Tag Archives: Vermilion Parish

Faith Camp, Bukidnon Youth Conference and the Future

Posted on July 14, 2016 | Leave a comment

Faith Camp is a one week long camp held for middle school aged students based somewhere in Vermilion Parish. There are currently two such camps held each year. While the kids are the focus it is an event that involves people of all ages. For many who participate in its various aspects it is both an optimistic and fun experience and a deeply spiritual one. The Catholic faith is celebrated in a context which is fairly complete and brings the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the experience of church into the lives of these young people in a complete way.

The last two weeks  before this posting there has been ongoing the 20th year of continuous Faith Camps. This ministry was founded by my sister Susanna whom I saw at Faith Camp last night. At the time she founded she and were regular prayer partners and she was in the area and living at Big Woods during the summer after having started her studies at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. It was a fairly small camp that year but I was deeply impressed with it and shared with her my own memories of a live-in conference  in Bukidnon when she was a child as one of my better memories and so the two things were linked in my mind at the inception although there was not much of a causal link.  Susanna wasalso a small child when the Bukidnon Youth Conference was going on around and near her in various manifestations in Malaybalay, Bukidnon on the southern island of Mindanao in the Republic of the Philippines. I haven’t been back since the 1980s but it was a time which I have always felt had a big influence on the rest of my life and other lives in the family. Many members of my family have played key roles in the success of the camp over the decades. This year a middle school aged child of one of the campers at the second camp was a camper at Faith Camp.

Austin at a faith Camp reunion a few years before he was shot.

 

 This year my sister Sarah’s eldest daughter Alyse is the coordinator of Faith Camp as she was last year. This is one of the blog posts that I write that is not primarily driven by the news. It is more driven by  a series of important experiences, recollections  and feelings which resonate in my life. This is one of those posts which combines both some vivid recollection and some fading memories: But the hope one felt at key times continues. The possibility of really putting together a history of those years is a daunting and not a very promising prospect. But the prospect of trying to recapture some of the spirit of those times seems a worthy aspiration as it will help me to convey some thoughts about the current times and some of the times in between now and then. I went from New Zealand to the Philippines with my birth family when I was seventeen and arrived there around Christmas. The bottom right hand picture below is of the Maranatha Youth Group in St. Pius X Church Parish in Titahi Bay which I left behind there on those cool windswept coasts. We passed through Australia on the way there.The top set of damaged images are from my time in the Philippines as is my better picture of myself leading my sisters on the carabao. The bottom right hand corner isa picture of the wall of my Household at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

 

faded image of my sister’s First Communion in the Philippines.
Our family loved our rare vacations to Camiguin Island while we were in the Philippines.
Like these faded copies of pictures for which originals may still exist some aspects of my ties to the Philippines and some memories have faded.
Leading my sisters on a carabao in the Philippines.
College Household at FUS
The Maranatha Youth Group in Titahi Bay, New Zealand with me in it.

 We were in the Philippines for a couple of years (or so I remember without checking) and Simon was born with difficulties associated with Prader-Willi Syndrome. That was also at Christmas and was at the time of my Bukidnon Youth Conference which is the real subject of part at least of this post. Due to Simon’s condition we came back to the United States. While there I completed my Freshman Year at USL — now the University of Louisiana  — in one semester and in the preceding summer worked in some college and youth ministries in the church. Then we all returned to the Philippines and I renewed my ministry for a while and in the summer just after my brother Joseph was born and having overstayed my visa in a tense time in a country on edge and with a gift of a large and dangerous looking tribal sword I flew back alone to the United States.The picctures I took there for various reasons have not much been digitzed and the ones that were have not al made it into part of the cloud I can access. But the memories that I have of the Philippines are indeed plentiful and meaningful. Many of them were pleasant enough. Although the images in the pair below do not show the day to day life there as I justified that life they do show some of the rewards of the experience. Visiting the sick westerners in trouble, prison ministry, speaking to dozens of groups and working with college ministries all filled most of my days. But the Bukidnon Youth Conference was perhaps the  peak of my ministry there.  Being a 52 year old, divorced, childless near indigent was not the future among many possible futures which I saw as most likely in those days. But the journey since has certainly been a complicated on and rich too in color and texture and that sense of richness makes me feel like an expert on almost everything on some days. While that is not fair to much of anything neither or the days entirely fair when I feel that my onIy efforts to communicate come from having little else to do that is fulfilling and that I only ever feel that I  am well qualified to be a sage because I appear not to be qualified for anything else. My life has not been laser focused in a single direction and my time in the Philippines was not either. I like Faith Camp and I liked the Bukidnon Youth Conference in part because they touched many aspects of life from the arts to sport to socializing over dinner. This reminds me of one of my first Facebook notes when I wrote about  some of the extracurricular activities and hobbies that have enriched my life  and divided them into the big three categories of Faith, Science and Sports which I  chose to denominate as easy issues for that early Facebook note. These Easy Issues are not to be confused with the Easy Essays written by Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker Movement. His essays were easy,  because he easily guided the reader through the complexities of political philosophy to a simple and cohesive approach which would provide the framework fo the movement he and Dorthy Day were founding. In my Facebook the subjects are easy because of my tremendous insights into the very narrow experience I had in each of those fields — I did not concern myself with the larger picture. There was some tongue in cheek in the use of there terms and words but Faith Camp and the Bukidnon Youth Conference were also founded to give young people a real body of experience that they could claim as their own. A small window of controlled positive experience from ehich to see the world.

