This Week

 I am not too inspired to do a catchy title for this week's discussion, so we will just self-title it "This Week."

There is not really a lot of earth-shaking stuff to say about this week, except that I am feeling happy that this year is about over - the group of kids I had were a challenge to say the least.  Also, upon starting this year late, I was proverbially "thrown to the wolves" with no textbooks for the classes I teach, and I had to come up with my own lesson plan for the year.  That was rough!  Thankfully, our new department chair is working on remedying the textbook issue for next year, so it should go much more smoothly.  Also, a change in administration - the school has just selected its new principal for next year, and I hear he is really effective - may aid in a smoother year next year.  The current principal who is an interim is a nice enough guy, but he leaves the impression that he doesn't know what the hell he is doing either and it has been more stressful as a result.  He will be teaching only next year, which means he gets to face some of our issues.  Hopefully that will give him a better appreciation for what his instructors have to deal with. 

I know it sounds like I am grousing about my job, but in reality I am thankful for it - it is the highest salary I have ever made, and it is also my first full-time teaching assignment which is definitely a change in career path now.  That being said, there are issues to face - one being that often I feel like a fish out of water ideologically as I am in essentially a liberal hotbed, both theologically and politically. This school is after all administered by the Jesuits, who are themselves a radical and controversial order.  So, despite the fact I teach Theology here, I cannot teach it like I want to in fear that it could stir up issues. That has nothing to do with the Jesuits specifically, but with the nature of the school itself - the faculty and student body are both comprised of many non-Catholic individuals,  and for a Catholic institution that creates a bit of a mess.  I have attempted to navigate it as best I could but at times it does prove interesting to say the least.  I am not planning on making this a long-term career though, and have my own feelers out for other things should the opportunity present itself.  In the meantime, I have renewed for another year here, and that will buy some time to look into my options at least.  And, it is also job security.  

The upside to this week is that we are approaching the end of the year, and that means it is not quite as intense of a work schedule for the next couple of weeks.  In total, we have maybe at most 10 actual classroom instruction days, as there are other events scheduled as the year wraps up.  However, I am feeling it now - I feel fatigued and a little burnt-out as the year wraps up, and there are days it is hard for me to get out of bed when that alarm goes off.  And these kids - most of them are minorities, from lower-income families, and there are behavioral issues with them.  While the overwhelming majority of them are generally OK, there are some consistent problems with some of them and I am at the point where I am just glad I don't have to deal with them as much.  Not to sound like it's racially-inferred though, the fact of the matter is that some of the worst offenders in my classes tend to be Black kids.  I have a high number of Hispanic students too, and although they are not perfect, for some reason they tend to be more manageable in class than the Black kids are.  And, that leads me to a couple of interesting observations for the week I wanted to share.

The seniors at this particular school are required to do what is called a capstone project.  Generally, these are projects I would associate with graduate- and doctoral-level courses, but they have those here for high school seniors.  Essentially, what the student does is focus on an issue related to social justice, and they do the research, ask questions, and propose solutions to the issue they address. The "social justice" aspect of this sends up some red flags, as the politically-liberal bent of many faculty here makes for some weird paths these students go down.  As part of the process, underclassmen and their teachers are invited during certain times to sit in on these, and I got to sit in on two of them over the past couple of days.  The one yesterday raised some interest, as it is both a good topic but also has some interesting debate.  It focused on food banks and what are called "food deserts," meaning areas where markets for purchasing food are not readily available.  The students who presented these proposed two excellent ideas I felt like could be practically implemented in some communities - one was community gardens, an idea I have always supported, but then one of the students proposed what are called "food depots," and that intrigued me a little.  As the student eloquently explained in his presentation, a food depot provides affordable (and nutritious) groceries in communities that lack grocery stores and markets, and based on the model of the business, they are essentially self-financing and have their own dividends.  It is a great idea actually, especially here in Baltimore, and it would also solve another problem as well.  Anyone who has visited Baltimore knows that the rowhouse here is a common fixture, but so many of these rowhouses are now abandoned and they look crappy.  While the City of Baltimore tried to implement an incentive program of selling some of these to developers who could renovate them at rock-bottom prices (some for as low as a buck) it is inadequate as a solution.  As the student mentioned, some of these abandoned rowhouses could be renovated and turned into food depots for communities lacking markets, and that would help.  It would be like resurrecting the small convenience stores and restaurants that used to be found on the first floors of many rowhouses years ago but are now gone.  But, that would only account for a fraction of the abandoned properties.  I think another feasible solution would be for some nonprofits to buy up those things, renovate them, and make them into transitional housing for the homeless population to get them off the streets.  Given that Baltimore winters can be brutal (this one sure was!) this would not be a bad idea.  Also, maybe it is time for Baltimore to get a big facelift and just demolish a lot of these abandoned rowhouses and open the land up for something more productive.  With Baltimore's population in steady decline, there is no need for a lot of ratty-looking abandoned buildings, so get rid of them!  And, given there are tens of thousands of rowhouses in the city (and I live in one now), there would still be plenty of them left to give Baltimore its uniqueness. Anyway, that is just some proposals I would have expanding what our students talked about on that topic.  

