Everybody's Got the Right To Their Dreams

There's something I've wanted to blog about for a week now, but I keep forgetting and now seems a good time. The Archdiocese of Detroit has decided to shut several schools down, including my mother's alma mater (Bishop Borgess), the school that gave her her first teaching job (Our Lady Queen of Angels). The reason I mention this is that the list includes several of the teams we played against in high school, including the some schools that were involved in some of the few Shilander athletic triumphs (meaning I was on a team, not that I was actually on the field playing). These include Holy Redeemer, who we beat in one of Richard's few playoff wins my sophomore year, as well as the loser of my last game in high school. Also closed was Trinity High, which was formed only a few years ago from the ashes of St. Florian in Hamtramck (seriously, is there a worse name in terms of not perpetuating a stereotype? There's no I there, come on.) and Harper Woods Bishop Gallagher, who we played my senior year and lost to badly. I could say after that game that I was an opponent of both Braylon Edwards and Markus Curry which is kind of cool, and will be cooler at the end of April. Also closing is Centerline St. Clement, which was one of Richard's big rivals for a while, and beating them senior year, for the first time in about six years was a really cool way to go out.

(I realize of course, that yesterday I talked about how much high school sucked. I stand by that, because frankly, talking about a few moments of my very limited athletic glory really doesn't change the grand scheme of things, or how I feel now about day to day life at the school.)

The demographics of the city have largely changed, which account for why these schools are closing. Let's face it, large segments of the natural populations for these schools are now in the suburbs, sending their kids to Notre Dame Prep (alumni- Mike Bohne, Dan Staniszewski), CC (my cousin Brian is there now), Bishop Foley (Ventures, the dumbest nickname ever) (alumna-Karen Green) or places like that. Combine this with the fact that the school's cost a lot for people with not a lot of money, and you get dwindling enrollment. My mom told that after she graduated (she was in the first class ever at Borgess) they had the largest enrollment in the state for a Catholic school. Having looked at old yearbooks, there couldn't have been ore than two or three African-Americans in the school. When they announced the closing last week, there were only about 120 kids at the school, and almost all of them were African-American. Its amazing, really, how quickly people seem to be leaving the suburbs and going even further out, perpetuating a self-fulfilling prophecy as they do.

It should be said that last election, Adam Cardinal Maida spent $500,000 of Archdiocese funds on the campaign, money that didn't go to these schools.

It'll be weird, I must say, not seeing DePorres at the top of State rankings anymore. I'll never forget the sight of East Catholic's coach, who's won multiple basketball state-titles since he arrived there in the 60's, and his huge necklace of keys, and the game where they held the ball for five minutes at the start of the fourth quarter against Richard at our place. But time marches on I guess.

I have a bit of a quiz for people if you want to get in on, if you can tell me what the title of this post has to do with Three American cities: Dallas, Buffalo and Washington, and what those three cities have in common, you'll get something, probably some prominent mention in this blog as a superior mind or something.

What a fabulous prize, you'll be able to Google yourself and the phrase "superior mind" and it'll come right up.

Yes