Originally published in the October 2012 issue of Lacuna
1.
He named his rifle Persephone after Susanna’s favorite fruit of myth. Later, the blood and teeth he saw on the field stubble reminded him of the seeds of that fruit.
He didn’t name his knife anything because the knife was an extension of him. The knife was kept sheathed at his hip or at the small of his back. When he wore it on his chest with the handle pointing down and to the left the other men looked at him but didn’t say anything. When he wore the knife this way he was telling the heavens that he was bored to tears and needed to return to the place of silent breathing and the enemy not six feet away unknowing he was there to take what was most precious.
The knife was numbingly sharp and could cut transparent layers of wood and grass and anything else. He loved Persephone but he loved himself more. Covered in dead leaves and lying like a boxed corpse or striding from the wood as an apparition he could gather anything: lives if he cared to, but most precious of all was information. He could travel on information, and some of the most powerful men in the army were starting to notice.
Early September the heavens rewarded him. He was given orders that would take him away from the cavalry and send him out alone, on foot. Any other kind of man, he thought, would have been frightened or at the very least insulted by these orders, which isolated him from all the others and probably guaranteed Susanna’s widowhood. This was the sort of mission that would bury another kind of man.
James Pike thought these were orders of the most fragrant variety.
He squeezed his eyes shut and saw Susanna’s shoulder and neck. The smell of June sun on a snarl of hot leaves. Boys kicking dirt on him because he was fifteen and not five feet tall. What was he fighting for. To spill the reeking pearly guts of every butternut within his reach.
He named his rifle Persephone for the girl who comes up from the sky blue mouth of death every March.
2.
The man sat on the porch, legs crossed tight at the knee, arms folded tight against the chest. His eyes were closed and the corners of his thin mouth were turned down in a deep frown; Pike wasn’t sure if he was asleep, resting, or simply displeased.
It was a warm late October day but the man looked cold. Pike thought the man was Sherman but he couldn’t be sure. He had never seen a likeness of the general and he imagined Sherman as the type of leader who would be constantly surrounded by aides and always in motion. This man simply looked tired and old. His dark hair was thinning and seemed to have been cut by a dull knife. His chin and cheeks were stubbly. His blue coat was open at the throat, obscuring any stars or sign of rank that could prove to Pike that this was the Uncle Billy of legend. He was too far away and the man didn’t move.
Pike didn’t know what to do. He was exhausted to the point where he had to carefully balance upright in his boots and wobble in all directions at once so he wouldn’t collapse flat on his face. The past ten days he had spent in a canoe on the Tennessee, getting shot at by guerillas. Everything, including his cartridges, had gotten soaked at the bottom of the canoe. His stomach had stopped growling days ago. He wanted something to eat and he wanted praise. Something told him that General W.T. Sherman was not the man to give him such things.
Pike stroked his matted beard, shifted his weight slightly, and cleared his throat. “General Crook sends his compliments, sir,” he said. His voice was a croak and he couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken.
The man on the porch shifted his weight slightly, uncrossed his legs, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. When he dropped his hand to his knee his dark eyes were open and fixed angrily on Pike.
“I did not hear your approach, sir,” the man said. He stood up, slowly slapped the dust off his trousers, and glared at Pike. “I cannot place your accent, sir, or your mixed dress. Are you here to help me or run me through?”
Pike dropped his gaze to his filthy coat, which did indeed look gray from the dust and dirt. His wide belt was cinched tight against his hunger; tied now, not buckled. The knife sheath, smeared with blood, was strapped to his breast. He took a deep breath.
“Are you Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, sir, commander of the fifteenth army corps?”
The man walked down the porch steps and stood close to Pike. “I am not, sir. Tell me, how did you get past my picket lines?”
“Can you direct me to General Sherman, sir?” Pike thought the man’s face looked ancient; it had been scrubbed clean like a high-ranking officer’s face, but the creases were filled with dirt. He knew that some men called Sherman a lunatic. He also knew that in the month Sherman had lost his young son to typhoid. Maybe he had gone mad.
“Where are you from, son?”
“I was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, sir. But I moved ar --”
“The birthplace of General Grant,” the man said. “I was born in Lancaster.”
“Sir, are you General Sherman?”
