for that), and then raiding the neighbor's gardens at night to harvest things like cabbages, cucumbers, ears of corn, and yellow squash, which we then would fry and have as a simple dinner - meat was at this point a luxury, as the store in town had cut off Mom's credit, and for some reason Mom did not even get SNAP benefits or the Community Action assistance that had helped us for many years. To put it plainly, we were suffering badly.  When you start looking at fried sliced cucumbers and fried cabbage as a feast, you know you are scraping bottom.  It finally came to a head in mid-August, when circumstances dictated a move for us, and we then moved back with my grandmother and step-grandfather, who themselves at the time were in the process of a move of their own.  We all ended up moving together to the nearby community of Baker in Hardy County, and my step-grandfather rented this really nice farmhouse from an old, cranky man.  The farmhouse itself was actually quite nice - it had a beautiful kitchen, and the upstairs was relatively comfortable too.  It was at that point I started my high school years at East Hardy High School, and come to find out, high school was much better than middle school.

The farmhouse that my step-grandfather Lonnie leased was located out a remote country road called Sauerkraut Road for some weird reason.  The house was on one side of the road, and across the way was a nice little cattle pond and a small barn where the landowner kept some cattle.  It was about midway between the towns of Rio and Baker, and it was remote from both although the surrounding countryside did have some fairly affluent houses of people who worked in DC but wanted a quiet country getaway on the weekends.   At East Hardy, two very interesting things happened.  For one, I had graduated from alto sax - which Mr. Foster had so graciously set up lessons for me - to tenor sax, and our band teacher was a very nice preacher's wife, Mrs. Funkhouser.  Her husband, interesting enough, was also my English teacher, and a Methodist minister too.  A few years back, Mrs. Funkhouser wrote her own book of memoirs about her career as a music teacher called Measure by Measure, and I have a small piece I contributed to it that she kindly asked for from many of her former students.  I also have one of my few early band pictures in there too - in the marching band then,  I played cymbals as I was still a bit rough around the gills as far as my saxophone skills went, but I did get to play tenor sax in the small studio band (a high school big band, which was heaven for me) the school had, and that was a blast.  A second thing that happened there was that I developed a massive crush on a girl named Holly - Holly was beautiful, and Mom kind of helped that along by talking her up to me because she worked with Holly's parents the previous year at a fiberglass factory there in Wardensville.   The crush on Holly had three reactions - first she thought it was cute, then she got extremely annoyed at me, and then after I poured my soul into a letter to her, we knew boundaries and respected each other.  I can't totally fault her reaction to me though, as it was to be expected, but man, did I have it bad for her!   However, I did make a close friend there I still keep in touch with today, and her name then was Michelle Gray.  Michelle was a bubbly redhead who really made me feel welcome in the school, and because we both played sax then in the band we sort of had a bond between us.  Although Michelle was a cute girl, I never had any type of romantic feelings for her as to me she was just a really good friend and I really appreciated that in a new school and all.  We continued to keep in touch for a few years after, but then just sort of lost contact as we embarked on our respective futures.  However, about 15 years ago this thing called Facebook came into existence, and we reconnected and still keep in touch even today.  Michelle I believe lives in Virginia now, where she is a happy married and successful real estate agent with a couple of grown kids of her own now.  I still keep up with Holly too on occasion - Holly married and has a nice family now, and I think she still lives in that general area.  I also think Holly has grandbabies now as well, although I could be wrong - that is hard to believe too!  East Hardy was overall a very good experience for me, but it was way too short.  There were three things that happened I will give detail on now that caused us to move, so let's get into those.

The first thing that happened was the cranky old landlord of the farmhouse, a cratchety old man named Charlie, and he told Lonnie he had to move.  I would guess that a large part of that had to do with the menagerie of animals my grandmother and him had - a ton of dogs, and an assortment of poultry outside as well as I believe a cat or two.  Plus we had our dog Jill, my cat Dora, and my grandmother had parakeets.  All of that was slightly off-putting to old Charlie, and I think too he had friends who spied on his property back there (there was suspicion about the school bus driver, an older lady named Mrs. Leatherman, whom I believe was one of Charlie's longtime friends).  So, in early November, that facilitated a move, and two subsequent things happened that made that possible. 

The first was the death of Lonnie's older brother Lee.  Lee lived in Rowlesburg, and in almost every way he and Lonnie could have been twins.  Lee had a house just across from the cemetery there, and their sister Betty lived across the street in another house.  I cannot remember all the details of how it happened, but my grandmother and Lonnie somehow got the green light to move into that house, and this would be a huge adjustment for them - this meant they couldn't keep as many animals around, and therefore they had to ask a friend in Hampshire County to take all their poultry as well as a number of their outdoor dogs.  So, yes, I remember how that went, especially trying to transport a pickup truck with its bed full of cages containing cackling chickens, quacking ducks, and honking geese at 11 at night.  When the move finally came, that was challenging as well, given Lonnie and Mom went up to Rowlesburg first and my grandmother and I were stuck in a bare house for a night waiting for them to come back for us - I remember sleeping in two chairs pulled together while my grandmother slept on a cot that was left for us.  We made the best of it, and at some point I want to also devote a story to my grandmother too, as over the years our family dynamic was interesting to say the least.  To summarize though, my grandmother could be cranky, mouthy, and loud, but when it came down to it she always looked out for me, and I recall that with great fondness.  I was actually thankful that when she finally passed away in the hospital in Winchester, VA, in 2004, Mom, Barbara, and I were there.  However, my step-grandfather's brother paled in comparison to the next event, as it affected over one million people throughout the region. 

On November 5-6, 1985, an event happened that was perhaps one of the worst disasters anyone in our state had ever faced.  A particularly strong hurricane that had struck the Gulf Coast earlier - the hurricane was the fifth of the season, named Isabel - and sent rough weather well into the Ohio Valley.  According to Bob Teets and Shelby Young in their 1985 book Killing Waters: The Great West Virginia Flood of 1985 (Terra Alta, WV:  Cheat River Publishing), on page 5 it was noted that all of the previous four hurricanes of that active season caused a cumulative damage of around $2.5 billion and had so far cost 18 American lives between them.  Although Isabel herself would go back out to sea off the east coast of Georgia, a much more catastrophic storm called Juan was forming around the first of October, and it would hit the Gulf Coast between Pensacola and Port Arthur, TX, at around that time.  Juan was apparently only a Category 1 storm, and under normal circumstances it would give the Gulf Coast a bit of a beating and then be over.  However, a cold front from the Midwest would meet up with its remnants later, and that is what made it perhaps the most dangerous storm on record, doing almost as much damage far away from the ocean as Andrew would do later in 1992 and Katrina 20 years later in 2005. By the time the flood waters did their damage, the storm was not a hurricane anymore, and Juan had evolved into just a monster system of some other classification that dumped a tremendous amount of moisture over the Alleghenies and the little river towns like my hometown of Parsons and Rowlesburg would be hit hard.  Last year, 2025, was the 40th year commemoration of that horrendous flood, and what happened next was one of the most upside down years yet as we settled into Rowlesburg then. 

By the time we had finally moved to Rowlesburg, the town looked like a war zone from the damage the flood wrecked on the town.  While we were still in Wardensville when the flood had hit, the only thing that impacted us was the cattle pond overflowing into the road and not much else, as the farmhouse in Baker was far enough away from major rivers to not be overly affected (although many towns nearby were - Romney, Wardensville, Moorefield, and Petersburg were all hit hard).  But, we moved during the time the aftershock was still evident in Rowlesburg, and moving there meant a lot of adjustments.  For one, there was no drinkable water, and thanks to the generosity of Anheuser-Busch and other companies, water was distributed for free at the local Southern Baptist church in town.  The water itself came in six-packs of white cans, and each family in town could get a few cases a week based on family size.  The house my grandmother and step-grandfather moved into was thankfully far enough away from the river to not be affected, as it was at the ridge on the southern edge of town on 72.  However, the magnitude of the damage to the center of town was astronomical - whole streets and whole houses were completely flattened, and a deep, thick blanket of mud submerged many places then.  Being the Baptists and Catholics in town had the best resources, they worked together to help the town recover, and to this day both churches are talked about with great respect.  The other churches in town - the Methodists and a tiny Church of Christ near the railroad - were pretty much destroyed, and the only other church in town - the tiny Pentecostal church nestled in the hills just north of the town on Salt Lick Road - was cut off and had to rely on the nearby town of Terra Alta for what it needed now despite the fact Rowlesburg was normally literally in walking distance.  The damage the flood did to the town would take literally years to completely recover from, and even today it is fresh in the memories of many people there.  Perhaps the most shocking adjustment though was school then, so let's talk about that now.