During those years when ministry was part of my life I did a lot of work preparing to work . One thing  or another or many things must be left out including almost all my regular Catholic  school time but I now note  the religious education I received. Some I received within the context of the schools mentioned. However, I also took a set of remote preparation confirmation classes in the Diocese of Lafayette within the Come Lord Jesus Program and the brief imediate preparation course at a Parish in the Archdiocese of Wellington, New Zealand. I was confirmed by a cardinal. In the Diocese of Lafayette I also completed instruction in and was commissioned for Evangelism as a Lay Evangelist of my native dicoese. This was also where after college I was certified as a catechist. Beyond those things, I completed the Life in the Spirit Seminar, the Cursillo de Cristiandad (en Ingles), a basic Lector’s training, Prayer Group Leaders Training Course, a salvation history micro course and stdied as a journalist the English translation of the Prelature of Bukidnon’s Alagad course which was a successful lay leadership course. I also read and discussed the Documents of the Second Vatican Council many times and in many contexts. Susanna who founded Faith Camp completed here degree in theology while continuing to build up this ministry. The two things have in common that they communicate to the kids from a depp and well laid foundation.

Like a lot of activity among Christians it is designed to provide an opportunity for a personal spiritual experience. The importance of personal spiritual experience in America is more evident than in some countries. One of the reasons for that comes from a man who was not a Christian but had a profound influence on the Christian and other populations of these United States at a critical time — the Revolution. Thomas Paine, one of the great thinkers of the American revolution basically stated that one of the profound problems with revelation as a basis for any law or covenant is that as soon as it is written down or described rather than existing as a perceived miracle or apparition or Messianic epiphany it becomes mere tradition. Three things can be said about that idea that miracles and revelation become traditions:

1. It is somewhat true and worth keeping in mind.
2. If God, the universe, the gods and Divine Wisdom were communicating with humanity they might not excuse people who said “Well, I needed that direct Apparition your Highness — didn’t get it so it’s your fault not mine.”
3.In places and times such as existed in the Charismatic renewal there was a renewal within the person which was seen to confirm the written Word and the received tradition. It is out of that third connection with the renewal of the background music and lifestyle of our family that the Bukidnon Youth Conference (BYC) and twenty years of Faith Camps have come. The Bukidnon Conference was less part of the Charismatic Renewal than was some of my work in those days and the current Faith Camps only remind one of the renewal. But the tradition is there.

St. Augustine is credited with two sayings that mean a lot to me as far as faith goes. One is “Seek not to understand that you may believe. Seek rather to believe that you may understand.” That saying is not perfect and is easily misconstrued but it remains profoundly true and truly profound.The second saying I will allow to explain itself and to be interpreted without me. St Augustine wrote “The best and the worst men in the world live in monasteries.” The idea that these young people come together to find understanding and to explore a fully lay spirituality does not mean that none will later become monks, priests, scientists or theologians some do and those around usually rejoice.  But the experience is of a different focus of informing a growing faith and living for Christ in the world.

That Filipino journey  in which the Bukidnon YouthBconference was born was one  which only temporarily ended just after the conference itself. But after returning with them from my time at USL and in this region I did not stay but went to enroll at the school where Susanna was studying when Faith Camp was founded.  I returned a bit early and went to live that summer with my paternal grandparents in a larger than most two storey house beside a park. That  is where I lived in that intervening summer have lived at other times and is also where I am living  now as I type this but I have only been here for a few months this go round. Then I enrolled as a sophomore at the Franciscan University. The summer after my sophomore year I returned to the Philippines to visit and overstayed my visa yet again by only a few days and flew home alone. I left school in mid semester for complicated reasons including some to do with problems in the Philippines related to those whom I had invited into the region to help me with the Youth Conference and  shortly after leaving school I met my parents returning to Abbeville where I currently reside. All of that was along time ago and I took a break to do some more ministry and other things before enrolling again at USL and finishing my degree there. Thousands of picture taken during those and subsequent years are unavailable to me here and now on this blog. But the family on the bottom left hand of the set below are the son of Abbeville friends and his wife who have been FMC missionaries where we once served for more than a few years now. The picture on the bottom right hand corner shows my brother Simon and my parents at an FMC Donors Dinner. He clearly survived the ordeals surrounding his birth as did we all.

