Is this charter school a secular ruse?

Published in Cumberland Times-News Tuesday, January 25, 2011.
(Beginning mid-October 2010, the Times-News limited Letters access to online subscribers.)

"A few local progressive thinkers did endorse the idea, but
authentic broad-based support in Allegany County remains non-existent. In fact, the idea appears to many in the county to be a ruse by MMPCS founders to impose their personal agenda."

Sister Phyllis McNally presents a valid point in her Jan. 9 letter, “Bishop Walsh makes education option available for students": Private schools pose viable alternatives for students whose parents otherwise might support a charter school -- an idea that fell flat last month in Allegany County.

Since 1966, four years prior to Bishop James Edward Walsh’s release from prison in Communist China, the Catholic school has educated students “of all faiths and beliefs,” the president writes, and offers “the very same qualities parents continue to want …smaller class sizes, excellent academics, values-centered curriculum and individualized learning experiences.”

Calvary Christian Academy, a ministry of Calvary Baptist Church in Cresaptown since 1973, has similar offerings.

Most people of faith who could afford tuition and manage transportation would gratefully send their children to one of these quality schools.

Christian values, though, probably are far from the Mountain Maryland Public Charter School founders’ desires for their children. MMPCS President Veronica Mingolelli is an outspoken member of Citizens for a Secular Government, a local non- to anti-religion organization headed by atheist activist Jeffrey Davis.

Davis fought to erect a monument to secularism, promoted as a tribute to the U.S. Constitution, on the courthouse lawn in a show of opposition to Judeo-Christian principles displayed there in the Ten Commandments, which Davis tried to have removed.

As early as November 2007, Mingolelli pushed Davis’ monument agenda, and she was his spokesperson on a 2009 county task force. A January 2010 decision by the Maryland Historical Trust, however, thwarted their efforts.

Now Mingolelli, an occupational therapist in the county schools who apparently hails from Massachusetts, seeks the trust and influence of our community leaders to help her and her friends establish a taxpayer funded charter school in Cumberland.

A few local progressive thinkers did endorse the idea, but authentic broad-based support in Allegany County remains non-existent. In fact, the idea appears to many in the county to be a ruse by MMPCS founders to impose their personal agenda.

Contributors in a Cumberland Chat chain, for example, from Sept. 26-29, 2010 speculate that MMPCS promoters are “an elitist bunch (who want) a publicly funded ‘private’ school,” perhaps a Montessori type; and they note that studies show charter schools perform no better than other public schools.

In reality, a June 2010 U.S. Department of Education publication, “The Evaluation of Charter School Impacts: Final Report” (prepared by the Institute of Education Services), concludes that while “charter schools serving more low income or low achieving students had statistically significant positive effects on math test scores…charter schools serving more advantaged students -- those with higher income and prior achievement -- had significant negative effects.”

Why would Mingolelli and her associates – medical, law and education professionals – want their children, who probably achieve above average, in a public charter school? More understandable -- unless they object to Christian values, or unless they aim to create their own non- or anti-religion environment -- would be a desire to place their children in a private school.

Bishop Walsh and Calvary Christian have records of high standards and student accomplishments, and they always are in need of well-heeled parents and patrons to support their fundraising and endowment programs.

Much wiser community investments of time, treasure and energy -- spent misguidedly on the idea of a questionable charter school -- would be to help our private schools expand their finances, increase their enrollments, and enhance their academic programs.

Eighth Commandment: Palestine shall not steal

Submitted to the Cumberland Times-News December 13, 2010; published December 20.

...there are many places where Palestinians could establish a homeland "that would be consistent with their roots. But there is only one place on earth where the Jewish people could have a homeland that is consistent with their roots." -- former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee

As we watched Alan Dershowitz attack Mike Huckabee in a taped three-year-old argument on Huckabee’s FOX program Dec. 4, the governor, in real time, most likely rehearsed his remarks for his role the next evening as keynote speaker at the 28th annual dinner of the American Friends of the Beit El Yeshiva Center in Manhattan.

With 1,400 to attend, this dinner “is one of the largest and most prestigious functions of any Jewish organization,” according to Eugen Gluck, board chair, as reported by Arutz Sheva, the Israeli media network based in the West Bank that hosts the event.

The dinner honors 5,500 or so residents of Beit El (Bethel), first settled in 1977, who forego the cushy life to stay put in the conflict and clamor for the rights of Israel.

Bethel is the Biblical site where Jacob slept and dreamt of angels descending and ascending a ladder (Genesis 28:10-19); and God spoke to him. Therefore, Jacob called this place “the gate of heaven.” This is where Jacob delivered the blessing of his father Isaac into Israel, and it is where he would manifest God’s promise to make of his grandfather Abraham a nation.

Huckabee is “outspoken,” reports Arutz Sheva, “in his support for Israel's rights to sovereignty over the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, where Beit El is located.”

A visitor to Israel 12 times, Arutz Sheva reports, Huckabee said last year there are many places where Palestinians could establish a homeland “that would be consistent with their roots. But there is only one place on earth where the Jewish people could have a homeland that is consistent with their roots."

