non-update update

There are about a million posts that need to be written and placed here, but there is no time right now.

I am right in the middle of my second year of graduate school, and I am writing no less than three papers about St. Catherine's Indian School this semester.

In fact, I have a special fellowship from the NM State Historian's Office to research the school in state archives. One or a combination of these papers will become a presentation I give at the State Historical Society's annual meeting next May.

If possible, I will also present at other conferences.

There is so much about the research, now including interviews with former students and teachers, that I want to share here ... all in good time.

All that to say, as I sit here reading about Saint Katharine Drexel and the work she accomplished, I am crying.

When I finished reading the dissertation written about St. Catherine's by a former teacher, I cried then too.

Of course, this is emotion laden for me for so many reasons. Principally, my grandmother's connection and the way that history has linked me to this school and Drexel's mission in ways that I could never have imagined. I can't help but feel a strong connection to my grandmother with every page I read as far away from her experience as all that I read may be. I also can't help that it was my grandmother that led me to this work.

Even though she would not tell me about her time at St. Catherine's there was something that she wanted me to know about it. I guess it is possible that somehow she wouldn't tell me so that I would have the desire to do this research now. Who knows? The tears are rolling, again, maybe it is the lack of sleep.

As a non-practicing Catholic, I started learning about Drexel with a mixture of cynicism and trepidation. I find her faith inspiring even if I don't necessarily share her sentiments about the Catholic church. There is something about her belief in God, Jesus and mercy, and, especially about the action it spurred in her that has me in tears just now. It hasn't gotten me back into the church, but I did spend some money in the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament gift shop (online). It might not be a lot, but I can see how important it is to support the kind of work she envisioned.

I am not saying that she is perfect, sainted or not. She was a product of her time in many, many ways, but she was also a visionary. There is something beautifully imperfect about that. It's like real life, messy and complicated, and totally worth it.

I guess I turned to this forum because it doesn't seem at all appropriate to write it in any of the three papers, though, I am wondering how I get through an academic presentation without bursting into tears... I will definitely have to practice.

I will post some links to some interesting stuff I have found that is available online...

For now, I just want to share Sr. Monica Loughlin's description of Katharine Drexel:
"At a time when women did not have an active voice in society she was not only courageous but also fearless in working for justice. She raised the consciousness of the church and nation. Hers was never a strident voice but she was assertive, respectful and compelling in her arguments. She called her church and her nation to be true to the gospel and to the Bill of Rights. Hers was a voice that could not be stilled."
find the entire remarks given at Xavier University (another institution founded by Drexel) at the October 2007 New Board of Trustees Members Orientation Meeting.

Odd Coincidences

I have not been updating but I have been working in the project.

Last fall the project morphed from a purely personal pursuit to an academic research project with a heavily personal component.

I took a class called the history of native American education and had the chance to choose to do a research paper on the boarding school of my choice. Of course I chose St. Catherine's. I was surprised to learn that there was not much written about the school.

I still was able to get quite a bit from two books about the founder and some info about from old newspaper articles. Luckily for my personal project the bulk of the info was from the first forty years of the school. My grandmother's time there would fall in the first thirty years.

I learned some about what it would have been like for her in a technical sense and started to come to grips with what it must have been like to have no real family just these well-meaning nuns. Nuns who from the looks of it had very little real world experience, certainly no sense of how to mother.

Some time in the near future I will dig inti my notes and share some nuggets.

Now I am following up with a research project in the archives. Trying to ferret out what the student experience was like. And why the school lasted so long.

The coincidence was that this week I have been parking in a lot (because it was free) near enough to walk to the archives.

When I was walking back to my car I noticed that I had parked right across from the original bldg. The one where surely my grandma had either lived or studied or both. Of course there is an entire cemetery between my car and the old grounds. But I could see the huge adobe with the bell tower rising out of the trees.

At times I feel so close to unraveling the history and then again so far away.

The archdiocese won't respond to my request to see their archives. The catholic schools office here in Albuquerque hasn't yet decided if they will let me see their records. And I can't get to Bensalem to see the mother house stuff for at least another year.