Our family posing in our home garden in the Philippines
Some photos of their ministry before Family Missions Company
My Sophomore Class Award from the Franciscan University of Steubenville
New Zealand Youth Group at Botanical Gardens
Sammy and Lindsey and their family in missions. Donald long supported the mission work of my family.
A picture I took of my table at the Donors Dinner

 

Of the  actual BYC as an event I have no photos to share and never had many photos. Indeed of the conference itself very little documentation was made and far less survives. But there are a few things and here are a pair of snippets of that time. The newsletter Resounding Praise which defined so much of our communication with the rest of the world had a feature on the conference. This gathering so distant in time and space is still near to my memory and sensibility. The sense and vision behind the conference was one of bringing young Catholics and some not sure they were Catholics together to celebrate the gospel and to deal with the real challenges not only of their personal lives but of Islamist and Communist pressures from groups which in several cases were profoundly hostile to their Catholic Christian commitments.  There was also a real openness to finding what could be improved in the generally pro-American, Catholic, free market synthesis that informed the conference. There was not a tone of xenophobia or paranoia but of relatively optimistic participation in the world as it was  for young Catholic Christians. There is something in Faith Camp’s tradition that has always reminded me of that event.

 

 

There are bigger events in the world than Faith Camp or the Bukidnon Youth Conference but bigness is not everything. Nonetheless as America approaches it participation with other countries in the Rio Olympic Games I am reminded that the New testament is full of references to Olympic events. Paul wrote of racing, boxing, archery and of the disciplines of training as well as the glories of victory in those ancient games. For those going to the Olympics who are Christians while they should respect the games and the diversity there it can be both a mission and a spiritual experience in Christ.

A few years ago London prepared to see the wedding take place in Westminster Abbey there was a lot of suffering and pain in the world. Truthfully, there is almost always a lot of suffering and pain in the world.  Whatever their role may be in adding to the sum of distress in the world, the British royals do quite a bit to lessen the sum of woe and that was not the less true in a year when they were planning a royal wedding . That  set of outreaches to those in need is an effort that  is well documented. Prince Charles, Camilla Duchess of Cornwall and Prince William (the bridegroom this weekend) all have long supported a variety of charities benefiting humans, animals, ecosystems and cultural groups in distress.Prince Charles has a substantial income as Duke of Cornwall and donates a great deal of the income to charities in such a way that it leverages and is leveraged by other charitable donations. While it may well be that not a direct penny of that family’s efforts and gifts will go to help those hurt by the tornadoes whch ripped through the South last night it is also true that they are part of a philanthropic community around the world in which helping is informally circulated almost everywhere. Two babies (at least) ago the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth celebrated on the 29th of April 2011 The wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. This expensive and extravagant occasion was also a Christian ritual and gathering and an expression of faith. The scene was truly extraordinary and the elegant venue and the well prepared  liturgy and preaching were all rather impressive even for those who are not so easily impressed.  The sermon of the Anglican Bishop of London is one which I have found to be a worthy sermon to address our times:

“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” So said St Catherine of Siena whose festival day it is today. Marriage is intended to be a way in which man and woman help each other to become what God meant each one to be, their deepest and truest selves.

Many are full of fear for the future of the prospects of our world but the message of the celebrations in this country and far beyond its shores is the right one – this is a joyful day!

It is good that people in every continent are able to share in these celebrations because this is, as every wedding day should be, a day of hope.

In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding with the bride and the groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future.

uture.

Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Joseph Granger arrived early after preparing the reception and were waiting in the bleachers for the ceremony to begin on a beautiful evening.
My godson Mark John Braña with his wife and children in the Philippines
An image showing the basis of all this Christmas celebration.
A picture I took of my table at the Donors Dinner
Thanksgiving Dinner 2014 — a single backlit shot to serve for a whole set of images and memories…
my fiftieth birthday
My fitfieth birthday
two of my grandparents
Me in front of my family in Micronesia
Michelle and I kiss on our wedding day.
Former wife Michelle Broussard Summers and I — Sea Island Georgia

 