“I am, but as of one hour ago, I am no longer in command of the Fifteenth Corps. Let you be the first soldier to congratulate me in person on my promotion to Commander of the Army of the Tennessee. The theater of war has become a safer place and the enemy will surrender by Christmas, by God.”
Pike pretended he didn’t understand the sarcasm. “Corporal James Pike, Fourth Ohio Cavalry, sir.” He saluted quickly, didn’t wait for a return salute, and reached into his bag for the two messages. He handed them to Sherman, who stared at him for a moment and then took the torn pieces of paper out of his hand.
Pike watched Sherman read the messages and waited to be dismissed. Or offered a place to sit and rest. Something to eat. When he realized the general was forthcoming with none of the above, he waited and studied the man’s face as he read. Pike knew what the messages said.
One was a telegraph from Grant which had been sent through by Crook. It was an order to drop all work on the railroad, cross the Tennessee River quickly, and head east toward Bridgeport. The other letter was in part a character reference from General Blair, who had written that Pike was a man deserving of the most complex and delicate missions.
“In conclusion: If you are reading this letter, General Sherman, you may regard the man standing before you as a truly gifted scout and ranger,” Sherman read aloud.
Pike bowed. Sherman cleared his throat.
“Your footfalls didn’t wake me and you avoided being detected by my picket lines. You paddled a canoe down the Tennessee River over Muscle Shoals with no ammunition and received not so much as a scratch on your person. Or at least no scratch that I can see. You’re a singular character, Pike. What can I do for you?”
“Give me something to eat, sir,” Pike said. “And then I will tell you what you can do for me.”
3.
He had been offered a horse and a change of clothes. He accepted the former and declined the latter. Two nights into the march toward Elkton, Pike was summoned to Sherman’s tent.
Pike had the gift of silent movement and obviously he knew it. Although he didn’t know why he was so blessed. Most of his young life was spent shouting above the clamor of the newspaper pressroom while his father occupied the quiet corner office upstairs. He didn’t stay in the business long enough to become deaf.
He watched Sherman write at his desk. Pike was not five feet away from the general and yet the older man did not know he was there. Pike wasn’t surprised; a few months ago he lay under a broken bridge while what seemed to be Stuart’s entire cavalry made valuable plans inches from his nose.
Now Pike breathed low and deep, mouth closed, feeling his lungs expand effortlessly. His heartbeat slowed to a whale’s pace. By watching the movements of Sherman’s hand, Pike could decipher what he was writing: The child that bore my name, and in whose future I reposed with more confidence than I did in my own plan of life, now floats a mere corpse, seeking a grave in a distant land.
The man’s hand paused above the paper. He took a deep breath and started writing again. I ask no sympathy. On, on I must go, to meet a soldier’s fate.
“Sir.”
Sherman carefully set aside his pen. “You did it again, Pike. Have you not announced yourself to my aide?” More humor than anger this time.
“I’m not certain where your aide is,” Pike replied. “Permission to enter.”
“Granted. Have a seat. And answer me this.”
“Yes sir.”
“Your accent.”
“Sir?”
Sherman adjusted the lantern so he could see Pike’s face. For a moment both men were silent. “Permission to speak candidly, sir,” said Pike after a moment. Sherman nodded slightly.
“As I like to say sir, I don’t speak like an Ohio man because I am only from Ohio on my mother and father’s side. I always wanted to be someone different. So I trained myself to speak different. So I could keep myself company. Give me two seconds with anyone sir, and I can speak in their manner. Perfectly.” Sherman’s diary entry moved him and he considered telling him about Susanna’s accent. Then he thought better of it.
“What is your favorite accent?” Sherman asked.
“It’s not really an accent sir, but I enjoy speaking in the style of Chaucer.”
“Ah,” Sherman said. “Can you imitate all of the southern accents?”
“Rebel accents? Easily, sir.”
“I have been thinking of a mission for you, Corporal. There are many variables, but one thing is almost certain – you will fail. You will be captured and jailed, at best. You will be hanged, most likely.”
Pike’s smile was wide and avid. Sherman looked at this smile, confused for a moment, and then continued. “There are many … how do I put it? There are many ‘what ifs’”
“What ifs are the purview of the charlatan,” Pike replied.
Sherman considered this for a moment and then dropped his head back and laughed. A dry, one note ha.