As a Christian, Huckabee understands his shared inheritance in God’s promise for salvation, first granted to our spiritual elders, the Jews. We believe that Jesus, a descendant of Abraham (Mt. 1:1-17), is the manifestation of that promise.

During Advent, we wait, with Jesus’ mother Mary, and prepare for the Messiah’s birth. We look inward, and we reach out to others in charity, as we aim to re-order our lives, and to open our hearts to God’s redemption. During this holy time, Christians also anticipate Christ’s second coming.

Sadly, the secular crush to buy expensive gifts defines Christmas, and charity, for many today. Surely, for children, visits from St. Nicholas, and fulfillments of hearts’ desires for material expressions of affection are important, to build treasured memories.

As St. Paul writes, though, a time arrives when adults give up childish attachments to things, memories and desires (1 Cor. 13:11). Advent is the time to mature, through personal discipline, to acquire the ability to cast off inordinate lifestyles, and to explore our spiritual destiny, instead -- and to advance on the path of St. Paul toward self-sufficiency (Phil 4:11b-13). One day, with Paul, we may say, “In him who is the source of my strength, I have strength for everything.”

In their disagreement, Dershowitz lambastes Huckabee for saying the Ten Commandments are unalterable; and he claims that Jesus rewrote them to shift the Sabbath and to redefine adultery.

As a Jew, and reportedly a supporter of Israel, perhaps Dershowitz might agree, finally, with Huckabee and others who believe that the eighth commandment stands unchanged: Palestine shall not steal land from Israel bequeathed by God to the Jews.

Furthermore, in the course of three years, since he apparently first tore into Huckabee, Dershowitz could choose to re-order his view, and let go of inordinate tendencies to confound the foundational tenets shared by the Jewish and Christian faiths, and seek authentic peace by making peace with God.

Share the story of the legendary Turkey Foot Road

"Chances are, when you read the book, you will discover new
facts about your ancestors; and you might uncover connections with other folks you know, or will come to know, that you otherwise never would expect."

In its heyday, the Turkey Foot Road was a primary route west into the frontier, which at that time in our region was anywhere west of the Conococheague. In the mid-1700s, the Wills Creek region included the entire Wills Creek drainage area -- seemingly undefined by boundaries and governed collaboratively by the colonies of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. It was, as "In Search of the Turkey Foot Road" co-author Lannie Dietle once described it to me, "a howling wilderness."

This is where our ancestors, migrating from Europe to seek religious freedom and economic opportunity in unexplored territory, braved the elements and encountered the Indians to claim land, build homes, settle communities, and leave legacies that today are our roots and our hometowns.

Share the story of the legendary Turkey Foot Road, almost lost in time, but captured by co-authors Lannie Dietle and Michael McKenzie from the memories of Salisbury, Pa., Mayor Harry Ringler, Sr., and the research of Mount Savage amateur historian and archaeologist Francis Bridges, and others.

Chances are, when you read the book, you will discover new facts about your ancestors; and you might uncover connections with other folks you know, or will come to know, that you otherwise never would expect. While serving as editor for the project, I grew to know my ancestry better; and I found that I share genetic connections with both Dietle and McKenzie.

So join the fun, and share the story. You will find new friends, and perhaps a relative or two.

Feel free to print our promotional flyer and post it in your school, library, post office, etc., or include it, or an item about the book, in your historical or genealogical society or family newsletter. All proceeds from sales benefit the Mount Savage Historical Society.

Turkey Foot Road 1906 view

Mount Savage Historical Society
P.O. Box 401
Mount Savage, Maryland 21545
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FIGURE 102 CUTLINES -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 29, 2010 -- Contact: NancyE.Thoerig@verizon.net

MUCH IMPROVED – In 1904, four Allegany County road directors and Engineer George G. Townsend designed a plan to improve the hillside route along Jennings Run, which primarily entailed protecting the roadway from flood damage when the run “got up,” an ofttimes occurrence. Townsend writes in a 1906 “Good Roads Magazine” article (Appendix 19 in Dietle and McKenzie’s “In Search of the Turkey Foot Road” book): “This wall is 231 ft. long, of good sandstone, laid in first-class Portland cement mortar. Another shorter, but higher wall, similarly constructed, protects an exposed point farther up the stream.” Realignment of both the road and the run was necessary in 1957, to construct the current Maryland State Route 36 corridor. Parts of this wall remain visible, and segments of the old road remain in use today.

Turkey Foot Road 1897 view

Mount Savage Historical Society
P.O. Box 401
Mount Savage, Maryland 21545
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FIGURE 169 CUTLINES -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 29, 2010 -- Contact: NancyE.Thoerig@verizon.net

WAGONS HO! -- From the bottom left corner, wagon wheel tracks lead into a curving dirt road that hugs a craggy cliffside, along a portion of the historic Turkey Foot Road between Corriganville and Barrelville, Md. The authors of “In Search of the Turkey Foot Road” consider how road builders might have cut primitive routes through rock and tackled other difficult obstacles to forge and improve westward routes through the Wills Creek Narrows in Cumberland and the Jennings Run gap in Corriganville. The authors selected this view from the 1897 book “Artwork of Allegany County Maryland” to be the cover for their book, published by the Mount Savage Historical Society.