The future does flow through families and gathering and weddings and the like. Churches and other communities have an obligation, it seems to me to prepare young people to be conduits of the grace of God and the hope of the future into new generations. They need to be prepared for the task. All married couples, all celibates and many other classes of not mutually exclusive kinds of people have to be educated in that complete humanity. For Faith Camp that is a Catholic Christian experience An I like that best but it also speaks to those not with us in that community. I am not a young optimist and my own view of life can be pretty bleak often enough. But while  I am sorry that when caught up in nearly apocalyptic events I often already have declared myself to have been involved in a number of calamities — sorry but not very repentant. these conferences and other things have not made me boldly cheerful in that sense. But each Faith Camp and its predecessor to my view  have in fact reminded me that how one engages with life may change over the years  but faith filled engagement  and courage remain necessary.  I know that I  was at one time more fully engaged in meeting the world and the changes going on around me with gusto and energy than I am now. I beilieve that some of those now enthused will persevere in doing good but will not have the same zest when they are my age as they do now.  The world is no stranger to my dire assessments and prognostications regarding my own life and future but the truth is I am still in the fight for the same causes and so are some of those who fought with me under that old distant BYC banner. So also is Susanna and her early team.

Faith Camp prayer - 8   But there is a time and a place for looking back on all that has happened in ones life and that place is this blog. The time is spread out over many posts and pages. The truth is that I was not always quite so late middle aged, directionless and chronically despondent as I am now.  There were times when I aspired to other and more things in daily life than a differing serving of a perpetual mix of the routine, the impossible and the trivial. I was working hard at BYC but perhaps nobody got more out of it than I. I rejoice in the legacy I see although nobody else may see it the same way exactly.

The outgrowth of my various involvements and labors over the years are not all that easy to track, however there has been an institution which has grown out of all that activity in one sense or another and which is also dear to my heart for various reasons…  My brother John Paul was the head coordinator longer than anyone else so far I believe. It is also interesting that this year’s head coordinator Alyse Spiehler has a brother who although he only went to the first camp and was abroad on his birthday during the second camp has celebrated his birthday at Faith Camp several years and probably will again. In fact all of my sibling except Simon and my deceased half brother have served ads head coordinators or coordinators although I never have. I did of course at BYC which I consider to be an ancestor of Faith Camp. The family tie is a real one with my family but there are many other family ties as well. This does not make the focus more narrow and our family does not embody any analogous local set of privileges to those that shaped the hosting of the large wedding in London mentioned before. But the family story is part of the Faith Camp story.

 

That is, with everything else already mentioned and many other things not mentioned here  — the ongoing work of Faith Camp. That is the distant legacy of the BYC. And in some way it is the universal call of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are called to be the Body of Christ as Church and to celebrate the mystery of the fullness of life Christ came to offer and assure. All of that is part of the Faith Camp Story.

faith camp week 2, 2016 - 4 faith camp week 2, 2016 - 2 faith camp week 2, 2016 - 1

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Louisiana and the Lost Legacies

Posted on June 28, 2016 | 3 comments

The  recent study that is reported on by the Washington Post here brings up issues familiar to readers of this blog. Louisiana is ranked the third worst state in the nation in which to grow up. The article reports on the recently released  Annie E. Casey Foundation’s release of the findings of its 26th annual Kids Count report. While the report deserves more critical and sanguine analysis of methods, biases and presumptions than it receives it remains a professional and respected investigation into the health, education and economic well-being among American children and seeks to determine what trends are indicated by data collected and compared in the study. I have visited the issues of Louisiana’s low rankings before almost exactly a year before this post came out in fact. That post which is excerpted here from time to time appears at this link.

Louisiana has often been ranked at or near the bottom of various surveys and  studies that claim to show the relative position of various states in the United States as regards the kind of excellence a particular study seeks to define and understand. Those seeking to lead or hold public office in this state have long had to contend with the perception of inferiority as well as with the rankings that proclaim that inferiority. There are few enough conversations regarding policy which do not include a discussion of these realities: Louisiana is perceived as straggling and in many regards (even if the studies are flawed in some ways), it is straggling as regards the United States. One hesitates to post pictures with this kind of  an opening paragraph and to identify people with the negative comments and  categorization of the State. But most of those deeply involved in life here are well aware of  these perceptions and both the problems that cause the poor rankings and the problems that arise from  the poor rankings.