“Thank you for that, Pike,” Sherman said, looking at him again. “I note that the more dangerous the mission, the more desirous you are of earning it.”
“It’s true. I want to do something bold, sir. I want to be a hero. I want to be remembered.”
“Are there heroes in this war, Pike? Will we be remembered? As the men we were?”
4.
His orders were to burn the bridge crossing the Savannah River at Augusta in order to create confusion in Johnston’s army. Pike was to wait for news of Sherman’s mobilization toward Atlanta and then he would act.
Sherman had estimated that the odds were three to one that Pike would be caught. Pike thought his commander was being too generous. The odds were much worse and for that he was grateful.
Sherman wanted Pike to take a companion and disguise himself like a refugee from East Tennessee, work his way over the mountains into North Carolina, float down the river and burn the bridge.
He had refused to take a companion and so found himself alone on a raft in ragged butternut, lying on his back in the sodden summer heat, looking at the stars. Persephone was long gone and yet this was her time to be walking the Earth, was it not? Pike had time to wonder about the things he had lost in the past three years alone. Boots, horses, rifles. Teeth. Where were they now? What of Susanna and Frederick his hound. Would they know him. If he followed his orders properly he would be unrecognizable to the very end.
When the enemy called to him from the river bank he would sit up and holler back as someone else.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Getting off on Third Eye Blind
Originally published in New York Press in April 2000. Unexpurgated so I (and you) can relive its bitter joy. What would I say about 3eb today, 13 years later? "Always/Think we'll get more time"?
by Jessica Willis
There is a handsome man stumbling over a dirty snowbank on the edge of Tyler St. He
has pale blue eyes and dirty cowlicked hair. The Just Been Fucked look, some
would say. It’s a fair assessment, but a larger measure of his handsomeness
is that he is sporting what I would call Lush Hair–a dark, pungent cock’s
comb that says he sleeps where he lays and doesn’t care if he comes or
prays, as the song goes.
He, the former Johnny Bender of Bumlake High, the dark star in a long coat, should be naked and smoking in
a motel room right now, his hangover assuaged with coos and quim, but now, this
weekday, he’s on the tall side of 30 and the short side of his preferred
midday blood alcohol content: a beautiful loser without a ride in a town where
rides are hard currency. He might very well be a derelict, a bum in the old
language. He looks almost homeless. There is a liquor store, inevitably
named Cappy’s, or Crappy’s, across the street. That’s where he’s
going. A lonesome day for this handsome man.
He finally gets over the snowdrift and the traffic is slow enough for me to observe what he does next.
He doesn’t do anything. I pass by; eventually he lurches between the cars and is gone.
Handsome men don’t know what they are, and no one knows what to do about them, so they wincingly
endure and use the cliches at hand, to pass time and try to make some sense:
they "don’t fit in"; they "walk with the mighty"; they
"lie like dogs" with the tired, pretty young women who are still willing.
They are neither the tough guy nor the fey boy. They give head and they cry
with equal amounts of gusto. They might be good-looking, but they don’t
necessarily look good. They are not the male equivalent of a beautiful girl.
They act as mortal as they can. They do not feel blessed. They feel deep. What’s
that Devo line–half a goon and half a god?
The handsome man walks on, looking for handsome things. Walk on baby, walk on…on and on, Stephan
Jenkins begs a "hottie" in one of his songs. He’s singing about
one of his damaged women, but I’d like to think he is singing about himself.
Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind: the unapologetic frontman in a climate where frontmen are treated
with derision and arid awe, a full-time handsome man. A man handsome enough
to make me crumple in front of my stereo, lyrics sheet in hand, when Blue,
Third Eye Blind’s second record, is played in the apartment for the first
time. You want to absorb and memorize every inch of Jenkins’ lyrics. He
effortlessly plunders what was the last secure realm of the crazy, moneyed female:
conversational psychobabble. And not only that, he makes this hollow crisis
management rock. Really hard. He even makes it fertile and interesting.
During our recent conversation(on Valentine’s Day, naturally), Jenkins described "Wounded"–unarguably
the best song on Blue–as a "sexy song about sexual assault."
