The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • Page 135

Today The Sun Sunday, February 8, 1998 Page 3k Beyond Road Rage there is Shopping Cart Rage Catching Up With Sister Kathleen Feeley Dave Barry I If': When I finally get into the supermarket, I often experience Shopping Cart Rage. This is caused by the people and you just know these are the same people who always drive in the left-hand lane who routinely manage, by careful placement, to block the entire aisle with a single shopping cart. If we really want to keep illegal Immigrants from entering the United States, we should employ Miami residents armed with shopping carts; we'd only need about two dozen to block the entire Mexican border. What makes the supermarket congestion even worse is that shoppers are taking longer and longer to decide what to buy, because every product in America now comes in an insane number of styles and sizes. For example, I recently went to the supermarket to get orange juice.

For just one brand of orange juice, Tropicana, I had to decide whether I wanted Original, Homestyle, Pulp Plus, Double Vitamin Grovestand, Calcium or Old Fashioned; I also had to decide whether I wanted the 16-ounce, 32-ounce, 64-ounce, 96-ounce or six-pack size. This is way too many product choices. It caused me to experience Way Too Many Product Choices Rage. I would have called Tropicana and complained, but I probably would have wound up experiencing Automated Phone Answering System Rage For questions about Pulp Plus in the 32-ounce size, press 23. For questions about Pulp Plus in the 64-ounce size, press 24.

For questions about My point is that there are many causes for rage in our modern YOU DO MUCH DRIVING on our nation's highways, you've probably noticed that, more and more often, bullets are coming through your windshield. This is a common sign of Road Rage, which the opinion-makers in the news media have decided Is a serious problem, currently ranking just behind global warming and several points ahead of Asia. How widespread is Road Rage? To answer that question, researchers for the National Institute of Traffic Safety recently did a study in which they drove on the interstate highway system in a specially equipped observation van. By the third day, they were deliberately running other motorists off the road. "These people are morons!" was their official report.

That is the main cause of Road Rage: the realization that many of your fellow motorists have the same brain structure as a cashew. The most common example, of course, consists of motorists who feel a need to drive in the left-hand, or passing, lane, even though they are going slower than everybody else. Nobody knows why these motorists do this. Maybe they belong to some kind of religious cult that believes the right lane is sacred and must never come in direct contact with tires. Maybe one time, years ago, these motorists happened to be driving in the left lane when their favorite song came on the radio, so they've driven over there ever since, in hopes that the radio will play that song again.

But whatever makes these people drive this way, there's nothing you can do about it. You can honk at them, but it will have no effect. People have been honking at them for years: It's a normal part of their environment. They've decided that, for some mysterious reason, wherever they drive, there is honking. They choose not to ponder this mystery any further, lest they overburden their cashews.

I am very familiar with this problem, because I live and drive in Miami, which proudly bills itself as the Inappropriate-Lane-Driving Capital of the World, a place where the left lane is thought of not so much as a thoroughfare as a public recreational area, where motorists feel free to stop, hold family reunions, barbecue pigs, play volleyball, etc. Compounding this problem is KARL MERTON PERRON SUN STAFF Visiting professor: After decades of teaching, Sister Kathleen Feeley says she still learns from students. A return to the joys of teaching world, and if we're going to avoid unnecessary violence, we all need to keep our cool. So let's try to be more considerate, OK? Otherwise I will kill you. Knight RidderlTribune parties.

Under court agreement her position lapsed in 1997, ending two trying years. "It was a different world, and it was a very difficult world," she says. "It was probably the most difficult two years I ever had in any assignment. The bureaucracy was difficult, the task was difficult. It was just a huge boulder I was trying to push up a hill.

"I think I moved it a few inches, and it may have slipped back to where it was since I left, I don't know. I felt that the two years were spent in what I would call service of the city, and I love our city and I was happy to serve it for two years." Asked for an example of the difficulties, she says: "I have washed them all out of my head." It's a gentle but firm warning: Don't ask. It's characteristic of Sister Kathleen, whose soft-spoken ways camouflage a potent determination. LIBERATE YOUR ENTIRE HOME the CONCORD Liberty STAIR LI FT Straight or curved stairways folds and swivels year warranty Wheelchair lifts available home survey Physical and emotional barriers our complete line of Freedom Call or visit our Access Center. 825-1440 Accessibility Company Falls Road, Baltimore, Md 21209 Free 1-80O-825-1440 another common type of Miami motorist, the aggressive young male whose car has a sound system so powerful that the driver must go faster than the speed of sound at all times, because otherwise the nuclear bass notes emanating from his rear speakers will catch up to him and cause his head to explode.