There was a ranking of Louisiana schools among the schools of the United States of America last year at about this time that inspired my earlier post. That article was discussed in the Daily Advertiser and  if the link still functions should be accessible here.  The survey ranked Louisiana schools at 47 out of perhaps 51 systems with the district of Columbia. Interestingly, the  Yahoo News did a ranking of fifty states about the same time and did that ranking on the broadest possible basis and ranked Louisiana of all fifty states and in that ranking Louisiana came out ranked fifth.  The two surveys may have been profoundly different and the new Casey Foundation survey may have  looked at different things as well. But surveys are tricky things, as are polls, studies and rankings. The question of what is good is a philosophical one and philosophy is very much in decline in this country and the world. We may ask if California’s horrible history of unsustainable water policy was built into the Casey study, or Oklahoma and the Northern plains far above them had to account in some way for soil depletion in the thirties and the resulting horror of the Dust Bowl. Or whether displaced Aboriginal Americans were made to count against people in terms of determining the tolerance of New England and the Mid West. My guess is that a trained critical and philosophical inquirer being honest would find that almost nothing like this was attempted but that in countless ways a punishment for slavery and the Confederacy’s perceived rebellion was built into the study.

Press from Acadian Museum Corinne Broussard Scrapbook
Pieces from Acadian Museum archives not really included in my book but showing the richness of new information coming in…
The Honorable Dudley J. Leblanc — Acadian Icon
The Acadian Miracle by Dudley Leblanc is fifty years old this year.
Young but experienced reporter from Abbeville was on the job… Not sure who she is with these days, I have known her since she was an infant…
Toby Takes Charge: DOTD set out state of I-49 Connector plans
Double rainbow at Big Woods in August of 2015
More or less what Acadian means to those who do not know…
Mom with a Christmas tree in a previous year. Today she is scheduled to buy a tree.
Me in front of a Christmas lights nativity scene shot by one of the proprietors on my phone as I walked into the Donors Dinner.
My mother poses in front of the statue of the Hero of New Orleans who fought the British Empire and become President and the Church of the Sainted Crusader King.
Window in St .Louis Cathedral showing the Crusader saint’s body being borne back when he died after launching a great war against Islamists who were terrorizing local Christians and others.
Window in the Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans showing the sainted King of France for whom the church is named caring for the sick directly.
Two of my maternal uncles working that same father’s Day work day at Kisinoaks.
These are the fruits I hope will weather today’s storm.
My brother killed his first deer taken with a bow today at Big Woods and brought it back here to our house.
I have a dearth of images of him available here and now but this retreat house is one place of many where he and I were together.
These are different horses at Big Woods. But one memory I have of interacting with the Romeros is catching the horse Champ to give to Donald’s son-in-law D.J. to load into a trailer and drive to their home for Gabrielle and their other children.
The reality of the South as a subjugated and oppressed region of the United States does not cease to exist because things are never reported that way. Assumptions are never perfect in any of our major policy discussions and deeply held assumptions are seldom closely examined.  While we decry global warming and other forms of climate change  and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and the rise of ISIS and many other groups devoted to modern Islamist Terror Jihad, and the crumbling US infrastructure and signs of geopolitical tension the tendency which defines our era most of all is the unwillingness to consider how larger systems of thought and belief distinctive to our own time might need to be reformed to handle the crises of our times. My undergraduate alma mater got rid of its philosophy department since I graduated and there are many reasons for this and the simple existence of such a department does not in fact assure anyone or any institution of very much but it is nonetheless a significant datum.
This sort of  deep and pervasive intellectual blindness is grievous beyond being simply sad and  when closely examined only goes to show how horribly out of balance the priorities of this society are in fact. Such decisions  as what to do with budgets, whom to hire and what courses to teach are often made very much in direct response to studies, polls and surveys which are really malicious in design if not in human intent (although that should not be taken for granted). Therefore a truly horrifying decision can make a kind of sense when one reasons from many bad starting places provided by highly respected sources and reinforced by federal policy all at the same time.
The Vermilion Parish School Board employed me as a substitute teacher for several years and then a few years ago employed me in a chaotic and abusive mess without definition through a new computer system. But it was not the worst system I have been exposed to. I have a GED diploma from Abbeville High School to bring together study in over a dozen pre-collegiate institutions and my dearly cherished niece and goddaughter graduated from the same school in a year after being admitted  and having done two years at John Paul the Great Academy in Lafayette. The institution struggles for money often enough and I have been shorted, had supplies misplaced or lost because of odd conditions symbolic of shortages and have known others who have experienced similar problems. But lately the Board has been praised for having very high graduation rates compared to the rest of the State of Louisiana. This has not ended the budget crisis and there was an announcement that no human French teacher would be assigned to Erath High School in the Future. The Parish  public system has several High Schools but not a plethora. As I recall there are now Abbeville High, Kaplan High, Gueydan High, Erath High, North Vermilion High and none other that I can think of at this time. There used to be more and some students travel a long way past old high schools to their new facilities. There are many home school students, various correspondence schools and a few modestly sized but not tiny sectarian or private schools in addition to the old  Catholic  high school which was refounded and renamed Vermilion Catholic High School when I was more or less and infant (it is a successor to Mount Carmel High School). Its hard to know how much the public schools represent the totality of education in the parish.  I reacted strongly in an email circulated in the aftermath of this decision and my reaction was very negative. I feel that  this single decision was made possible by rankings of graduation rates and is a horrible attack on our Vermilion Parish professional community and on our cultural life and heritage.