He’s not joking or being disingenuous; "Wounded" is four minutes
of the gunkiest, most freewheeling arena nosebleed rock this side of Montrose,
topped with a strenuous vocal catharsis that would make Bikini Kill’s Hanna
go red: "The guy who put his hands on you/Has got nothing to do with me,"
he reassures a violated female over a misleading strummy intro. By the end of
the track, he’s hooting up and down the scales like a girl uninterrupted:
"rock on baby, rock on/you say you can’t grow."
Much of the hugeness of Third Eye Blind’s sound on Blue (and on its self-titled first album,
the sleeper of 1997 that gave the world that heinously tuneful doot doot doot
single) is provided by the not-quite-handsome men who surround Jenkins: Brad
Hargreaves’ tumultuous drumming, bassist Arion Salazar’s arrangements,
the driving, alpha-male landscapes of lead guitarist Kevin Cadogan. But it’s
Jenkins’ limelight, all the way. Perhaps this is why Cadogan left the band
right after a gig at Sundance in January. According to an anonymous source at
Elektra, Cadogan’s departure came after "a unanimous decision"
within the band, since destructive "creative differences" had been
evident during the recording of Blue. Cadogan has since been replaced
by Tony Fredianelli, Third Eye Blind’s original guitarist, who left the
lineup in 1996, before the band was signed.
Of the return of his once and future guitarist, Jenkins says breezily, "We’re a closed society.
We hire from within." If there’s pre-divorce tension between Cadogan
and his bandmates on Blue, I can’t quite hear it. I wish I could,
because a touch of genuine, unintentional sonic angst would have made this perfectly
damn good record into a rough jewel. For reasons I can’t quite name, the
notion of trying to rock Sundance gives me the heebie-jeebies. Then again, I
am not a confident, handsome man who has caressed Charlize Theron’s hair.
More things about Jenkins:sometimes he ends statements in question form? Like this? In that Newspeak that
seems to have been borne straight out of the halls of Choate or Pencey Prep?
For example: "The girl in "Wounded"–it’s very personal?"
Any elaboration would "ferret her out, and that’s not okay"?
My question to him had been,"Who was she?" Because there’s a she embossed all over
Third Eye Blind’s narrative; an unnamed and gloriously screwed she who
often finds herself waffling, thrusting and ODing under the long shadow of Jenkins,
who has more than just a knack for slipping graphic, clumsy references to sex
and death into what could be just another good ’n’ forgettable breakthrough
hit. She is the wan, intelligent presence who makes Jenkins into a handsome,
pained man. Without her, he would be museless, or, at worst, a good-looking
6-foot-2 jock with an acid tongue. He’s got her though, and she’s
got him, and Jenkins is definitely the most cleansed when the ending is an unhappy
one. "When I walk out of a tragedy, like Lear," he says, "I
feel good. The demons were exorcised. I’m like, ‘Drinks for everybody!’"
Occasionally, Jenkins serenades this she, and it’s bedroom bard-dom at its most ugly beautiful: "I
lift your head while they change the hospital sheets/I would never lie to you,"
he blurts to his burnt-out babe in "The Background," an excellent
power ballad from the first album that cops Jimmy Page’s mincing "Over
the Hills and Far Away" intro. And occasionally he’s bragging about
the skills all over the FM–Blue’s "1000 Julys" is
flanged and phased-out gratuitous Apocalypse rockdom about making some girl
come. "She goes down on me" was the cutest, clearest line in "Semi-Charmed
Life" (doot doot doot), and this worried a lot of talk show folks when
special guest Third Eye Blind refused to change the line into something more
like "Let’s spend some time together."
One of his favorite words might be "fucking," used adjectivally, flatly and casual, as in, "Some
days I feel like a giant, like a demon, and some days I’m invisible and
fucking flawed, and neither one is true." His literary heroes (he graduated
UC Berkeley in ’88 with a lit major) are Kerouac, Sam Shepard, Wordsworth,
Tennessee Williams and "their sons," Lou Reed and Bob Dylan.
"Guy writers," he says with a chuckle. He refers to Shakespeare as a "guy."
His Valentine’s Day plans included rehearsal and a radio interview thing.
No date? "No date," he replied, like this is a foolish question. I
wanted to ask, "No Charlize?" But I don’t know how to pronounce
her name.
He is happy to talk about the trustfund cutie on Prozac who inspired the shouty "Losing a Whole Year,"
the first track on the debut album, which begins with an alt-rock sledgehammer
riff and the line, "I remember you and me used to spend/The whole goddamned
day in bed," and disintegrates into a "routine deceit" by the
end of the song.