In the early 1980s, every major town in Preston County had its own high school, as the schools in the county had not been consolidated like they were elsewhere then.  I want to say that pre-1985 there were five high schools in the county - Central Preston in Kingwood, West Preston in Reedsville, East Preston in Terra Alta, Bruceton High School in Bruceton Mills, and Rowlesburg High School which served the southern part of the county then.  After the flood happened, school had to resume somewhere, and by the time I got there, Rowlesburg School was meeting in the fire hall of the Buckwheat Festival grounds in Kingwood.  Although Central Preston was literally just at the end of the street then, the Rowlesburg School was small enough (around 300 students) to set up in the fire hall.  Our classrooms consisted of partitioned walls, and the principal had his office in the back of the building while the Buckwheat Festival kitchen served lunches.  Gym class was conducted at the Civic Center at the other end of the festival grounds, and there was no more band at that point.  If we needed a library, that was located on the next block in Kingwood, or students were allowed to use Central's library down the street.  And, that was the rest of my freshman year.  Interesting story about that was a few years back, in 2018, Barbara wanted to go up to the Buckwheat Festival, and that was the first time I had been in the old fire hall in 32 years.  If you ever have a chance to go to that, the Buckwheat Festival in September merits visiting - those Preston County buckwheat cakes and that sage sausage are worth the trip alone.  When we went to the festival in 2018, surprisingly we actually sat at a table in the very area my homeroom/History class (Mr. Cassidy was a great teacher then) used to be, and that was a surreal feeling too.   Also during that year, we had a long bus trip to school.  The buses picked us up in downtown Rowlesburg then, and we would have to go south on 72 to Macomber, and then climb the mountain on US 50 to Fellowsville, before turning onto SR 26 to go to Kingwood via the community of Tunnelton.  North 72 ran by the Cheat River, and large chunks of that road were destroyed by the floodwaters so no one could access it for months.  The bus ride was long, and I think it also altered the school schedule then somewhat then too. To complicate things more that year, Mom and I would move in early March 1986 across the river to the community of Mannheim, where Mom secured a live-in caregiver position for an 88-year-old man named Webby.  A short couple of months later, Webby would actually pass away, and then our move to Terra Alta would happen, which is the subject of another story later.

Living in Mannheim was not the worst condition I had ever been in - I mean, after all, I actually had lived in a flood zone all that winter!  But, it was an adjustment.  While I had a room to myself upstairs, the conditions were very sparse living there - Webby could only eat boiled stuff, so my heavens, we had a lot of boiled pork chops with onions!   If you have ever experienced those, I feel you - while they were edible, it was some of the most bland, depressing food I think I have ever eaten.   Mom seemed to thrive on it though, and come to find out later Mom was exercising a bit of extreme altruism living there and come to find out she could have easily varied the diet a bit.  Problem is though, my mom could not cook - she was never all that good at cooking.  Thankfully, I discovered ramen soup then so I also ate a lot of that too.  It was also during that time I became a born-again Christian too, as I had accepted Christ when Pastor Olen Phillips prayed with me on a cold January night and I was baptized two weeks later.  But, I felt truly like I was encountering spiritual warfare at that time, as I was not content, and I felt very depressed a lot of the time.  There were bright moments though, such as fishing in the Cheat with my good friend Jack Schaeffer then and catching the occasional hellbender salamander, as well as harvesting a ton of broad-leafed wild garlic in a meadow just beyond the house.  Moments like that, and a lot of prayer, kept me sane then.  Of course, once we did eventually move to Terra Alta and I started my sophomore year, I would soon find my own niche and settle into it well, but at this point it was still a time of upheaval for me.  When I do the next part of that story, I will talk in more detail about how that went.

The year beginning in August 1985 and ending in June 1986 was a rough intermediate period for me, and it was literally a year of transitions - I went from a dorky middle school student living in Kirby to becoming a fairly secure high school student in Terra Alta by the time July 1986 rolled around.  There is a lot about that transition year I would love to forget, as it was rough, but at the same time I also grew too.  As I continue the second part of this later, you will see how I sort of came of age in Terra Alta as I began to find the person I truly was, and that would shape me as I grew into adulthood later.  Thanks for allowing me to prattle, and will see you next time. 

Another Visit Down Memory Lane

 I wasn't going to post anything else today, but I wanted to just share something while it was fresh on my mind about a childhood memory.  This is a strong recollection too, as it was considered family legend for many years on Mom's side of the tree.  First though, today also commemorates what happened on September 11, 2001.  I recall that day ever so vigilantly, because at the time I was only 31 years old and I remember when it happened.  I was actually completing a job interview in the same building where Barbara worked at the time, and this was in downtown Tampa on Westshore Boulevard.  Being we lived in St. Petersburg at that point, I had ridden in with Barbara for the interview and after I finished my appointment, I was just sitting in the car in the parking garage behind the office complex.  The news came on that morning about the World Trade Center getting hit by what was thought to be a rogue airplane (they discovered later that Islamic terrorists had hijacked the planes), and I vaguely saw something about it as I was finishing up my interview as the agency's office had a TV in the lobby that was broadcasting what was happening live.  At the moment, I didn't know all the details, but everyone was in a bit of an uproar about it.  Then, Barbara and the people in her office were told to get out of there and leave early, as a major city like Tampa would be a premium risk.  When we got back to the house in St. Pete, the first thing we did was turn on the news, and there it was - the collapsing towers and then the plane hitting the Pentagon.  It was a surreal moment then for all of us, and the one thing I recall at that point was that all of a sudden political differences didn't matter - it was time for us to come together as a nation.  I would venture to say that it was probably the last time we were really a united nation, as now at 25 years later there are idiots like Hasan Piker celebrating the tragedy, and radical Islamists like Ilhan Omar in Congress dismissively describing that day as "some people did something."  Up to that point, the only real scare was Y2K, which came and went without anything happening then despite the hype we heard in the late 1990s about it.  However, that tragic day - September 11th - would define what has been one of the most chaotic centuries we have had yet - the 21st century has been one crazy thing after another.  First was 9/11, then it was Hurricane Katrina which did tremendous damage 4 years later.  After that, we had a brief bit of hysteria with the whole 2012 scare, and then the political scene started getting insane when "wokeness" for a while really prevailed, and then there was COVID, the Iran war we have now, and God only knows what is next.  Seeing all of this happening in the past 25 years is really making me miss the 1980s and 1990s.  And, it is also one reason why I decided to start taking a lot of forays onto Memory Lane to revisit some things and share.  What I am about to share took place personally for me about 50 years ago, and it is one of my more light-hearted memories but I got some good information earlier in the week that helped fill in some gaps.  So, we'll dive right on into it. 