So the tiny minority of us Miami drivers who actually qualify as normal find ourselves constantly being trapped behind people drifting along on the interstate at the speed of diseased livestock, while at the same time we are being tailgated and occasionally bumped from behind by testosterone-deranged youths who got their driver training from watching the space-fighter battle scenes in "Star Wars." And of course nobody ever signals or yields, and people are constantly cutting us off, and AFTER A WHILE WE START TO FEEL SOME RAGE, OK? YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT, MISTER NEWS MEDIA In addition to Road Rage, I frequently experience Parking Lot Rage, which occurs when I pull into a crowded supermarket parking lot, and I see people get into their car, clearly ready to leave, so I stop my car and wait for them to vacate the spot, and Nothing happens! They just stay there! What the heck are they doing in Cooking YES, YOU CAN! mil i 1 ENDS FEBRUARY fi; rv' I yH-H with Seat 2 Free Eliminate with Machines. The 6300 Toll FLOOR SAMPLE CLEARANCE SALE UP TO 50 OFF Classes: The former president of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland brings literature and theology together for her honors English students at UMBC. By Arthur Hirsch Kathleen Feeley enters the classroom smiling. And why not? It's a new term at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Sister Kathleen is about to spend the next 14 weeks Immersed in a melange of three abiding passions: theology, literature and teaching. She walks into Room 18 in the Fine Arts building smiling, and smiles through much of the 75-minute honors English class, through questions and responses and group readings.

At 69, after a two-year stint as Baltimore City special-education administrator, the former college president has returned to the work that called her to the School Sisters of Notre Dame 52 years ago. 'The classroom is No. 1, No. 1," says Sister Kathleen, who served as president of her undergraduate alma mater, the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, between 1971 and 1992. "I am a teacher.

I love teaching. I would have done nothing but teach if providence hadn't gone in a different direction. So I feel I'm back doing exactly what I do well and I love to do, which is open the minds and hearts of people to literature." A visiting professor at UMBC for one year, Sister Kathleen taught two classes last term and is teaching two this term: Analysis of Literary Language and, a course of her own creation, Theology in Literature, in which religious truths are sought in Western letters, from William Shakespeare and John Donne to Alice Walker and Flannery O'Connor. Literature, says Sister Kathleen, "is a way of touching eternity, because, cally, literature is so full of life-giving moments." Discovering insights Behind her wire-rim glasses her eyes are big, round, blue. When she looks at her new students her eyes convey eagerness, as if anticipating discovery.

After decades of teaching, she says, she still learns from the students. Get them to talk, to discover their own insights, she says. That's the trick. "I think my talent is to encourage people and to get people to articulate. I just think young people keep a lot inside and don't articulate.

So I want them to articulate, so it's an interaction between teacher and students." Day One Theology in Literature. About 30 students file into the afternoon session, most of them women. Sister Kathleen, a slender woman with short, white hair, stands at the front of the class. She wears a light gray suit, white shirt buttoned to the top, soft black shoes. She takes attendance, briefly describes the course, then gets to business.

"What do you believe about God?" she asks. "What qualities do you associate with God?" "All knowing," says one student. "All loving," says another. Sister Kathleen transcribes a list on the blackboard: "Unique forgiving uncaused cause." "Controlling," says one student. Sister Kathleen is not sure about that one, but she's not about to say it's wrong.

Whenever possible, she tries to find something valuable in what students say, or at least to find some way to use what's been said to advance the discussion. She writes "controlling" on the blackboard. Next to it, a question mark. "I don't want to put my theology on you," she says to the student. "But I think you're going to have a problem with free will in there." A young woman raises her hand to suggest another God-like attribute: "He accepts you for who you are." Opportunity for compliments "That's a beautiful sentence," says Sister Kathleen; and writes it on the blackboard.