"She’d say she was trying to be down. I think she’s a painter now. She sounded like money,"
he adds, quoting his own lyric. "It was funny and fragile, her desire for
grit." Next.
We return to "Wounded."
It has been my favorite song for what seems like forever, and Jenkins likes
it too. A manifesto for the bloodied, damaged and unbowed, which becomes evident
when he eagerly sings a stanza for me, a cappella, in a reedy, breathless voice.
Anybody could go around singing this. In the Third Eye Blind merchandise catalog,
included in the Blue CD case, there are "Wounded" baseball
caps for sale.
"Boom, I’m out
there." He’s talking about visiting the "Wounded" girl,
who apparently went to NYU. He seems to be warming to the idea of discussing
the story. "I visit her one semester, and she’s dressed all sexy.
Suede miniskirt. Big butt, big tits, big legs, long strides." Then the
bad thing happened to her. "The next time I see her, she’s got her
hair in a bun, loose clothes, and she’s protected and angry."
But time happened, the bruises
she feels will heal, to paraphrase the song, and eventually she shows skin again,
and goes back to sexiness and her long strides. "That’s where I get
the line ‘you walkin’ down shakin’ that ass again, and then you
walk on baby, walk on,’" he says. I would say this is a happy ending.
It is during this moment in the song that the music and the words hit a triumphant
climax, spurred by Jenkins’ perfectly timed "Ow!" Chiming, sustained
power chord to fade. Don’t tell me you can’t get your hands in the
air.
David Lee Plath. Sylvia
Lee Roth. I can’t think of a more chic, more durable morph: the star who
has a few trials by fire in his back pocket, the in-jokey nut who has the balls
to thank Klonipin by brand name on his first record, crossed with a man who
likes a big blast of anything with a summertime hottie walking on and on like
a cherry on top of it all.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
So Cool
Originally published in the New York Press, July 31st, 2001
by Jessica Willis
The summer of ’87, scored in 10 seconds of guitar tablature: a couple of deafening
power chords, arcing into an harmonic shimmy, and landsliding down again. A barely there pause and then, riding on a torchy hi-hat beat and a few more implosive chords, hair metal was spurred to its apex.
"In the still of the night I hear the wolf howl, honay!" Let the loitering outside
the L’il Peach looking for someone to buy us a case of Miller Genny games
begin, motherfuckers.
Whitesnake’s "Still of the Night" was well over six minutes long and pretentious
enough to whiff of Zeppelin, but lead vocalist David Coverdale was more mercenary
than any spreadsheet Page and Plant’s people could ever hope to scribble
up. After firing guitarist John Sykes, the tasty young god responsible for laying
down that unbelievably hollow and huge sound on the album, Coverdale snatched
up a poseur metal lineup that aimed to satisfy both the chinless geek boy and
the booby teen queen: bassist Rudy Sarzo from Quiet Riot, drummer Tommy Aldridge
from Thin Lizzy and guitarists Vivian Campbell (Dio) and the hideously pretty
Adrian Vandenberg, who looked like an Aryan with a Farrah ’do. It was all
cheekbones and gorgeous hair and instrumental breaks and it was the shit, man,
we ate it up like good blotter.
Not that anything else was going on that summer, except for the Crüe show at the Centrum,and Whitesnake was opening, it was gonna rule. But until then, it was too hot
to do anything, so we would stay inside and watch Whitesnake on MTV. Of course
it was the "Still of the Night" video, played in ceaseless rotation,
that completely numbed, titillated and belittled us. There was Tawny Kitaen,
the sixth Whitesnake, Coverdale’s bitch, video co-poseur, hollow and blowzy
and bored and beautiful like Sykes’ power chords; the girl none of us could
ever be or have, condemned to have auburn tendrils of her profuse hair stuck
in her lipgloss for eternity, always two steps away in her stiletto snakeskin
heels.