As I have talked about before, my late grandfather and my step-grandfather lived in a little community just outside Martinsburg called Bedington.  To get to this community, you would go north on Route 11 until you got to County Route 5, also known as Bedington Road.  If you turned right onto Bedington Road, the little town was just about a few hundred yards, and if you kept going you would then make a left turn onto what was called Scrabble Road.  A couple of miles out there is where my grandfather owned a sizeable parcel of land, and he had a mobile home on it then.  My step-grandmother Goldie at the time was the quintessential homemaker, so she had cellars full of canned goods, gardens full of things such as cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables that would end up being canned and stored in those cellars, and she also kept a few chickens down close by Hoke Run, a small creek that ran in behind the property where I used to catch tiny spring peeper toads (that has a place in this story shortly too) and other critters in large Maxwell House coffee cans or jelly jars.  Additionally, Goldie was also devoutly Pentecostal, the result of a very intense conversion she had about 10 years before when she was first diagnosed with cancer (that would eventually take her life in 1979).  Her fervent faith led her to start going to a little church in nearby Falling Waters where she would essentially be a member until she passed away, and in either a fortuitous circumstance or by divine guidance it turns out that little church now has a website, and that is what brings me to what I wanted to talk about today because now I have a historical backstory on a little church that played a pivotal role in my childhood. 

Little Falls Chapel, Falling Waters, West Virginia

The recently discovered website for Little Falls Chapel has a concise history section to it, and referencing that (if you want to look at it yourself, the URL for it is https://littlefallschapel.com/discover-the-rich-history-of-little-falls-chapel/ ) I got a bit of a backstory on the little church.  It seems the history of that little church goes back to the early 19th century, when a group of Pennsylvania Germans settled there and established what was the Salem German Reformed Church, a Calvinistic church that originally was German-speaking.  In time, it then was assimilated into another Calvinistic tradition, the Presbyterians, and this led to its rebranding in 1892 to Little Falls Presbyterian Church.  In time, the Presbyterians outgrew that little building, and they have a more modern brick structure just down the road still called Little Falls Presbyterian Church.  But, it was in the 1960s when the church began its transformation to another tradition of Christianity, that being as a Pentecostal church.  There is a little more to this story than the church website has, so I will devote a bit more space to telling that. 

The church website said that in 1962 the Church adopted the name Little Falls Calvary Temple, and it became an independent Full Gospel Church.  The pastor of that church for many years was a diminuitive older man who looked more like an insurance adjuster by the name of Rev. Claude Benjamin (or "Jeff") Carbaugh (deceased 1994) and his wife Alta (1914-2008).  Rev. Carbaugh, who was originally from Pennsylvania, was an ordained minister with the Church of God denomination, but chose to pastor an independent Full Gospel church instead.  Although later retired, the Carbaughs were pretty active in church planting in both Washington County, MD, and in Berkeley County, WV, as Alta's obituary said they planted about 17 churches.  Given the name "Calvary Temple" was attached to the Little Falls Church, I am thinking there is some connection between that and the larger Calvary Temple in nearby Williamsport, MD, which was founded in 1940 by a Rev. Vernon Wesley Miles (1913-2001) and his wife Mary (1913-2010) - the connection I want to make is if it was possible that Rev. Miles may have been one of the people that Rev. Carbaugh originally worked with, given that Alta's obituary noted that at her passing she attended there regularly.  This means I need to do the work of the historian I am and do a deep-dive into Calvary Temple's history

Interior sanctuary, Calvary Temple, Williamsport, MD

Well, as it turns out, it looks like Rev. Carbaugh pastored a different church at the time called Jones Chapel, also in Williamsport, so he and Rev. Miles were not directly connected although I would wager they knew each other.  The history of Jones Chapel, including a photo of a very young Rev. Carbaugh, can be found here - https://wmspthistory.org/jones-chapel.  At that time, he was still in the Church of God denomination too, and Little Falls Calvary Temple was still Church of God up to around the late 1960s, when it was just called Little Falls Chapel from that point when Rev. Carbaugh pastored it.  By the year 1976, when I first became familiar with the little church, my step-grandmother Goldie had been going there for several years, and even led house prayer meetings in her living room.  And, that leads to a hilarious story I wanted to share that some of you may have heard before, but it bears repeating with more information now. 

Interior of Little Falls Chapel during a Sunday service

I mentioned the affinity I had for collecting all sorts of critters years ago, and one thing I loved catching was these tiny little toads called spring peepers.  A spring peeper is so small it could fit on a dime with room to spare, and after a summer rain they could be found all over the place near creeks in wooded areas.  I had a "sweet spot" just a little ways behind Grandad's house at Hoke Run where I would catch dozens of those little amphibians, and I collected them in one of the large aforementioned Maxwell House coffee cans.  On one occasion, it was a Wednesday afternoon, and as was the routine, Goldie had the church ladies over for a prayer meeting, and she assembled about 15 or so in the room, so I was encouraged to sort of stay out of the way by Mom and instead go hunt frogs, which I gladly did.  That particular day, I had a can full of about 30-40 of those little critters, and I was really quite proud of myself.  So, I go back to the house, and not thinking that a prayer meeting was going on inside, I just happily charge in like I usually did.  The 15 church ladies and Goldie were doing some praying - they were crying, wailing, and speaking in tongues like good Pentecostal church ladies do, and to be honest, they did not even notice me when I came in.  That would change quickly, as I had a bunch of jittery tiny frogs cramped in a can, and they wanted out!  And, I was excited to show them off, so the lid to the can came off, and tiny frogs went all over the place.  That got the church ladies' attention!  Next thing I know, the prayer meeting is in chaos as these 50-something-year-old Pentecostal church ladies were scrambling on top of chairs and screaming because some of the frogs decided to hitch rides on their panty hose.  That of course meant that for me, the church service had just started, and I was about to get one hell of a sermon from Goldie - she was not happy!  Grandad of course was sitting in the corner with a big goofy grin on his face - he was enjoying the show - and my poor mother looked like she was about to have a stroke.  From that point on, I think caution was taken to keep a disruptive 6-year-old boy with a can full of critters at a safe distance away from any church functions!  Later, I would also try to take Rev. Carbaugh - who in my young six-year-old mind I for some reason called "Preacher Jake" because I actually really liked him, and he seemed to be entertained by me - a gift of a large field toad I had caught earlier in the day and snuck into the church in my suit pocket one Sunday night.  While "Preacher Jake" got a good laugh out of it, my step-grandmother Goldie was not amused and she came up with her own behavior incentive to keep me on the straight path in church.  Everyone knows I hate pickles (you all have heard that story already), and Goldie was well aware of it.  So, as a behavior enforcement measure, she kept a small baggie of them in her purse to make sure I behaved myself from that point, and all I had to do was see her just show them in her purse and that would immediately cease any bright idea I might have in church with anything.  Looking back on it, Rev. Carbaugh was a nice and very longsuffering guy, and all accounts I heard of him were that he was a good pastor to his people.  I am a bit surprised that whoever set up Little Falls' website didn't mention him somewhere, but it is easy to fill in gaps now, thanks to the miracle of the internet.  Anyway, now that I told that story, let's get up to date about Little Falls.

In 1997, a widowed lady pastor, Rev. Linda Reese, assumed the pastorate of the little church, and she is still pastor there as far as I can see.  The little church runs about a dozen congregants a week, and it does have videos of its services and a solid web presence, including the aforementioned website as well as a Facebook page.  They are pretty much now an independent, identifiably Pentecostal church, and they are still going strong, which is good.  I figured that as a historian it would be a good story to tell, thanks in part to the very good information they have on their website plus the material I found on Rev. Carbaugh later too.  I am thinking about doing more recollections like this as I learn more about certain things, so stay tuned.

Thanks again for joining me, and will see you next time. 

