Congratulations To Our First-Ever Graduating Class, the Class of 2023!
Congratulations to our first graduating senior class! Our students will be attending the following colleges: Benedictine College, the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Tarleton State University, University of Dallas, and AIMS Community College. Students attending four year American Universities were offered $71,000 in scholarship money. As a class, the students were accepted by all but one of the colleges that they applied to attend.
We are so proud of the accomplishments and hard work these students have completed, and we look forward to seeing the wonderful things they accomplish in the future!
Spring Campaign!
Did you know? St. John Paul II High School raises approximately 60% of the cost per student to offset tuition! Help us reach our goal! We aim to raise $50,000 in additional support before this fiscal year ends (on June 30th) to help us reach funding for the 2023-2024 school year. We would love it if you would prayerfully consider a gift as part of your tithe this month!
Give online at: https://jp2hs.com/online-giving/ Or Mail a check made out to St. John Paul High School to 1250 7th Street, Windsor, Colorado 80550.
Contact Gina at gbrandt@jpiihs.com if you have questions!
Event Snapshot: Mother-Daughter Tea
At the end of April, our students organized a lovely Mother-Daughter Tea for members of the community. During the tea, Mrs. Audrey Tool was invited to speak about the new Marisol Project in Northern Colorado. Our students sold rosaries and took donations for Marisol Health, and over the course of the afternoon raised almost $1,500 for the project! Thank you to everyone who came out to support this amazing cause.
From the Headmaster’s Desk: Beans in the Rain (A Short Story for our Graduating Seniors)
By Mr. Blaise Hockel
The following narrative is fictional. None of the people, places, or events are real. Or they are, and the author is saying this simply so you don’t spend time trying to attach fictitious names to factual faces.
Windsor, Colorado is what the old crowd could call a deceptive city. When it first came to be, plummeting to its feet with all the solemnity of a newly born colt, it got itself up and running with barely a fumble. The city had one stop light, convenient access to the best biker bar in the United States, and was something of an agricultural Xanadu. Now, however, Windsor had the sense of the great American sameness—the main drag still had a hint of the old town. The Mill had been converted into a bar, a brewery, and an Italian joint. The lake had built up a boardwalk and an accessible playground, mounting dummy pelicans to logs just off shore to inspire the birds and the people alike to flock to its shores.
The deceptiveness of the city was not a wicked conceit, nor was it to be likened to a lipstick pig. To call Windsor deceptive is the same kind of deceptiveness that you find in an uncouth friend from the good old days who has grown up to become suave. He looks the part alright, but something in his grin just tells you that he still remembers the time you slipped in the muck down by the creek and how he helped you slip in a second time. That’s not even to say it was malicious, but the creek, much like the new debonair has had a lot of quick growth go up around it, so the memory seems to exist only in ripples and reflection now. But there, alongside the Poudre River inside an old church built up into a new and magnificent church there was the school in which our short story takes place.
The Headmaster arrived early that morning, and the mid-May sun should have been brilliant in the desert sky, but the spring had tucked itself away, spreading a general malaise over the state. Cottonwoods refused to leaf, considering it pointless to proffer shade in a sunless world. The blossoming trees, in a fit of vanity, had determined to blossom thinking they would be the more beautiful for being soaked, and of course the floozy trees just got themselves battered and the wet blossoms plastered the ground in testament to an old Ginsberg poem. The only ones that seemed to benefit from the week’s unseasonable downpour were the grass and the Headmaster himself—the grass grew high and unruly, and the Headmaster reveled in the puddle-wonderful world, going so far as to stomp in some of the convenient puddles as he made his way into the new high school.
The Headmaster was on his way to teach economics to the Beans. Economics was not the primary forte of the Headmaster, but he was glad of the class this morning. It was to be his last lesson with the Beans before they graduated, and he was a sentimental man. The Beans would probably be unmanageable today. They only had five days before they were released from their indentured servitude to the house of learning—the Bean Castle, as the Headmaster referred to it in his own head—but as the lesson was on personal finance the Headmaster felt hopeful that just maybe they would be willing to listen for one more day. Inside the Bean Castle, the lights had been flicked on and the first activity of the morning was going about its business.
Four or five students milled about, feigning some emotion that it was really to early to be feeling at all. Mrs. Berg was greeting people at the front desk, and her exuberant joy was so genuine that it was already beginning thaw the high school frostiness. Mr. Pace had made his way to the adoration chapel furtively as a deer longing for running water. Somewhere down the hall the Headmaster could hear the chatter and laughter of a few of the other teachers, and he turned away from them, headed for the stairs and the second floor above. He would be sequestered there all day with meetings and emails, but before any of those duties, the Headmaster would see to the Beans.
The office unlocked, and the clutter was still arranged artfully on the shelves, desk, every available surface. The letters to read and respond to, the books with everything but a bookmark wedged between their pages to save a place, the insurance paperwork, the latest proposal from the architects, and a dozen other things that would need attention today. The Headmaster set his bag down on the chair, flicked on the lights, and took up his watering can. Every morning this spring had started the same way—the entrance, the appraisal, the ascent, and then tending to the seedlings. A few beets, some carrots, summer squash, the succulent, bulbing garlic, and a few Rocky Mountain pines for the yard. The watering done, the Headmaster set the pot of coffee on and opened the classroom to prepare the Bean’s lesson.