Every part of the country lives in a tension with these national rankings and their local consequences and there are many ways to respond badly. I found the VPSB choice horribly disloyal to the local community and its needs and traditions — although what will happen in the end I am not sure. However, others have supported their local communities in ways that undermine all integrity of the whole system. But the education picture in the country as a whole is far from clear. Lying, fibbing, making up nonsense and ignoring reality are very important parts of the reporting of schools and of educational performance in this country more than most. I discussed the Atlanta Public Schools in those terms in a post linked here.
But I  will revisit the most relevant parts of the post within this blog post. The Atlanta Public Schools were reacting to their very poor performance  on these tests which are another basis for making so many decisions. I respect their concern that the tests are not perfect measures of anything and do not always produce worthwhile goals and incentives for educational policy. As those who read me extensively in this blog or otherwise will know, I have been a teacher in numerous contexts as well as being a person who has taken many standardized tests. I have also advised people I cared about who take standardized tests.The testing culture which shapes testing results and does not produce the prosecutions which occurred in Atlanta is not a pure and pristine testing culture by any means.  Let me assure anyone unsure that people provide skinnies and acquire early copies of master forms and provide for special conditions for pretty girls who can use their favors to influence the right people, for stellar athletes who cannot make the grade after extensive tutorials and for the relations of rich donors to universities and prep schools. Teacher’s pets can sometimes be rewarded with hints that are unfair to others. That kind of impurity which is not so shocking but offends a sense of the sportsmanship that goes with standardized testing regimes is rampant enough to offend but not pervasive or normal in most testing regimes around the world. Beyond all of this in our own country margins are attached to scores to provide affirmative action for racial minorities, for women, for veterans and for the disabled before making decisions that will apply the scores. Different people react differently to different elements of these variations but  they all make the tests something other than pure objective scientific measurement.  Similar things happen in the world of polling, surveys and  studies.
 In addition to all of these ways of shaping  results not very good but very old techniques of  intimidation, cheating lies and abuse not much modified since the early stone ages still occur in all sort of places around the world and are not absent from educational measurements. If that is the case then does it matter if the  kind of criminal cheating on a massive scale occurred in Georgia under what amounts to official gangsterism as the APS scandal  of 2013  and before? Does it matter that Beverly Hall and others in the Atlanta Public School System presided over wholesale distortions in public school testing, motivated largely by inflated racial loyalties driven by distorted national policies and false perspectives? Yes I think it matters.  Just as it matters that the VPSB superintendent Puyau who appears to be of at least partial Louisiana French descent is not able find the loyalty to fight for our region’s heritage Just as the it matters that the President Anthony Fontana child of a Sicilian American father who was a teacher  and a Cajun (therefore American) mother who was a teacher could not find motivation to fight harder to preserve this key teacher if he fought for that at all. It is not so much that compared to the Atlanta system in a state that did better in the Casey Foundation study the VPSB were not paragons of ethics. Compared to the APS the VPSB deserved none of  all the horrible and relatively obscene things I was calling them in my inside voice as I type that first email response to the news — that is not the point. The point is that in response to all of the vast supply of objective information that is supposed to make things better the VPSB in this instance became part of a vast and comprehensive societal movement to worthlessness. I write these angry and inflammatory words about them or about the APS or about the measuring  establishment  and  yet anyone can guess that I wonder if  perhaps we  who dislike these outcomes largely deserve them. I write that because I know the basic futility of my complaints because I surely cannot make all the difference alone and apparently others feel much the same, the people who feel that sense of hopelessness are not stupid. The measures  of the Board I called the Very Poorly Structured Budgeters  in my email were based on a contempt for their constituents that comes largely from national studies designed against these people and which they use to calculate needs and resources and make decisions that arise from accepted practices and from the parameters by which they define their objectives it is a larger picture and not their specific practices which are entirely flawed. That does not mean there is no personal are moral fault. I was not then and am not now  afraid for my critique to come to the attention of Puyau, Fontana or anyone else in my small community.  Nor was I afraid to offend the Black Exaltationists of the country in the APS post.  I believe they should be grown ups and perhaps they believe that as well. But despite whatever differences we may have this is not only about personal values. Just as I criticize them I also know there is wholesale lying and cheating is occurring in many school districts around the country.
I myself have mixed feelings and a mix of things to say about standardized testing itself. I know we have visions create by national standards and studies that are shaped by those who do not believe high schools should ever have more diverse educational outcomes leading to apprenticeships, tech schools and work programs for a good portion of seniors who will still graduate and take some classes in the main school. Those are things that I think should happen.  Likewise they should offer advanced college prep and individual classes. I also think a military track should exist in each school. In other words I think the public school system is broken. I think reliance on studies that are assumed to be well intended but are not  must change or we will pay an ever higher price.