Revisiting Graded Absolutism

 I wanted to revisit this topic today based on something I had just read a couple of days ago.  It was the text of an interview given by Fr. Daniele di Sorco, a priest of the SSPX, with the Italian District of the SSPX.   The article can be found at https://fsspx.news/en/news/sate-necessity-invoked-sspx-real-60862 (accessed September 7, 2026).  In the article, Fr. di Sorco is discussing something called "the state of necessity," and as he defines it, essentially that means a situation exists where a danger is evident, and this danger can be to body or soul - the presence of the danger, therefore, allows for the disregard of certain laws which could result in something harmful.  Reading that brought me back to what Dr. Norman Geisler said in his book Christian Ethics about graded absolutism - remember, he defined it as when the greater good, rather than the lesser evil, is pursued to follow the higher moral duty.  If two moral duties clash then, the believer is exempt by virtue from the lower duty by virtual obedience to the higher duty (Norman Geisler, Christian Ethics.  Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010: 98).  It is this reason why the Thomistic premise for just war exists, and why in certain circumstances (such as this demonic Lindsay Clancy who is in the news right now for murdering her own kids) capital punishment is also permissable.  In essence, both the state of necessity and the idea of graded absolutism are intricately related, if not even synonymous with one another (their component convictions are remarkably identical).  This means then that I would argue that Father di Sorco of the SSPX is in essence espousing graded absolutism as it relates to the way the Vatican has responded to the recent SSPX episcopal consecrations - the higher virtue of adherence to doctrinal orthodoxy exempts one from the duty of Papal allegiance when the Pope himself is in error with certain things.  I tend to agree with Fr. di Sorco on this, as what I have been seeing from Leo as well as his predecessor Francis and some Sadducees in positions of authority in the Vatican as well as some diocesan leadership has raised cause for concern.  This is where I will get into the "meat" of my argument. 

While I essentially went over the more fundamental aspects of all this earlier, graded absolutism at times is warranted, and we see even God himself setting the example many times with it, particularly in the Old Testament.  In the early days of Creation, for instance, God allowed consanguine marriages without consequence to populate the earth, and later he tolerated polygamy for a short time - polygamy was never God's ideal at all, but God worked through the process to accomplish a greater good.  God also allowed a degree of mass destruction in the books of Joshua and Judges because there was a greater good there as well - it has been offered by some that many of those original "-ites" that the Hebrews came against may have been beings who were not fully human, based on the Genesis 6 principle.   All you hear about, for instance, are supersized giants like Og of Bashan and Goliath, and some of those individuals were astronomical in size.   I tend to take those accounts at their word, and I understand why God would want entire populations of these individuals eliminated - they were in essence corrupting the land in unnatural ways.  In this day and age - and believe it or not, you actually hear this from people! - this makes God a racist genocidal maniac who made Hitler look like a Cub Scout.  It is one reason many of them are ambivalent to Christianity, but they don't understand the context and setting of the story.  If these supersized individuals were indeed somehow the descendants of fallen angels, then they were a mistake and were not part of God's original creation.  So, God had to cleanse the corruption of Creation for his own people to make the way for the redemption of mankind, and these half-angelic supermen were a problem.  Other sources of this I have read have said that those disembodied souls became the demons, and I see that as a possibility.  This means then that Satan - who is a fallen angel and not a demon - rigged the system to produce his own slave army to do his bidding, and that would make some sense.  I am not here today to argue the origin of demons, but rather that graded absolutism has been part of the story of God's purpose for mankind since the beginning.  If we are created in his image, then in that case it only makes sense that we are given the liberty to apply the same principle to the world we live in today.  The road to the right thing is often crisscrossed with bad acts and decisions, but they can be used for the greater good.  That explains just war and capital punishment then, but what of people disregarding a bad Pope?  Let's address that next.

The issue with this whole situation is a definition of terms, namely the Papal office vs. the person who occupies it.  The Papal office has Apostolic sanction and authority, and it supersedes all who occupied it because they too are subject to the Apostolic teachings that established the office.  So, when a sitting Pope does something stupid or sinful - such as worshipping a Pachamama or groveling to Islamists or the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party - he is in conflict with the Papal office.  So, there are some like the SSPX then who see this as a violation, and thus they are justified by their actions to continue the faith they hold convictions to even if it brings them into direct fire with a sitting Pope who is disobedient.  And, while Fr. di Sorco notes correctly that the state of necessity is not directly addressed or defined in Canon law, but it is implicitly understood by Magisterial teaching.  This leads to a few observations of my own as it relates to the SSPX issue but also to wider problems in the Catholic Church in general. 

For one thing, I disagree with the good Father on one point - he makes the claim that all of Vatican II is in error or is wrong, and I respectfully disagree with that.  It is possible to be a faithful and orthodox Catholic who attends the post-Vatican II Ordinary Form Mass.  I have attended many myself, and they are reverent, valid, and I saw no conflict with my personal faith.  The priest I consider my confessor and main counsel for spiritual matters, Fr. Timothy Grassi, celebrates the Ordinary Form in his parish every Sunday, and he is perhaps one of the most sound and orthodox priests I have ever known (as well as, like myself, having sympathies for the TLM without actively attending it).  Neither Vatican II, its documents, or a proper implementation of its reforms are the real problem - the problem is a wrong implementation of those things, and way too much of that goes on.  While it is true that there were dissident and rogue periti who served in advisory capacities at the Council, it is also true that for the most part the documents that came from it - in particular Lumen Gentium - are quite good.  I have a few issues though with Gaudium et Spes, as a lot of the liturgical abuses and other things we have seen can be traced back to what is perhaps a very faulty application of its more ambiguous language.  If a document like Gaudium et Spes is to be studied, perhaps some clarifying commentary would be in order to utilize with it.  I also tend to agree with what my good friend Charles Coulombe said as well, that being you accept what is good, and throw out what is bad - there were many good things to come from Vatican II as well, and as long as they are consistent with Tradition then there are no problems.  However, watch out for bad players in the game too - the dissident priests, the rogue bishops, and others who bend things they read in those documents to such a degree they can say anything they want them to say, and this is where you get characters like Cardinal Tucho Fernandez, James Martin, Richard Rohr, Richard McBrien, Bede Griffiths, and - dare I say it! - the late Pope Francis, among others.  These are individuals who try to rewrite the recipe, so to speak, and they tend to cast Tradition in a foreign mindset that many of the early Saints and Fathers of the Church would have rejected.  The same goes for some pre-Vatican II figures too, such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Merton.  And, that being said, it bears a few closing thoughts.

To begin, let me just reiterate that Pope Leo XIV, as well as Francis before him, were mortal, concupiscent human beings.  They didn't fart holy writ every time they sat on a toilet to do their thing, and for some badly misinformed Catholics who tend to give them more allegiance than they deserve, I would caution strongly to be careful - you are on the verge of creating an idol out of the occupant of the Papal office, even when what he is doing falls short of that office he has been given.   It is also a fundamental misunderstanding about Papal infallibility too - this does not mean that every time the Pope burps it is divine revelation either; that is not how Papal infallibility works.   For Catholics who hold to that erroneous view of Papal authority, you have just put Leo on the same level as Warren Jeffs of the FLDS, and the psychopath Jim Jones, and nothing good will come of that, I can assure you.  The Pope is also subject to Magisterial standards as well, and where he falls short, no one is obliged to follow it.  That is something people like the members of the SSPX understand, and that is why a state of necessity may be warranted, as it flips on its ear what the definition of a heresy is - who are the real heretics, and who really is in schism?  Is it a group of individuals who want to preserve a traditional form of the Holy Mass, or is it a Pope who tends to bow in reverence to pagan idols?  That's a definite thinker for sure, but it shouldn't be - the standard was established two thousand years ago when Jesus commissioned twelve men - his Apostles - to lead his Church on earth.  Magisterial teaching, and Holy Tradition, began there, but it had a foundation as well that goes back millennia before it.  On that we start getting into the history of philosophy and Judaic/Hebraic tradition, as both contributed to the construction of our Tradition because both were rooted in areas God created - one the natural law, and the other supernatural Revelation.  That, therefore, is the standard we judge things by, and we also cannot forget the importance of Holy Scripture too - God's own words, infallible and inerrant, eternal truth.  If something does not align with those, it is to be rejected, and if a cleric of the Church insists on holding the bad ideas anyway, they have declared themselves schismatic.  So, does that mean Leo XIV, or his predecessor Francis, were schismatics?  Weigh the evidence and decide for yourself, but just keep in mind the man is not the office.  The Papal Office is eternal and established by God, but the man who sits in the chair of it will be a creature of sin, and how they understand honestly that fact will determine how they responsibly accept the awesome burden of that office. 

Thanks again for allowing me to share, and will see you again soon. 

