Friday, August 17, 2018

Evening Sky

... poetry by Carmel Cronin '41 from the Elizabethan of 1940.





A (Short) History of Saint Elizabeth's High School

... an excerpt from the Thuringian / Elizabethan Saint Elizabeth's High School 1929 yearbook.  



Redlining the Fruitvale Neighbourhood of Oakland





















Cristo Rey De La Salle High School is located within the Fruitvale neighbourhood. This article gives an excellent overview of how the redlining affected this community.

An excerpt from the article: "In the 1930s, as the country was recovering from the Great Depression, the federal government wanted to encourage homeownership in cities that had suffered from waves of foreclosures. So it established the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), to refinance mortgages at risk of default. As part of that effort, HOLC created maps of cities, to identify which neighborhoods were good investments and which were bad investments.


HOLC assigned each neighborhood a grade, according to the "favorable" and "detrimental" influences in the neighborhood. The presence of minority communities was among the so-called detrimental influences. Take Oakland's Fruitvale neighborhood, for instance. A 1937 HOLC map of the area indicated these so-called detrimental influences: "Odors from industries. Predominance of foreign inhabitants. Infiltration of Negroes and Orientals.

Fruitvale and other neighborhoods given low grades were colored red on the maps, which spawned the term "redlining."
https://www.kqed.org/news/11648307/has-oaklands-fruitvale-neighborhood-recovered-from-redlining

Thursday, August 16, 2018

Bishop Barber's Blessing

One of the people who dreamed our school into reality is the shepherd of the Diocese of Oakland Bishop Michael Barber, SJ.  He took the time to celebrate the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (which also coincided with our first official academic day) in neighbouring Saint Elizabeth's Parish and walked over with the students for a ribbon cutting ceremony and blessing of the school.  Here's the text of his blessing:


God of all creation,
In your kindness hear our prayers.
We dedicate this building to the
human and Christian education of the young people
You have kindly entrusted to our care.
May it become a center where young women and men
become leaders of faith, purpose, and service
to build your Holy Kingdom here on Earth.
May the relationships developed here
Be a sign of Your Love and may it
Be a catalyst to transform lives.
We ask this prayer through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

May the all-knowing God, who is Lord,
Show us God’s ways;
May Christ, eternal Wisdom,
Teach us the words of truth;
May the Holy Spirit, the blessed light,
Always enlighten our minds,
So that we may learn what is right and good
And in our actions carry out what we have learned.
Amen.

And may the blessing of almighty God,
The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
Come upon you and remain with you forever.
Amen.