October's This, That & Other
St John the Beloved Academy
Suddenly every vain hope became empty to me, and I longed for the immortality of wisdom with an incredible ardour in my heart!
~ Saint Augustine of Hippo*
October Greetings
Here is a sundry assortment of things--liberal arts and otherwise--in a newsletter format that we'll offer each month.
Each week we will update the "What's Up...Next Week" section. And, well, other sorts of interesting things--a touch of philosophy, a note of music, nature or history, etc.--may also find their way into the monthly mix.
In addition to the update, we are pleased to announce our 2018-2019 PTO Executive Board: President--Bill Kuker, Vice President--Carlo Singson, Treasurer--Mike Watson, Secretary--Nicolas Mason. I'm excited to have this talented team in place--more information and activity to follow!
Enjoy your weekend!
Warm regards,
Jeff
Jeffrey P. Presberg
Headmaster
Saint John Academy
What's Up...This Month & Next
- 7 Feast of the Rosary, morning House sorting! School Rosary in the afternoon!
- 14 Columbus Day, NO SCHOOL
- 17 Fall Portraits
- 18 An October Party~a relaxed event with jazz and friends~7:30 - 10:30 p.m.
- 23 Open House, 9:00 - 11:00 a.m.
- 25 NO SCHOOL for students, faculty professional development
- 30 3rd Grade Saints Presentation
- 31 HALLOWEEN! Come in costumes! 11:30 a.m. DISMISSAL
November
- 1 All Saints Festival Day, morning: Mass & poetry competitions, afternoon: lunch & games!
- 5 Coffee with the Headmaster, 8:00 a.m.
- 8 Veterans Day Assembly, 10:00 a.m.
- 11 Veterans Day Holiday, NO SCHOOL
- 17 - 23 Discover Catholic Schools Week
- 19 Picture Retakes
- 20 Open House, details tba
- 21 HSPT, 8th grade
- 23 Saint John The Beloved Academy Family Picnic 3-6:30
- 26 HALLOWEEN! Come in costumes! 11:30 a.m. DISMISSAL
Open House on October 23rd!
Amusings
Lepanto
White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.
The Beautiful Changes
One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.
The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.
Your hands hold roses always in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.
Autumn in the Garden
by Henry Van Dyke
When the frosty kiss of Autumn in the dark
Makes its mark
On the flowers, and the misty morning grieves
Over fallen leaves;
Then my olden garden, where the golden soil
Through the toil
Of a hundred years is mellow, rich, and deep,
Whispers in its sleep.
'Mid the crumpled beds of marigold and phlox,
Where the box
Borders with its glossy green the ancient walks,
There's a voice that talks
Of the human hopes that bloomed and withered here
Year by year,--
Dreams of joy, that brightened all the labouring hours,
Fading as the flowers.
Yet the whispered story does not deepen grief;
But relief
For the loneliness of sorrow seems to flow
From the Long-Ago,
When I think of other lives that learned, like mine,
To resign,
And remember that the sadness of the fall
Comes alike to all.
What regrets, what longings for the lost were theirs!
And what prayers
For the silent strength that nerves us to endure
Things we cannot cure!
Pacing up and down the garden where they paced,
I have traced
All their well-worn paths of patience, till I find
Comfort in my mind.
Faint and far away their ancient griefs appear:
Yet how near
Is the tender voice, the careworn, kindly face,
Of the human race!
Let us walk together in the garden, dearest heart,
Not apart!
They who know the sorrows other lives have known
Never walk alone.
When a Buffalo Climbed a Tree
By MARK TWAIN
Next morning, just before dawn, when about five hundred and fifty miles from St. Joseph, our mud-wagon broke down. We were to be delayed five or six hours, and therefore we took horses, by invitation, and joined a party who were just starting on a buffalo hunt. It was noble sport galloping over the plain in the dewy freshness of the morning, but our part of the hunt ended in disaster and disgrace, for a wounded buffalo bull chased the passenger Bemis nearly two miles, and then he forsook his horse and took to a lone tree. He was very sullen about the matter for some twenty-four hours, but at last he began to soften little by little, and finally he said: "Well, it was not funny, and there was no sense in those gawks making themselves so facetious over it. I tell you I was angry in earnest for awhile. I should have shot that long gangly lubber they called Hank, if I could have done it without crippling six or seven other people--but of course I couldn't, the old 'Allen's' so confounded comprehensive. I wish those loafers had been up in the tree; they wouldn't have wanted to laugh so. If I had had a horse worth a cent--but no, the minute he saw that buffalo bull wheel on him and give a bellow, he raised straight up in the air and stood on his heels. The saddle began to slip, and I took him round the neck and laid close to him, and began to pray. Then he came down and stood up on the other end awhile, and the bull actually stopped pawing sand and bellowing to contemplate the inhuman spectacle. Then the bull made a pass at him and uttered a bellow that sounded perfectly frightful, it was so close to me, and that seemed to literally prostrate my horse's reason, and make a raving distracted maniac of him, and I wish I may die if he didn't stand on his head for a quarter of a minute and shed tears. He was absolutely out of his mind--he was, as sure as truth itself, and he really didn't know what he was doing. Then the bull came charging at us, and my horse dropped down on all fours and took a fresh start--and then for the next ten minutes he would actually throw one hand-spring after another so fast that the bull began to get unsettled, too, and didn't know where to start in--and so he stood there sneezing, and shovelling dust