Summer Has Ended

 Today is Labor Day, and my goodness, did I labor!  I spent the majority of it doing a reorganization of my quarters here, and I am overall impressed as some things needed to be done.  It has been my view that Summer starts with Memorial Day weekend, and ends with Labor Day.  Although equinox Summer won't end until around September 21st, the Summer season (meaning the time people take off for vacations, schools being out, etc.) is essentially over.  We will have warm days for a while for sure - I may not even have to wear a coat out until at least mid-October, so the weather will be nice out but not insufferably hot.  Technically, by the time Labor Day weekend comes, many schools have been back in session for about a week, including the school where I used to work which started classes on August 31st.  But, today ends the Summer season, and for the next week or so people will be shifting into Fall mode as the pumpkin spice flavors of everything from cupcakes to Rice-a-Roni (yes, I did see that!) will be starting to populate your local grocery store's shelves.  I like pumpkin spice myself, but there are limits as to what you can add a pumpkin spice variety to in all honesty.   Oddly, just a couple of weeks ago I finished up some pumpkin spice Tootsie Rolls I had gotten last year - candy tends to last a very long time for me these days, and I have had candy in the house in some form for months.  Pumpkin spice Tootsie Rolls are one of those things I have tried, and have also decided they are no longer a bucket list item - while they are not bad, I don't think I will get them again (I stick with the classic chocolate ones or the fruit-flavored variety bags - the orange and the lime ones are delicious).  Come to think of it, I think this year I will restrict my pumpkin spice indulgences to coffee and pies - that will be sufficient, thank you. 

Speaking of school things, as I was cleaning out a ton of papers I had accumulated over the past few years, I managed to save a lot of my old lesson plans from my classes.  I am thinking they will make a nice portfolio of my work for later, and I may even construct a few articles here out of some of that, as they are overall good lessons.  I am actually toying with the idea of maybe compiling them into a bound book for use later, or at least GBC them into a book of some sort so that they look better and then I can add them to my personal papers as a sort of personal work accomplishment.  While I am notorious for letting clutter accumulate over a lengthy amount of time, there is also something cleansing about sorting it out and throwing useless junk away - as much as I love keeping memorabilia, I also cannot be called a hoarder either as I am not adverse to getting rid of things I don't need.  Given I am a bit crunched for space in my quarters, I undertook some major reorganization over the past couple of weeks, and my room now has a new and more organized look as well as being less congested.  That is one benefit of preparing for the months ahead as I get ready for a potential move soon - that all depends on where God opens a door, and I wanted to talk a bit about that now and tie it to the changing seasons a little. 

When one thinks of Summer, the most popular thought of the season is recreation - the weather is good for swimming, outdoor activities, and vacations.  That's a positive view.  However, there is the other side of the Summer months too - they are insufferably hot, things are slow, and if you're strapped for cash or have limited transportation, your house can soon take on the atmosphere of a prison.  That is why even since I was a kid, I have always sort of liked it when the Fall came - I was never overly thrilled about going back to school (what normal kid is?) but something about the Fall season just felt good.   The coolness of the air, the more frequent cloudiness and rains, and the hustle and bustle of a lot of upcoming holidays and the conclusion of an old year with the dawn of a new one was something that was somewhat exciting.  Even seeing the first snow in November was exciting - everyone loves that first snowfall, especially as it blankets the ground in a beautiful white blanket of cold frozen water vapor.  Now, come March, you are also glad to see the snow go too, because after the below-freezing temps and endless white snow outside by that point it starts to get a bit depressing.  Again, it's the changing seasons.  The two seasons most people seem to not have issues with though - the ones that avoid extremes of weather - are Spring and Fall.  Spring and Fall both mean that a refreshing break comes after months of either extreme heat or extreme cold, and both are seasons that signify for me anyway times of new beginnings and fresh starts.   So, both Labor Day and March 1st herald significant renewal times.   Now, how does that relate to life?  This is where I want to get a bit personal.

I have not divulged a lot of my everyday life and challenges I face here unless it is in retrospect later, and I am not going to do that here or now either.  However, I can say that there are some challenges and decisions I have been facing over the past couple of months, and I am ready for a new season to dawn in my life.  By the time the calendar year gets to Labor Day, like today, the weather takes on this strange sort of battle, and especially in September and early October, there are extremes within one week - a week can start out extremely hot, then get really chilly, and then heat up again.  It is as if the old season does not want to let go and give way to the new one, and that struggle in climate can be challenging.  In life that happens too - we get very impatient for change, and wonder why God is not doing anything, and what makes it even more complicated is that you may feel really good about things one day and then wake up in a cold sweat worrying the next.  It is not the greatest feeling to swing between those extremes in all honesty, and I will be open to say that is something I have experienced recently myself.  So, what did I do?  Let me talk about that.

In my own life, I am not the only one going through some intense challenges - Azi, Barbara, and several of my friends have been hit with this too over the past couple of weeks, and it has really stretched us.  One friend of mine, who is a very accomplished minister and writer in Texas, has been faced with challenges to his late parents' property, the death of an uncle he was really close to, and also dealing with some unfair treatment he received from a very crooked activist general when he was in the military.  Though the circumstances in my life as compared with his are somewhat different, I actually relate on a level - we both seem to be asking the question "what in hell is going on??"  And, there are others I have talked to that feel this way too.  So, what do you do in this case, and how do you pray, make sense of things, etc.?  I will give you my response to the particular situations I am addressing, and you can judge for yourself whether it resonates or not when you hear how I approached that issues. 

When we ask God for something, there needs to be a couple of things to consider.  First, is it God's will to ask for it?  There are promises in Scripture, notably Philippians 4:19, which say God provides for needs, and indeed one of the Hebrew names for God in the Psalms and elsewhere is Jehovah Jireh, meaning simply "The Lord Who Provides."  What that means is that God's will has already been established - he provides for needs.  Now, over the years you have greedy televangelists like Kenneth Copeland who have twisted this into the whole "name it and claim it" heresy, which emphasizes lustful indulgence over needs.  You don't need a multimillion dollar jet, but you do need a reliable source of transportation in today's society, and a suitable income to provide for your food, shelter, and other things.  This is where I believe a more correct application of "sowing seed" comes into play here that is more consistent with reality.  The way we "sow seed" to secure our necessities entails building experience, getting a decent education to have a suitable vocation, and doing so in a way that builds something.   In other words, "sowing seed" is not about giving tithes to get something back from God, but rather it is putting forth the labor and effort to cultivate something, and this also has a dimension in the statement in James that says "faith without works is dead."  There is nothing in Scripture that says God gives people things just because they are entitled - the only promise there is our eternal salvation, not a temporal situation.  In temporal situations, there is a meritocracy which necessitates proper background for proper status, so if you work hard, study hard, and do so with a level of competence that matches intelligence, you should be rewarded.  So, if you rightly ask God to open some doors for you and you rightly hold him to actual promises in Scripture he himself said, then you are not doing anything wrong or heretical - it doesn't have bearing on your eternal soul (at least not completely) and it doesn't entail miraculous intervention either.  God opening a door for what you already have the merit for is not a miracle - it should be the fruit of your labor.  So, it is OK to ask for that.  And, let me be completely honest with you - I have really gotten frustrated at God for this at times, and even now I have some frustration about a couple of things as I write this.  I want to address this in a more practical way for you, as it may relate.