He would hear the Beans before he saw them, and he would know them by their step on the stairs. They were unique, distinctive creatures, and the Headmaster adored each one of them. They didn’t know that the Headmaster called them “the Beans”, but the nickname came from their sophomore and junior years in the Bean Castle. They had started doodling little caricatures of themselves that looked like an odd blend of sock puppets and wugs. The students had dubbed these doodles ‘beans’. The Headmaster tended to take people at their word, and so they became the Beans. So really it was only a matter of time until the new high school became the Bean Castle—it was a natural progression, really. But as the Beans made their way up the stairs (some of their feet deliberate, some of their feet galumphing, and some of them barely stirring the air as they glided to their seats) the Headmaster heard them, and knew each one. The class began, as they always did, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Headmaster listened to their intentions (a mother, a sister, many that were held in the silence of the hearts), they prayed, and class started. Or, rather, it was supposed to.
It is true of every student in every school in America. I would hazard to guess that this extends well beyond the boundaries of nations, and even beyond the confines of time itself. It is perhaps one of the greatest of all human truths, and it was known to the Headmaster, and so it was anticipated. The immutable law of nature that befell the class was this: that, as soon as the lesson commenced, the students tried to get the Headmaster off-track. But, as I say, the Headmaster was used to the this tactic, and it was his secret pastime to find a way to take whatever sidetrack or segue, however obscure, and try to tether it back to the lesson. Some days, in fact, he would start the lesson with what the Beans thought was him being distracted himself, they would find themselves suckered and conned into a lengthy lesson to which they had devoted more attention than they knew they were capable of. And so it was today, and it was Ms. Lima and Mr. Pinto that opened the conversation.
“So, Headmaster,” They began, and the Headmaster knew from the tone of their voice that it was going to be a good one today, “We’ve got a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“So, we were reading a speech from Steven Hawking, right? And he gives some advice to his kids—he says, ‘Look up at the stars, not down at your feet’. Well, I say that you should look at the stars. Have dreams and think about the big stuff, you know? But Pinto says that’s stupid.”
“Why do you say that, Pinto?”
“Because that’s how you fall on your ass.”
“Language, Mr. Pinto.”
“Right, sorry. But what I mean is, it’s nice to have your eyes ought for the good stuff, right, but say there’s a pothole, and you miss it because you were staring at the stars instead of paying attention to where you’re going. It’s poet stuff, and it’s stupid.”
“I’m not sure whether you’ve insulted Mr. Hawking for calling him stupid, or insulted poets for numbering Mr. Hawking among them, Mr. Pinto.”
The Beans laughed. It wasn’t that it was funny to merit a laugh, but they thought they had succeeded in their ploy, and so the laughter was at the success of their distraction. But the Headmaster had another idea.
“Would someone care to respond to Ms. Lima or Mr. Pinto? How about you, Ms. Cannellini?”
The students cast about for a moment, thinking as hard as they had ever thought to try and keep the ruse going. This was, of course, the way to keep the economy away, through tedious and tangential conversations. Ms. Cannellini rolled over it for a moment in her mind—she had a funny way of tilting her head at just thirty-five degrees when deep in thought, as though the idea would slide down to the back of her head, slip into her throat, and she’d be able to let it tumble off her tongue. Today was no disappointment.
“I think they’ve both got a point, but it’s kind of a generalization. We’re not really supposed to take either at face value, but it’s the ideal, right? We’ve got to look up at the stars so we have something to hope for, but we have to look down at out feet so we don’t trip.”
“Fair,” the Headmaster replied, and he looked out past the Beans, out at the rain threatening an almost biblical flood, “But which one has the better point? Take a stand. If you have to agree with one of them, whose argument seems the better advice?”
Ms. Chickpea sided with Ms. Lima, Ms. Fava (predictably) sided with Mr. Pinto. Ms. Mung rolled them both around for a minute, as though really taking the question to heart, and she finally said, “Are those the only two options?”
“Again, that’s fair,” replied the Headmaster. “Are we sure that we’re being thorough and exhaustive?” They hated the phrase. They’d learned it in logic, and they hated—no, they loathed—the use of the phrase because it meant that they were actually learning. They knew there was a trap laid out for them, but they couldn’t see it. Even if they felt it closing in, the Beans couldn’t see how the Headmaster was going to turn the distraction into a lesson. The muttering started, which was a sure-fire sign that they had spotted the trap. So the Headmaster answered himself.
“I think they both miss something.” He began. He still looked out the window, and the great clouds swelled by, loosing their torrent on the earth, rejoicing in being made clean. “I think that the real trick is knowing that there’s something to look for. In either instance, they ignore the real beauty of it. For the love of God, just look. It’s beautiful either way, if you don’t forget to look around. And with that, let’s take a look at budgeting.”
And inwardly the Headmaster wondered if that was the real reason he was glad for the rain—no matter whether you looked up or looked down, it found the means to captivate.
There is no moral to this story. This is just a story about a man who loved some Beans very much, and will miss them, for their ideas were as wonderful as the rain.
Blaise A. Hockel, Headmaster