In the term's first two classes she takes every opportunity to compliment students for their participation, which will account for 60 percent of their grades. "Students listen to each other, are influenced by each other," she says. This is the voice of experience, of a woman who was called early to teaching. One of seven children who grew up on Guilford Avenue, Kathleen Feeley graduated from Notre Dame Preparatory School and immediately joined the School Sisters of Notre Dame, a Roman Catholic order founded in 1833 and dedicated to educating women. She then attended the College of Notre Dame of Maryland part time, graduating with a bachelor's degree in English in 1962.

That year, writer Flannery O'Connor visited the school and talked about her experience as a Catholic writing in the predominantly Protestant South. Her body crippled by lupus, O'Connor mounted the stage on crutches and spoke softly in her thick Georgia accent. The moment helped establish the course of Sister Kathleen's academic career. "I was fascinated when I heard her speak," says Sister Kathleen. "I thought this woman, in her quiet voice, is taking the top of my head off.

So then I started studying her." In 1964, the year Sister Kathleen completed her master's degree in English at Villanova University, O'Connor died of lupus at 39. Soon afterward, Sister Kathleen decided to write her doctoral dissertation on O'Connor at Rutgers University. "Flannery O'Con nor: Voice of the Peacock" was published in 1972 and was reissued in paperback in 1 982. At UMBC, Feeley's class will include reading and discussion of 10 of the 23 short stories O'Connor wrote. "She's probably one of the most theological writers of our time," Sister Kathleen tells her students.

O'Connor's theology usually appears subtly, in moments of revelation, moral failure' or violence, moments when "grace," as the writer put it, "waits to be accepted or rejected, even though the reader may not recognize this moment." Sister Kathleen did not introduce herself to O'Connor or speak to the writer that day she spoke at the College of Notre Dame. As it turned out, she would not have another opportunity. It's the one regret she freely acknowledges. City service Despite the frustrations she found in the job, she expresses no regret about having accepted Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's request to serve as Baltimore City's administrator of special education in 1995.

As a result of a lawsuit against the city, her task was to bring the city into compliance with special-education law. Schmoke needed a neutral party with standing in the community who wJuld be acceptable to all mm "She is a very commanding presence, even though she's slight and wiry," says Charles Ritter, a history professor at the College of Notre Dame. As college president, he says, "She had the moral authority to carry the faculty along with her. She had tremendous respect. People followed her and trusted her." Ritter had occasion to argue with herduringhertenureas president.

She would always listen to his position, but she was not easily swayed from her own. The Caroline Center "There's a will there that's very powerful," says Ritter. With a certain awe in his voice, he mentions "her ability to will into being the Caroline Center." He's talking about an agency in East Baltimore established by the School Sisters of Notre Dame under Sister Kathleen's direction. Its mission is to teach job skills to women who are either unemployed or underemployed, most of whom are referred by the Baltimore City Department of Social Services. In 1994, the order handed Sister Kathleen the task of creating the center in a vacant building it owned on Somerset Street, a three-story building that once served as a novitiate.

The center welcomed its first group of women in November 1996. The sixth class arrived last Tuesday, about 30 women between the ages of 20 and 55. Sister Kathleen, the center's executive director, was there to greet them, much as she welcomed her students to a new term at UMBC. "They're just like the students on the first day of classes," says Sister Kathleen. "They look at you eagerly." She spoke to the group for about 15 minutes, describing the background of the School Sisters, and how the order was created for the purpose of educating women.

She encouraged the women to set clear goals for themselves, expressed her confidence in their power to succeed. Later, one member of the group thanked her for the inspiration. "I just feel very blessed that my vocation and my avocation are one," says Sister Kathleen, who hopes to teach in China on a Ful-bright Fellowship next year, then possibly return as a teacher to the College of Notre Dame. "Being a School Sister of Notre Dame and being a teacher, they're two sides of the same coin. I have opportunities for retreats and for prayer life and for deepening of my own spirituality it all converges in my teaching.

It makes me the kind of person that I am, and therefore I can be more influential with my students. So it all works together." bt I 1 28 4 First Come, First Served, On All Floor Samples! Or, Choose 500 Styles, 3000 Fabrics, 350 Leathers and get delivery in just 35 days! IrrmiiMn rim .1 Li MM. Mi liiTHll lH SALE Laurel, MD 8693 Cherry Lane (301) 490-2255 In MA, CT, NY, NJ, PA, Cockeysville, MD York Road at Church Lane (410) 667-4111 iFeaiirniieW DE MD, call 1-800-456-SOFAfor a store near you!.