We have all been there - it feels like the end of our rope, and we are starting to get desperate.  So, we get very agitated with God, and that is when the bargaining in prayer starts.  I am guilty of this myself, as I want to be as honest and consistent with you as possible, and I often have prayed in the past that if God will do this, I will do that.  The problem wasn't the bargaining necessarily - that just shows you are a person who doesn't want to get something for nothing and you are trying to establish you are willing to make a commitment.  But, perhaps that is not the approach that is necessary.  For one, we are taught in Scripture itself to "study to show ourselves approved," and that means knowing what God actually says in all areas.  Part of that is promises God actually makes - he promises to supply our needs, he encourages us to come to him with our burdens, he tells us that we have to be able to put some effort into things to cultivate fruit, and he also has clearly stated in Acts I believe that if you have an actual vocation from God, it is a permanent call that cannot be taken back by him.  And, as far as getting frustrated with God, not only is it natural to do that, but even Scripture records in Genesis about Jacob wrestling with God too and demanding a blessing.  Also, we are human beings, so we have limits to what we can deal with at this point too - so, it is natural to get mad at God on occasion, and I am not too proud to admit my own imperfection here because I have to be honest in saying that I have even cussed God out on occasion too.  In many cases, once you cool down, there is time to repent of anything really volatile later, but you and I are human beings with limits, and God's silence at times can be deafening for us.  What is worse, often it is only in retrospect that we see where God was truly at work, and even then you still have the nagging questions as to why it had to happen the way it did, and that tends to resurface once we have a word with God in frustration later.  This now gets me to a point about something that needs to be said about the judgment of others.

There are some Christians who would probably be a bit shocked and appalled at what I just said, and I have something to say to those people.  For one, I bet the image they maintain on the outside is not as squeaky-clean as they want to present it to be - for all the displayed piety and sanctimonious act they show to others, I would wager a month's salary that they too have felt the same way in their prayers as well, and they are just too ashamed to say so.  They have an attitude similar to the fictional Hyacinth Bucket from the aptly-titled Keeping Up Appearances Brit-com in that image means everything to them, but image doesn't always reflect reality - it's called being human, and as holy and sanctimonious as they may appear, they fail too at times and they have vulnerable moments.   I have seen both Catholics and Evangelicals who act like that too, and a part of me just wants to slap them upside the head and say "Cut the crap!" but I restrain myself and just mock their sanctimonious tone.  Or, worse, they get caught up in the world of people like Kenneth Copeland, and they think they can "claim" things they didn't earn and are not actually entitled to.  If you have only managed to work a $15 an hour job at Wal-Mart as a greeter, you are not entitled to a Lamborghini - God will provide adequate transportation for you which is his providing for your needs, but if you want to "roll and stroll with the big dogs," you need to think about upping your own game and maybe preparing for that role that will pay you the $100K annual salary to afford a luxury car like that.  And, you may bemoan not having a 6-bedroom estate in a luxury gated community, but on a Wal-Mart salary that isn't going to happen either - you work hard to build your credit, and you can get a pretty decent but less-extravagant home somewhere that you can live comfortably in.  However, on the other side of that, if you have earned a Ph.D. in something and you have a long illustrious track record of quality work and experience, then it works the other way too - if you feel your credentials and work warrant producing fruit, and you have sought to do that, then there should be doors opening for you.  And, that is where it gets frustrating, because you keep wondering what's missing, what you are doing wrong, etc.  And, you are wondering why God is not opening the doors you worked so hard to have opened for you.  You are not "claiming" something by faith that is not yours in that instance, but you are asking real questions.  This is where the silence on the other end of your prayer conversation can be deafening, and I want to offer something here for that too.

The way I approach a prayer like this is simple - I first recall what God's actual promises are, and I also reflect on what I should have based on what I have worked for, and then I lay it out before God.  Upon doing that, there are some things to keep in mind:

1. Be open - God can - and should - open doors based on his promises, and you want to be ready for whatever that door is.

2. Set conditions within reason - For those who say that we should not "demand of God," I have something to say.  First, you can demand from God what he has actually promised, and even Biblical characters like Jacob did that.  Second, you have every reason to ask God to make the path clear of what door he is actually opening to you - if this is truly him, then you have a right to expect that all the necessary factors will fall into place to make it happen.  It is perfectly OK to pray like that.  God is a God of truth, and if his word is true, he has to honor it.  However, just be informed realistically about those promises, and don't ask anything you don't feel,  or more importantly realistically know, you deserve.

3. Realize you are not alone - In life, we may know of others who are going through similar or even worse conditions, and like us they are Christians and need God's intervention too.  If you know who those people are, remember them please, and intercede like a public advocate for them as well.  

4. Anagogical vocation promises - Here is a very hot take on this.  Many of us feel a calling of God to a certain vocation, and there is an evangelical underpinning to that.  I am of the belief that each person called of God is specifically called to certain people, as yours may be the only voice that impacts them.  Your success in life, and your satisfactory fulfillment of that calling that burdens you, is contingent upon the souls of those people.  Remind God of that too - if he truly loves everyone and died for the sins of the world, then he cannot hinder you to reach those only you can reach.  Place those souls on the allegorical altar of your prayers, and remind God that if he loves them, he also needs to help you too.  

There are those who are going to think my approach to prayers like this is a bit weird, and that I may even be on the verge of disrespecting God and insulting his feelings.  Here's the thing about that people - God is a big boy, OK?  You cannot project your own fragile egos on him because he transcends us all, and believe me, he has probably heard much worse from others.  If God had such a fragile ego and was easily offended like that, he would have zapped this planet into oblivion centuries ago.  Maybe those who have a problem are actually the ones with fragile egos, and you might want to be careful if you are - you are creating a god in your own image, and that perilously borders on idolatry. 

I think I have made my point with these thoughts, and I went to an entirely different place than I intended, and that is OK.  If this encourages you, then my job is done - you may be that person that only a word like this could reach, and if it encourages you, I have done what I am supposed to do.  Thank you, and will see you next time. 

Summing Up a Week

 I was not planning on visiting here today, but figured I would talk a bit about a few things.  This week has been challenging - the grueling waiting for something to happen, because a current situation is getting somewhat critical.  The thing I am waiting for is a call for a position, and I am not sure what has been going on.  When I was on LinkedIn a few days ago, many are experiencing similar problems - they are highly qualified but are being "ghosted" by employers or sent that usual letter one hates to get that says "While your credentials are impressive, we have decided to move forward with another candidate."  Getting a stupid patronizing message like that tends to show a couple of things.  On the positive, at least the employer (or the stupid bot who autogenerates this crap) responded.  However, the negatives far outweigh the positives.  One negative is that nine chances out of ten, a real person has never laid eyes on your resume or CV, because HR personnel are lazy now depending on AI bots to do the work for them.  Another negative is that it makes an applicant feel frustrated - there is always more credentials needed (despite the fact the person probably worked their butt off over the years), more qualified candidates, and it makes you feel as if you will never land the position you deserve.  This has led to a number of people settling for less, and that is totally unacceptable.  Of course, there are supposed resume services and so-called "career coaches" (talk about worthless professions, that is one of them) out there circling like buzzards to suck money out of people who already are living on tight budgets as their savings dwindle just to survive while waiting for that offer to come to them.  My advice to potential job seekers is this - you can get most of that help for free through either your state unemployment office or through a lot of employment agencies that will never ask you for money because their client companies pay for the talent they contract.  If an employment agency ever asks you to pay something up-front, it is probably a scam so leave and then report them so they don't try to screw someone else over.  So. dealing with greedy "resume coaches," lazy company HR departments who never even look at your resume in the first place, and the fact that you get a lot of conflicting advice about resumes - such as the old chestnut that you have to alter your resume for every job you apply for (who has the time for that??) - does little to boost the confidence of a highly qualified professional who, by every measure, should have recruiters knocking down their doors instead of the other way around.  I am starting to think maybe I should apply to be an HR manager - they let the AI bots do all the work, and then just pull arbitrary rules out of their backside for companies to implement (including some frankly unethical ones such as indemnity clauses).  That, or maybe running as a Democrat for public office - neither job seems to require much in the way of intelligence, or at least that is the impression I am getting.  Any rate, I know that was a bit of a frustrating opening to today's thoughts, but just needed to share it. 