This sense of what the ideals are is very real and very powerful and the APS case in Georgia illustrates that fact.  Consider the stature  of Beverly Hall and the thirty or so other school officials indicted in the investigation of cheating in the Atlanta Public School System. This is especially important because Ms. Hall has been honored as National School System Superintendent of the Year and has been a symbol for many of the direction in which our American educational culture ought to be moving.  Hall’s behavior cannot be understood without reference to the national policies arising from the issue of race and the significance of these events being first uncovered beneath the Georgia flag. In this struggle by the State of Georgia and other authorities to deal with these issues the colors which were the confederate battle flag has waved above this instance of endless and widespread nonviolent black supremacy. The flag has often been attacked in Georgia but the falsification of all standards to promote the relative position of the Black race in our society has been fostered by all our learned and moral opinions. Now the  the whole Confederate history is nearly wiped away  because homicidal action of Dylan Roof in a very political but also sacred church. This action surely needs to be condemned and I have done so, but it has a context in the violence of our society more than in the Confederate Flag. The events and actions of this young man are much horrifying in appearance and also so prejudged that any chance he went in to do something other than murder cannot be considered by many who never prejudge any other homicide that way. He may have been looking for trouble but not planning to kill anyone — a trial should determine that.
The Washington Post article cited here at the start of this post is Christopher Ingraham’s continuance in a well established tradition of  showing the horrors of the South carrying onto the future from the past. But other horrors are little examined. We have not as a society correctly calculated the consequences of rhetoric and policy extolling equality in a way which destroys ethnic and regional richness and replaces it with shallow absurdity. Or the consequence of an indoctrination maniacally  demonizing racial distinction and white supremacy of any kind.   We do not consider the consequences of failure to investigate highly organized falsifications and badly designed standards while pouring resources into repeatedly simplifying the mechanisms of stopping fraud at many points. We do not understand the exigencies of any kind of meritocratic institutions on which we must rely. Today as we think back on the Independence Day anniversaries of 150 years since the greatest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere was drawn out at Gettysburg and the horror of the Vicksburg siege ended in the failed Confederacy we must recognize the change which Gettysburg assured has been a complicated kind of change bringing both good and evil to Georgia and the South. We must also consider that process launched in and for our nation. The occupation of the South and the repression of its state institutions by the federal government has never ended and has not abated. The morals of it have never been fairly examined.  But examining and measuring have been part of the oppression. But before focusing on race let me examine some other implications of all this horrific mess.
The creation of a destructive class of vicious and entitled black abusers has been one result, Dylan Roof and others who may be like him has been another result, but they are not the only groups empowered and supported against the society and culture of these states and all of the union. Just as not all in our School Board are eager to destroy our heritage and there are  in countless school districts many African Americans who would participate in a more positive system drawing on a diverse set of roots of progress. But these people are overwhelmed in the stream of a fantasized racial exact equality in our land. The Black Republicanism which many in the South and the Northern Opposition sought to stop in the War Between the States has reached its fruit and full flower in many places across our society. This racial element is very significant in all of this although one must applaud the black officers of the court who are involved in the prosecution and the black teachers and administrators who lost their jobs in droves opposing the total adulteration of scholastic integrity. There story is not much being told yet and may not be told. It is a story which ought to inspire us to give to the United Negro College Fund and to see in institutions like Grambling and Southern University in my own state. There is in such racially conscious institutions a different ethic than the wholesale cultural terrorism that the US Supreme Court has imposed upon the Union of the States. We are not likely to see such an outpouring of generosity to the UNCF by “Southron” whites of the old school.  We are more likely to see the anger and resentment captured in at least some of the Trump supporting movement. I am not sure Trump is a bad guy but his approach breeds alienation. It is more successful and appealing than anything I have to say in a country rocked by hopeless resentment or racially charged righteous anger.
Right now  when they meet a blindly accepted  national standard relatively honestly and their graduation rate is high a school board may feel that they can do anything they want and they are the good guys. What something like the last French teacher or the last teacher’s absence in any major subject and this subject most of all can do to a community is a hard thing to calculate. I do not know even now in the case of the VPSB who voted which way and I do not no know the depths of their budget crisis, I do not know just how intransigent the teacher’s union was in preventing other settlements.  But while this situation of crisis and the structural maladies are enormous that does not absolve the persons involved. The standards received from some national measuring apparatus are not to be examined in detail they are to be used to define all aspects of life and not to be criticized by anyone who know what I consider most worth knowing for any reason. Often time a norm is not a standard of excellence but a prohibition of excellence “Making every child a little behind” who is “common to the core” is my idea for a good honest name for our pedagogical history.
California has migrants and illegal aliens whose educational status is often less honestly reported than ours and I recommend reading Leah Remini’s book Troublemaker and asking yourself if her memoir doesn’t indicate that lots of the Scientologists in the Golden State are not getting much of an education as we usually measure it. Tom Wolfe’s  novel Bonfire of the Vanities describes a fictional public school outside the Deep South that is horrifying and is based on his deep and meticulous factual research. And are we supposed to believe that in the horrors of Chi-raq — bloody Chicago they do all the even we know they do but tell the truth about children’s welfare?   There are troubles here but there are troubles everywhere and the national lying campaign does not help.