Another topic addressed on Monday was this idea of the minimum wage.  Many well-meaning individuals want a wage hike without fully understanding the ramifications that would entail.  I am personally all for a living wage - people have to earn their livings, so yes, a reasonable salary is logical. However, this is where it gets murky, and the question is what is an acceptable living wage?  Some political pundits - left-wing of course - have proposed as much as $25 an hour, but is that wise??  If that were to happen, it for one thing would create an endless cycle of higher taxes and inflation, thus necessitating even more wage increases, and that would prove disastrous for the economy in the long run.  Another problem is who this would affect?  A huge corporation is not going to pay much attention to wage hikes because they benefit from two areas.  First, they can increase prices to pad their own profits, thus causing more inflation.  Secondly, they would start looking for cheaper labor in places like India, China, and the Philippines, where wage laws are more lax and they could pay workers there practically nothing to do the same jobs an inflated minimum wage would demand here.  That too would be disastrous for American industry.   Also, it is no loss to the big companies - they can be compensated by higher prices of their goods or outsourcing for cheaper labor to other companies.  However, who it does affect badly is the small business owner.  A ridiculously high Federal minimum wage would practically bankrupt a small business, who may be already struggling.  The small businessman does not have the same leeway as the corporate CEO, so they don't have the resources to meet the challenge.  Therefore, perhaps the Federal government should get their noses out of wage issues and maybe delegate that to states or local governments instead.  The solution therefore should be something that benefits everyone - the laborer, the small business owner, and the corporate executive.  Until that is realized, potential problems exist with politicians legislating things they are too stupid to know anything about. 

All of these issues address a common theme - there needs to be an overhaul in our society one way or another.  There are systems in place now that do not work, and perhaps it is time to junk them and think about better ideas and options.  Until we do, America will never achieve the greatness it could have, and no other nation will either.  

That was a little political soapboxing today, so stay tuned until next visit.  Thanks again, and have a good remainder of the week. 

Special - Picking a New Pope

 I am writing again this week as much has happened.  Yesterday, after the Papal conclave, it was announced that we have a new Pope, Leo XIV.  He is significant in that he is also the first American Pope (he was born and raised in Chicago) and at the relatively young age (for a Pope anyway) of 69, he is guaranteed to have a long tenure.  He is the former Cardinal Robert Prevost, and he served as an Augustinian missionary in Peru.  So, who is this guy?  There is a lot to discover about him yet, and I wanted to give a couple of preliminary observations.  

On the outset, it looks like Pope Leo XIV by all indications is a lot more centrist than his predecessor, so that is a positive.  He has made some good statements condemning radical gender ideologies, and he also is uncompromisingly pro-life and pro-traditional marriage.  Additionally, the fact that he made his first appearance after being named Pope in more traditional papal vestments also speaks well for him.  He also took the name Leo, and the last pope that had that name (Pope St. Leo XIII) was one of the best Popes the Church has had.  These are positives.  However, like anyone who is high-profile and also being a human being, he has a few imperfections too that are somewhat concerning, so I will address those next.