I have been focusing on a lot of personal organization over the past three months, much of it being badly needed.  In the cramped living space I rent here in this rowhouse in downtown Baltimore, I was almost boxed in by storage bins, and I had to come up with a solution.  So, the downstairs living room - which none of the three of us who live here even uses - has become a de facto storage area for our stuff - we each have a section of the room.  Being this place is very temporary, I am not getting too settled into the room I am in - I have a work area, sleeping, and closet space, and that functions for me right now.  We have of course a shared bathroom and kitchen, although neither is anything to brag about - the kitchen flooring needs some major renovation, and the bathroom toilet tends to clog on demand at least every couple of weeks like clockwork.  I want to go back in time a little to document the history of how I got here, as I think it is a good story to relate at this point.  

With a lot of craziness that happened in Hagerstown at the old place around this time two years ago, we had to make an abrupt move that neither Barbara nor myself were prepared for.  That resulted in a two-week stay at the Motel 6 in Charles Town, WV, which I kind of missed after I left (although I didn't miss the chaos of trying to raise funds to stay there, my goodness!) before I got the email from the then-principal (now vice-principal) of the Jesuit high school in Baltimore where I was offered an 11th-grade Theology teacher position, and of course I took it.  Given I had just earned my Ph.D. only a couple of weeks before leaving Hagerstown, it was the golden opportunity, and was definitely a career change.  So, in order to take the job, I also had to find a house, and quickly.  On a rental homes site, I found this guy who owned several properties in Baltimore, and I got in touch with him once I was offered the job, and given my situation, our parish church in Charles Town was more than generous in providing the funds I needed to secure the place - I still owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude even today for the amazing way they really helped us then.  The place I finally took was a 106-year-old rowhouse off of Greenmount Avenue in eastern Baltimore, and I was able to rent a tiny bedroom that was considerably smaller than what I was used to for around $620 a month.  It was not my ideal place, and if I could have moved to someplace better, I definitely would have, but at that point in time I had to get settled in quickly.  So, it was me, three cats, and my pet rabbit then who settled into the place, and I only had a few items with me, given the rest of what I had was in a storage facility in Martinsburg at the time.  The salary the school paid me was perfect for what I needed, and I recovered quickly from the trauma of the move.  But, I had challenges, and want to recount some of those.

I mentioned having a menagerie of pets when I moved out of Hagerstown, and that included a rabbit, three birds, and three cats.  I really did not want to drag the rabbit and the birds along, so I attempted to rehome them while I was still in Charles Town in the hotel.  I was able to rehome the birds just before moving here, and during Thanksgiving week a few weeks later I was able to rehome Zoe, my bunny.  I did not want to really give her up, but in all honesty she was very noisy - she was making all sorts of racket at night due to getting used to a new place, and for a while I had to put her downstairs so I could get a decent night's sleep.   After some time, a nice guy from Johns Hopkins took Zoe and I am so happy he did, although I did miss her.  Then it was just the three cats - Barbara's cat Mickey, who she could not keep where she was living in Rockville then, and my two cats Tippy and Lily.  Tragically, during the course of our move Lily suffered a head injury that led to a nasty infection, so I lost her that Christmas after moving in and had to bury her in the back yard.  Mickey would pass from old age the following November (2025), and I would have to put him to rest across the street.  So, of my original pets, all I have left is Tippy, and at 15 it remains to be seen how long he will last - he is starting to have trouble with his eyesight now, but seems to be OK otherwise for the time being.  I was essentially on my own then from the end of October 2024 until the beginning of March 2025.  I had begun during that time to, thanks to decent paychecks, recover some of what I had lost from Hagerstown, and in no time I was able to transform my own room into a decent living space.  But it was lonely - there were two other guys I shared the house with, one being an older stonemason named Joel and the other a young Mexican-American college student named James.  As of now, James still lives here and has the room at the end of the hall, but in late January Joel had secured a new place with his fiance Alex and he would move.  The way things came together with that though could not have been timed more perfect, and I want to talk about that. 

As I mentioned, in October 2024 Barbara and I had to, by necessity, go different directions.  Being Barbara worked in Rockville at the time, she secured a place with five male roommates close to where she worked, managed by a psychotic owner named Nadine.  This Nadine person was very micromanaging, and Barbara was not really that happy there despite the house itself being nice - she could not have Mickey with her, and therefore it was up to me to take care of him here for her.  However, with Joel moving, an opening happened quickly in this place, and I was able to get our landlord to fast-track it so Barbara could move into the place by March 1st of that year.  So, that happened, and it transformed the place some as Barbara was company for me again, and it was nice having her back.  With her back, she was able to have her cat Mickey, and we eventually were able to wrap up the rental on the storage unit in Charles Town and get our stuff over here this year.  Barbara and I also helped each other out too, and it makes grocery budgets and other things more manageable for both of us.  Living in this rickety old rowhouse in Baltimore is not ideal by any means, but it is only temporary until God green-lights us to move on.  And, that is what has been maddening.  Many reading this know the feeling too, and it is not pleasant.  You wait, and you wait, and you wait, and most days it is the proverbial crickets - it can get a bit discouraging.  In time, some doors will open, we know that, but it is just a bit stressful as we have to watch our budgets and things in the interim.  So, this is where we are.

With the departure of Mickey and Lily, we gained two new cats now.  One is Rocky, whom I got back in May 2025 at the Humane Society in Hagerstown.  While I really wanted another tortie because I was missing Lily, Rocky brought his own unique personality to our home, and I am happy we got him.  He has also grown into a huge cat too, but I also realized he needed some company - Tippy could not help him much because he is too old.  But, in December that was taken care of too when the most adorable little female black cat showed up - this is Sadie, and she has also been a joy to have too.  Both of them fill a void left by the passing of both Mickey and Lily, and they are new cats we have gotten in a new house.  At one point, I may talk about my pets over the years, especially the cats, as I have consistently had a cat as a pet in some form or another for almost 30 years now.  Given these two are young yet (both less than 2 years) I am anticipating many years of joy from them. 

So, any rate, we come back to the present - my contract at the Jesuit school ended on June 30, and I am currently waiting for something to come to me as I have done the work of putting out resumes and everything else.  Being I already have the Ph.D., this should be going easier but it isn't - now it's a Maryland teacher certification which, although not totally required by private schools, definitely enhances chances.  I have an appointment this coming week with a nonprofit that helps secure teacher certification for candidates, and they have some free coaching and direction that could maybe offer some good insights into what needs to be done.  I also have Armenian lessons coming up starting in October, and then I was persuaded to go for a D.Min. in Catechetics at my alma mater, Franciscan University of Steubenville, in Fall 2027.  There are things to look forward to, in other words, but right now it is just maintaining a consistent income that is integral.  For those of you who are praying people reading this, please keep me in mind when you say your daily prayers.  

That is most of what I really wanted to reflect on this week, and if all goes well, I may have some more inspirational stuff to share next time.  So, thanks for visiting, and will see you again soon. 

Scam Business Categories That Should Be Eliminated

 When people have tight budgets and have to prioritize necessities, especially during job transitions, it is often a good thing to reach out for help.  The job market can be unnecessarily complicated, more so now that AI "gatekeeper" screening slaughters most resumes and CVs before an actual person even looks at them.  Along with this is tax liabilities - when you get slapped with a bill from the IRS threatening to levy your assets when you have limited resources, it makes people seek help to make sense of that too.  The US tax code is a cumbersome hodgepodge of frivolous paper waste that, when compiled, is the size of a library in a small town.  That is ridiculous.  The need to survive - securing income, and also mitigating excessive tax burdens - has created a weird niche for a whole industry of "services" that capitalize on people's vulnerabilities.  There are two major areas where this is evident

1. Resume writing services and job search companies

2. Tax settlement firms

In all honesty, these are two industries that don't need to exist, and they are two of the most corrupt moneymaking schemes out there.  The first one preys on the desperation of job seekers who haven't heard anything back from companies they have applied to and have had endless rejection letters.  The second makes unrealistic and false claims about "IRS debt forgiveness," which is rare if it even exists at all.  If you go on a social media platform like Facebook, you will see literally hundreds of ads for both of these rackets (and let's be honest - that is exactly what they are), and it just gets to be a literal headache trying to navigate without those damn ads assaulting your senses at every turn. Let me take the first one, the "pay to work" scam.