The struggle of life in Louisiana is an easy one to simplify.  The student who struggle in many ways with situations in our public schools and post secondary education  are preparing for a life of struggle here or away from here. But the struggle is not always fairly meaured as regards what we achieve in an ongoing struggle as to where we stand in the country.  Louisiana has been amazingly dominant in the millions of pounds of seafood landed at saltwater ports. There are times when half of the top five or ten ports were Louisiana ports in that category. We have never done as well in ranking of the dollar values of catches landed. Although the seafood industry is still a big deal.

Louisiana has done an amazing job of leading in the production of offshore oil and gas at various times but has gotten little of that money into state coffers to invest in things like education. The federal government has taken most of that revenue from huge categories of mineral production and has sent back funds in other forms with less social benefit like transfer payments to needy in systems that foster permanent poverty.

The Gulf of Mexico's oil reserves remain vital to our country's future.

Louisiana has a vast treasury of cultural resources but exists in a society committed in general to degrading and destroying those resources over time.Jean Lafitte National Park and CODOFIL notwithstanding there has been a constant war on the distinctive values and traditions and assets of the state. So one has to ask what people here are being educated towards and why and how.

This may be one of the many reasons why although Louisiana has above average military enlistment it ranks below some of its neighbors in the former Confederacy. The military establishment here is significant but certainly not the biggest Fort Polk came out of recent reductions pretty well but over the decades has lost ground to other bases like Fort Hood. Fort Polk may have to change its name to Fort Parks but for now is named after a Confederate General. So rankings are part of the overall struggle to make sense of our place in the world.

 

My cousin Severin was killed in battle in Afghanistan.

Not very many people read this neglected blog compared to its heyday. However many of those who do have not heard of the term Silicon Bayou. There is disagreement about all aspects of the term. However the truth is that the area from New Orleans to Houston including Baton Rouge and Lafayette most of all is a technology center for the nation many aspects of the industries and universities in the region are ranked well in the fields of technology and information science.  The future is being built and sought here and has been for a long time. The results are always going to be mixed for many reasons.  I myself once led a group of interested people around the world in developing a plan for colonizing the Moon and Mars. There are thousands of ventures that do not achieve major recognition that have some influence. But there are also large operations and institutions.

How a crater on the Moon or Mars might be developed.

That brings us back to the idea of perception. Louisiana has a substantial tourism industry and a substantial film industry. Both of these industries labor to improve perceptions of the state in different ways. Nonetheless, there is little perception nationally or globally of how much this state faces challenges for the world and the nation and not caused primarily by the negligence or incompetence of this society itself. In fact I am very discouraged about the state, personally discouraged and discouraged at all kinds of levels. But the State has problems brought on us from the larger society as well. Those problems and our reactions to them affect our children’s lives as well.

Shrimp boats become skimmers

In the face of all the challenges of Louisiana life in this time it is interesting to not that Lafayette has been ranked as one of the happiest or the happiest city in the United States of America.  This happiness is not indifferent to or disconnected from all of our modern struggles but is perhaps rooted in our older heritage. That is perhaps also a key to how we perceive ourselves.

 

my great grandmother's painting

As we all seek to find our way forward it is useful to remember who we are, to see who we wish to become and to try to help our young people realize dreams they and we both can value and affirm. The future after all is uncertain and we cannot be sure where everything will end up. I know that we will not find a way forward if we lose all respect for one another.

Congratulating Louisiana State Senator Fred Mills on reforming Marijuana law...

 

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