It seems that the new pontiff was somewhat lax on the sex abuse scandals that rocked the Church some years back, and although he has perhaps remedied that it will no doubt still haunt him throughout his papacy.  Also, despite the fact he is thankfully more nuanced than Francis was, he does have a few controversial takes on immigration, and he has been critical of El Salvador and Trump's stance on that despite the fact that both Trump and the President of El Salvador are combatting very real threats to society (notably dangerous MS-13 criminals) that leftist politicians seem to be fighting them on - I am totally appalled at how the political Left is so supportive of dangerous criminals when they totally ignore people who have been victims of those scumbags.  This may create a few issues later as well.  No Pope in the past several decades has been perfect on everything - even John Paul II had some faults, and in all honesty I loved his papacy - so I can perhaps deal with a few things like this.  And, now that I have analyzed Leo XIV's initial impressions, let me give a couple of conclusions.

I am cautiously optimistic about Pope Leo XIV - he seems to be a Pope who wants to heal fissures in the Church, and I am completely supportive of that.  However, I am hoping he does not turn into the radical that Francis was, because in all honesty I am ready to jump a sinking ship if the Catholic Church continues down that trajectory Francis pushed it on.  For me, the Polish National Catholic Church is not out of the question, and I would even go as far as to even return to the Continuing Anglicans if necessary.  I am uncompromisingly Catholic, so Evangelicalism is not even an option.  However, if I need a new church home, I am keeping channels open.  This Pope was just elected, so it's going to take a little time to see how his pontificate shapes up.  And, that will determine my course in the long run as well. 

Thank you for allowing me to share in an uncharacteristic second reflection this week, and I will see you next time. 

Getting Settled and Important Decisions

 As I write down thoughts for this week, I am at what seems like a major milestone since our involuntary displacement back in October, when losing our home in Hagerstown led me to eventually come here to Baltimore after receiving a job offer.  A lot of our things are still in storage over in Martinsburg, but this week I was able to get a significant portion of items - my record collection - and bring it back with me.  My record collection is greatly reduced now - about 1/3 the size it was - and thankfully I was able to get my large collections (the two Franklin Mints, the Singers collection, and several rare Reader's Digest boxed sets), and those were what were integral to starting anew.  Although the place I am in now constrains settling in too much, I was able to get those records and house them on a new special shelf I got a few weeks back, and they look great there now.  There are other aspects of settling in that are still being sorted out, but for the most part I am on track to starting to rebuild a life, and thankfully I have kept a core aspect of my life to give it a good start. 

As I am at school today, it is the work-study day for my students that they have once a week.  The school year is starting to wind down some, and I am mainly focused on getting the students prepped for their upcoming finals in a couple of weeks.  With the school year quickly wrapping up, it is only natural that some issues flare, and I had one of those yesterday.  A young man in my final class of the day decided to act like a jackass, and somehow he managed to procure some cheese and he was being messy and destructive with it, even trying to damage computer equipment of his classmates.  When confronted, he was also very disrespectful and rude and I had to throw him out of class.  I have a phone conversation with his mother later, and hopefully when he returns tomorrow he will have a better attitude.  At the risk of sounding controversial again, I am noticing this behavior primarily in the Black students - I don't know if it is their environment they live in, or what it is, but they tend to be some of my most difficult challenges.  Then, when I see how some adults in this city act, it is understood that they are modeling their own behaviors after bad behavior of the adults.  When I addressed this with a couple of other students the other day who were profusely using profanity in class, one tried to say it was "Black culture," at which point I countered that no culture encourages acting like a jackass, and I told the student flatly that his excuse was BS.  In talking with another teacher, I found out what I had suspected as well - the onerous COVID measures enacted a few years back also played a part in the bad behavior as well, given that many of the students I now teach were middle schoolers then and therefore they lost a lot of valuable learning time.  I am hoping that next year will be better, and I am also planning on being more prepared for the group I will be getting next year as well.