Resume writing and career coaching have become big business these days, and you cannot scroll on social media or anywhere else without seeing ads guaranteeing you things about finding work.  They promise to short-list you, put your application material in front of a hiring manager, etc.  A person who is desperately needing work will see that, and thinking it is an answer to prayers, they click on it, and then the big fonts and continuous flipping through screens of repetitive claims finally come to a place where you are asked to fill out details, upload a resume, etc.  You do all of that, and then you click a button.  And - voila! - there's the catch!  In order to get their services, you have to pay them a fee to find you work, and in all honesty when I see that I run the other direction.  When anyone asks me to pay them for the "privilege" of landing that $100K/year dream job, they are lying to you - don't waste your money.  Nine chances out of ten, you will need the money they are trying to scam you out of for basic necessities, as you are probably facing a budget crunch due to your resources coming down to a trickle, and to waste money on a service that 90% of the time will not deliver what they promise is insanity.  A real employment assistance service should never ask you to pay them, and I am going to show you how the correct model works.

The traditional staffing agency (or temp service) generally is not going to charge you to find work for you.  Often, you just submit your information, and a staffing rep will call you to go over your options. Then, they will notify you of potential job opportunities, and you can have the option of accepting or rejecting them.  This is how the traditional staffing industry - made up of firms like Aston Carter, Randstad, Robert Half, and others - has worked for decades, and in my experience I have had some of my greatest successes securing work with them over the years.  Some of these agencies are also industry focused - Ally Educators is one that comes to mind for teachers, and a Florida-based firm called The Legal Registry works within the legal profession - but they operate pretty much the same way.  These agencies are generally efficient and effective at getting candidates short-term work, and they are also honest with you if any issue comes up.  So, these are businesses, so how do staffing agencies get funded?  They are contracted by companies to find talent, and the company pays them a set rate.  For instance, if you are signed up as talent at one of these agencies, and a client company decides to hire for a position you qualify for and sets a rate of $18 hourly to pay you, their contract will stipulate that they then pay the agency around $30 hourly for you, so that the agency makes a profit too.  That is actually a decent business model, and it's also fair as well.  And, as a result, the candidate needing work does not have to pay out money from their pockets, as the companies do that for their own services they receive which includes hiring people like you to do specialized jobs.  The down side, which to these staffing agencies' credit is honest, is that they will tell you up-front that they don't necessarily guarantee placement.  You may even go for weeks or months without a peep from the agency, but if you are still available, at some point they reach out and you have yourself work then.  The virtue of consistency then is something many traditional staffing agencies have, and that can be appreciated.  However, these buzzards on social media that promise things they can't deliver, and then try to charge you for it, are not the same.  So, the recommendation here is to stick with a traditional staffing agency for a more rapid chance at getting some decent work until the full-time permanent opportunity opens up. 

Another thing about this crap was addressed by a gentleman on LinkedIn recently concerning these emails you get.  After some time, when your personal savings are dwindling and you have to rely on maxing out credit cards to pay basic expenses, the job search can get discouraging.  The guy on LinkedIn, who is called Ramon, made some interesting points in a post on there.  He noted the common AI-generated phraseology you get, and these are some I have seen often too:

1.  From Indeed: "Your extensive leadership experience could be a strong match for this role." 

My commentary on this one:  When you get something like this, it is often a job so far out of your field and experience that an actual hiring manager would laugh himself silly if you submitted a resume for it.  I have actually gotten things like this for attorney positions, one time I got one for a phlebotomist, and another time it was a blue-collar gig like a forklift driver.  This is how you can tell a dumb bot generated that crap. 

2. From LinkedIn: "Your background aligns well with this opportunity."

My commentary:  Yeah, right!  Like the Indeed AI-generated spiel, this one is a bunch of BS usually too as a lot of things they list this way have nothing to do with your actual background. 

3. From Glassdoor: "You may be a great fit." 

My commentary:  This one tries to qualify their "assessment" with the word "may," but often what you supposedly "may" be "a great fit" for is something outside your professional demographic.  

4. From recruiters:  "Your experience really stood out to me."

My commentary:  Well great then - do I get the job if I impressed you that much?  Yeah, this is yet another bot and not a real person.

5. The email about something you did apply for:  "We were impressed with your background, but..."

My commentary here:  Here is the problem with that.  If you liked me so much, then why the rejection letter?  While at least they had the courtesy to respond - that's nice at least - they don't have to blow smoke up your hindquarters by trying to patronize your hard work.  

As Ramon very correctly said, none of us are going to get every job we apply for, but the problem is more fundamental than that.  Many of these places utilize robot "gatekeepers" that tend to reject a submitted application before a real person even knows it exists, and as a result, you end up applying to hundreds of positions you know you're qualified for, and out of those hundreds you are lucky to get a dozen responses, and even less will actually invite you to either an in-person interview or a Zoom call to talk more. For all the time a candidate wastes on this - and that doesn't even take into account that there is no real standard for what a resume or CV looks like, so you have to tailor those to every damn thing you apply to - it eats into dwindling resources such as gas in a car, Uber fare if you don't have a car, basic groceries, and in time it affects credit accounts and your living expenses.  Most qualified people who keep getting ghosted or rejected for jobs they really should have are forced to waste a lot of time and energy on superficial junk that won't even be viewed by a human eyeball anyway.  Usually, the useless, stupid bots intercept and auto-reject your resume before even a mail clerk sees it.  This is why personally I have little use for AI.  And, I have little use for so-called "job assistance services" that will charge you a small fortune you cannot afford to promise you jobs you never get.  That radically has to change, and a human dimension has to be restored to the job seeking process.  People have to feed and take care of their families, and cannot afford these stupid games with AI bots when they need income.  Ramon also noted that the hiring process in general has become direly disconnected, and I agree with him 100%.  As he notes, you are supposedly "qualified" but then not selected.  And then it is the guilt trips from people - your resume was not the right this or that, you didn't have a cover letter, etc.  In other words, they say it's your fault for not getting chosen, even if the references you submitted gave glowing recommendations, and your resume showcases the best of your work history.  That means that many qualified people who could contribute a lot are kicked to the curb, and some billionaire executive could care less.  Any rate, that is my perspective on that situation.

The tax services are a whole different level of annoyances.  In recent weeks, I get more than 20 calls a day from buzzards making promises to eliminate or reduce my tax debt, and they promise things that the IRS even says won't happen.  The IRS may reduce what you owe, but it doesn't get total forgiveness unless it's a unique circumstance.  However, those scavengers who prey on vulnerable people facing tax levy letters and other looming threats are not interested in helping you - they are interested in turning a profit at your expense.  It is kind of stupid really, because if someone is struggling with a massive tax burden, then how in hell are they going to pay hundreds of dollars to some scam artist to do something that theoretically is impossible.  I think social media platforms need to rein in those annoying ads, and even communication companies should go after them for calling people 20 or more times a day too.  That is another thing I am sick of when trying to find real answers to issues, and then these people give you a migraine with the scamming and nonsense.  It's got to stop.

I think I have said all that needs to be said for now about these two bogus business schemes, and if there is a way to force legislation to stop them, I am all in on it.  You should not have an additional and unnecessary burden imposed upon you when you are genuinely seeking help, and buzzards like tax remedy "services" and resume-writing firms as well as paid job boards need to be declared illegal for the way they exploit others.  If you need help with finding a good career, often there are free programs at churches and through most state Department of Labor offices that will help you in more realistic ways - they don't guarantee results, but they can give constructive feedback and assessment on your strengths and areas you could tweak.  Your tax revenue already pays for those, so you have a right to use them.  Also, a close friend who has some gift for creating resumes and CVs can do you a better service for less price - they probably need the income too, so utilize them and they will often work out something with you too.  However, please do not fall for those garbage ads on social media for services like this, because they will just rip you off and not deliver anything to you.  This is some practical advice based on my own experiences over the years, and I am offering it for free because it will do more good that way.

Thank you for letting me rant, and will see you next visit.