We look forward to seeing as many as many of you as possible this year, but sadly there is a final, more somber note. Ridgeview will be donating the entirety of its profits this year to our friends at Heritage Christian School. Over the break, they suffered a tremendous tragedy as one of their families, the Case family, lost a mother, father, and daughter in a motor vehicle accident while travelling in Arizona.

On Saturday evening, Ridgeview held its eighth annual Numis Night. This was the best attended donor event in Ridgeview’s history. The venue, the Windsong Estate Event Center, was beautiful. Looking westward, as we bid on items, we watched the sun set over the Front Range before sitting down to eat.

Mr. Gallacher was the best of the old school. He was a gentleman. This is a powerful and sincere compliment, particularly if our definition of gentleman is not so denuded as to refer to any man, and not so restrictive as to only have an historical connotation. It is, moreover, a concept that most men believe they ought to aspire to or be regarded as.

We are scouring the student body for students who believe in Ridgeview and are proud of their school. Proud of their school—not just proud of themselves. We want students who have done academically well, but we acknowledge that not every great student will have a 4.0.

This Monday is Veterans Day – the 105th since President Wilson brought it into being as Armistice Day in 1919. It is interesting to note in acknowledging this day that there are no calls for students to be released from schools on this day as there are for other holidays. A part of this might be attributable to the growing rift between those who have served, especially in combat roles, and the ordinary citizens they have served to protect.

Culturally, Ridgeview is a borrower. Any individual or institution that makes a mainstay of self-examination is likely to become a borrower. It is almost inevitable that, in inquiring about themselves, they will discover that others are doing better or more interesting things, and to incorporate those things into their own doings. When an individual does this, we call it a habit; when an institution does this, we come to call it a tradition.

I am grateful for the sacrifices Ridgeview mothers have made and their innumerable contributions, and without any desire to see those contributions lessened, at present, there is too much maternal and too little paternal. In boys in particular, this has resulted in children who are less resilient, less physically developed, less determined, less disciplined, and as a school, we need greater involvement from men. Put more plainly, half of our population cannot abdicate without consequence.

Without wanting to give the indication that we are content or have grown complacent, there are no alarm bells to be rung—neither doom on the horizon nor terrible portents. Instead, what I should like to have discussed with our community in these missed addresses is the state of our cultural affairs as they relate to parent volunteerism and student welfare.

The other day, my daughter queried me asking whether I could believe that the year was nearly over, and that this would mean the beginning of high school for her. That aspect of this progression is distressing, but instead of self-indulgent forlornness I told her that it all felt as though it were happening too quickly.

“April is the cruelest month,” wrote T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land. While it is not at all what Eliot intended, this line comes to mind each spring when the pace of the work feels relentless. Fortunately, it is a bit like a duck swimming about: the feet are paddling like mad beneath the water and all seems serene above the surface.

Our first term of the year, Michaelmas, has been a rather remarkable one. As I reiterated at our assembly this past Friday, we have witnessed dramatic progress in relation to several initiatives, and the vigor and industriousness of our students merits recognition.

A “new year” is an arbitrary event in the sense that time and our various demarcations of it (e.g., seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, etc.), are contrivances of convenience rather than natural phenomena. We are, for reasons both rational and irrational, obsessed with time as the register of our lives and the events we have assigned significance.