over his back, and bellowing every now and then, and thinking he had got a fifteen-hundred dollar circus horse for breakfast, certain. Well, I was first out on his neck--the horse's, not the bull's--and then underneath, and next on his rump, and sometimes head up, and sometimes heels--but I tell you it seemed solemn and awful to be ripping and tearing and carrying on so in the presence of death, as you might say. Pretty soon the bull made a snatch for us and brought away some of my horse's tail (I suppose, but do not know, being pretty busy at the time), but something made him hungry for solitude and suggested to him to get up and hunt for it. And then you ought to have seen that spider legged old skeleton go! and you ought to have seen the bull cut out after him, too--head down, tongue out, tail up, bellowing like everything, and actually mowing down the weeds, and tearing up the earth, and boosting up the sand like a whirlwind! By George, it was a hot race! I and the saddle were back on the rump, and I had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to the pommel with both hands. First we left the dogs behind; then we passed a jackass rabbit; then we overtook a cayote, and were gaining on an antelope when the rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty yards off to the left, and as the saddle went down over the horse's rump he gave it a lift with his heels that sent it more than four hundred yards up in the air, I wish I may die in a minute if he didn't. I fell at the foot of the only solitary tree there was in nine counties adjacent (as any creature could see with the naked eye), and the next second I had hold of the bark with four sets of nails and my teeth, and the next second after that I was astraddle of the main limb and blaspheming my luck in a way that made my breath smell of brimstone. I had the bull, now, if he did not think of one thing. But that one thing I dreaded. I dreaded it very seriously. There was a possibility that the bull might not think of it, but there were greater chances that he would. I made up my mind what I would do in case he did. It was a little over forty feet to the ground from where I sat. I cautiously unwound the lariat from the pommel of my saddle --" "Your saddle? Did you take your saddle up in the tree with you?" "Take it up in the tree with me? Why, how you talk. Of course I didn't. No man could do that. It fell in the tree when it came down." "Oh--exactly." "Certainly. I unwound the lariat, and fastened one end of it to the limb. It was the very best green raw-hide, and capable of sustaining tons. I made a slip-noose in the other end, and then hung it down to see the length. It reached down twenty-two feet--half way to the ground. I then loaded every barrel of the Allen with a double charge. I felt satisfied. I said to myself, if he never thinks of that one thing that I dread, all right--but if he does, all right anyhow--I am fixed for him. But don't you know that the very thing a man dreads is the thing that always happens? Indeed it is so. I watched the bull, now, with anxiety--anxiety which no one can conceive of who has not been in such a situation and felt that at any moment death might come. Presently a thought came into the bull's eye. I knew it! said I--if my nerve fails now, I am lost. Sure enough, it was just as I had dreaded, he started in to climb the tree --" "What, the bull?" "Of course--who else?" "But a bull can't climb a tree." "He can't, can't he? Since you know so much about it, did you ever see a bull try?" "No! I never dreamt of such a thing." "Well, then, what is the use of your talking that way, then? Because you never saw a thing done, is that any reason why it can't be done?" "Well, all right--go on. What did you do?" "The bull started up, and got along well for about ten feet, then slipped and slid back. I breathed easier. He tried it again--got up a little higher--slipped again. But he came at it once more, and this time he was careful. He got gradually higher and higher, and my spirits went down more and more. Up he came--an inch at a time--with his eyes hot, and his tongue hanging out. Higher and higher--hitched his foot over the stump of a limb, and looked up, as much as to say, 'You are my meat, friend.' Up again--higher and higher, and getting more excited the closer he got. He was within ten feet of me! I took a long breath,--and then said I, 'It is now or never.' I had the coil of the lariat all ready; I paid it out slowly, till it hung right over his head; all of a sudden I let go of the slack, and the slipnoose fell fairly round his neck! Quicker than lightning I out with the Allen and let him have it in the face. It was an awful roar, and must have scared the bull out of his senses. When the smoke cleared away, there he was, dangling in the air, twenty foot from the ground, and going out of one convulsion into another faster than you could count! I didn't stop to count, anyhow--I shinned down the tree and shot for home." "Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it?" "I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if it isn't." "Well, we can't refuse to believe it, and we don't. But if there were some proofs --" "Proofs! Did I bring back my lariat?" "No." "Did I bring back my horse?" "No." "Did you ever see the bull again?" "No." "Well, then, what more do you want? I never saw anybody as particular as you are about a little thing like that." I made up my mind that if this man was not a liar he only missed it by the skin of his teeth.
Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.
~ Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Re the quote from Augustine: it is from Confessions, noting the impact of reading a work of Cicero on the study of philosophy...