Dealing with some difficult students, in particular minority kids who are from low-income areas of town, can be a challenge.  You always wonder how much they actually respect and appreciate what you do, especially if you are a different ethnicity from them.  On many levels, I know these kids - having grown up poor and with a single parent myself, I can relate to them.  But, it has been over 40 years since I was their age, and they have some different mindsets than I did when I was their age too.  That perhaps is the greatest challenge of all.  One thing I feel should be mentioned though is that there are many similarities between the rural Appalachian roots I have and the backgrounds of many of these inner-city Black kids.  There are things I observe in their culture that I readily identify with, such as large mouthy women for one thing.  I have seen many large Black women who almost automatically make me think of my own late grandmother, as they have a similar attitude to hers.  This is another reason why racism is so wrong - at the end of the day, people of diverse cultures find out they share more in common than they have differences, and that is a good reflection point.  The problem with the rich White liberal yuppies a lot of the time is that they fail to understand either the Black culture of the city or the White rural culture of the Appalachians, and over the years those individuals have often displayed either patronizing behavior at best or outright contempt and mockery of us at worse.  That unfortunately exacerbates things such as racism, and it even makes cleaning up certain communities look like an exercise in discrimination.  Let's talk about that for a moment.

There is a word thrown around in recent years that has been a hot-button topic, and that word is gentrification.  What is it exactly?  The classic definition of it is when a blighted area of a city is targeted for renovation, and the downside of this is often it causes the cost of living to rise in said areas.  Its opposite is urban blight.  Many people who are on the DEI bandwagon view the concept of gentrification like the F bomb, and in doing so they actually cause more harm than good.  The harm they cause is specifically in how they define the terms - to some, any cleanup or restoration project in a given neighborhood gets the label "gentrification" when it may not be the case that it is.  Cleaning up urban blight is not "gentrification" - rather, it is trying to improve the standard of living for the people who live there.  There is no evil in tearing down dilapidated buildings which have the potential of becoming crack houses, and there is also no harm in picking up the trash and cleaning up the neighborhood a little bit - that is simply taking pride in one's community, not "gentrification."  Now, in order to diffuse the controversy, these efforts should be grassroots initiatives in which the residents make the call to clean up and improve their own communities, and that way no accusations of racism or anything else will hold water because efforts are on the part of the people that live there and not outsiders.  I have seen some positives to this end in some Baltimore neighborhoods - there are now many beautiful painted murals on some blocks, and I have also seen more community gardens and box libraries around, but there is still a lot of work to be done.  The city government has a lot to do with that too - for many years, the Baltimore government has been a source of corruption (after all, Nancy Pelosi's father was a corrupt mayor here back in the 1950s), and I am thinking more public revenue is going into the deep pockets of bureaucrats rather than being invested in improving the city.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a change in that on the horizon, and as a result, in recent years the population of Baltimore has begun to decline.  It remains to be seen where this goes, but hopefully and prayerfully a change in direction will come soon. 

Onto other matters, as I settle into my new place, I am slowly returning to a routine I have had interrupted over the past several months.  Being able to establish a new home takes time, but thankfully I have the salary and other means at this point to make that happen.  I have invested in new clothes for instance - the first time I have done that in several years - and I am also beginning to watch my health more.  That latter issue is becoming more evident, as lately my body has been feeling its age - I have a continual pain in my lower back, and there are days I am really stiff and it is hard to walk.  And, this despite the climbing and other things I need to do - I think I have climbed more steps in the past six months than I had the whole majority of my life previous.  Also, there are other parts of my life that have changed, some for the better and others not so much, but change is an inevitable fact of life because life marches on.  Change should never come at the expense of compromising principles though, and hopefully anyone reading this understands that too. 

The other big news of today is the Papal Conclave, in which the Cardinals of the Church will be gathering to deliberate on who will succeed Francis to the Barque of St. Peter.  I am hoping that orthodoxy and grounding will prevail, and that we don't end up with a worse disaster than Francis, but I am thinking I need a strategy just in case.  Near the campus here is Holy Cross Parish, a congregation of the Polish National Catholic Church that is around 112 years old.  The PNCC in recent years has adopted a more conservative approach to its doctrine and practice, and it is also still fully Catholic - they are actually currently in dialogue with the Anglican Catholic Church, my former communion.  If we end up with a controversial Pope, I am seriously thinking about changing my allegiance from Rome to a more orthodox form of Catholicism that is more compatible with Magisterial tradition, and the PNCC checks all the boxes for that.  At this point, I am maintaining a "wait and see" approach to see what happens, as thankfully the Church in the Third World is much more orthodox, and if a Pope were to come from those regions, it would be an answer to prayers.  I will continue to chronicle this until we see what happens, and then I will act accordingly.

Thanks again for allowing me to share this week, and will see you next time.