Coverdale made sure there was something for all of us to be wistful about that summer. I remember Fat Gino, sweating on his vinyl couch one listless afternoon, pulling absently at his pathetic thatch of straightened, coarse, dyed black hair, and staring at the spotlit, sunkissed image of Adrian Vandenberg on the screen. Fat Gino had tears in his eyes. Tears of longing and respect. "This is so cool,
man," he whispered. "This is so fuckin’ cool."
by Jessica Willis
The summer of ’87, scored in 10 seconds of guitar tablature: a couple of deafening
power chords, arcing into an harmonic shimmy, and landsliding down again. A barely there pause and then, riding on a torchy hi-hat beat and a few more implosive chords, hair metal was spurred to its apex.
"In the still of the night I hear the wolf howl, honay!" Let the loitering outside
the L’il Peach looking for someone to buy us a case of Miller Genny games
begin, motherfuckers.
Whitesnake’s "Still of the Night" was well over six minutes long and pretentious
enough to whiff of Zeppelin, but lead vocalist David Coverdale was more mercenary
than any spreadsheet Page and Plant’s people could ever hope to scribble
up. After firing guitarist John Sykes, the tasty young god responsible for laying
down that unbelievably hollow and huge sound on the album, Coverdale snatched
up a poseur metal lineup that aimed to satisfy both the chinless geek boy and
the booby teen queen: bassist Rudy Sarzo from Quiet Riot, drummer Tommy Aldridge
from Thin Lizzy and guitarists Vivian Campbell (Dio) and the hideously pretty
Adrian Vandenberg, who looked like an Aryan with a Farrah ’do. It was all
cheekbones and gorgeous hair and instrumental breaks and it was the shit, man,
we ate it up like good blotter.
Not that anything else was going on that summer, except for the Crüe show at the Centrum,and Whitesnake was opening, it was gonna rule. But until then, it was too hot
to do anything, so we would stay inside and watch Whitesnake on MTV. Of course
it was the "Still of the Night" video, played in ceaseless rotation,
that completely numbed, titillated and belittled us. There was Tawny Kitaen,
the sixth Whitesnake, Coverdale’s bitch, video co-poseur, hollow and blowzy
and bored and beautiful like Sykes’ power chords; the girl none of us could
ever be or have, condemned to have auburn tendrils of her profuse hair stuck
in her lipgloss for eternity, always two steps away in her stiletto snakeskin
heels.
Coverdale made sure there was something for all of us to be wistful about that summer. I remember Fat Gino, sweating on his vinyl couch one listless afternoon, pulling absently at his pathetic thatch of straightened, coarse, dyed black hair, and staring at the spotlit, sunkissed image of Adrian Vandenberg on the screen. Fat Gino had tears in his eyes. Tears of longing and respect. "This is so cool,
man," he whispered. "This is so fuckin’ cool."
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Border Crossing: The Juvenile Resource Center and Yearbook Photography
Jessica Willis
April 2012
Introduction
In the three years since the founding of the Juvenile Resource Center (JRC), the Pittsfield Public School district’s new alternative school, the yearbook photographers from the district’s two high schools have never visited the JRC to take pictures of the students. The objective of this intervention was to form a partnership with the high schools and have the yearbook staff visit the JRC and take pictures of the students.
At the same time, the researcher (who is a teacher at the JRC) sought to discover, through interviews and surveys with students, teachers, and administrators, what past and present barriers have prevented the JRC students from being included in their yearbooks. On a deeper level, the study sought to help students become connected to their school, classmates, and community through inclusion in their yearbook.
Interview data suggested that students who spend all or part of the day away from the campuses of their sending schools are unlikely to be represented (either through formal portraiture or informal photos) in their yearbook, and this absence may have negative repercussions for the student. Research suggests that yearbook and school photos provide a connection between the student, the school and community and “[w]ithout a school portrait, a modern childhood, at least as an aspiration, is in a sense incomplete” (Burke & Ribeiro de Castro, 2007, p. 215). At the same time, unflattering or insensitive school photography may also perpetuate stigma toward students with special needs and “[underscore] their status as less than desirable” (see Pfeiffer & Pfeiffer, 2011, p. 50).
The JRC is the campus for 52 high school students and 10 middle school students with moderate to severe behavioral issues from the Pittsfield Public School district. Students attend classes at the JRC for all or part of the school day; part-time students at the JRC return to their sending schools for other classes or go to work and/or volunteer commitments in the community.
The JRC is run by the Berkshire County Sheriff’s Department and the school district and is located in the county’s former House of Correction, a 140-year-old building that still retains much of its visual identity as a jail. The original bars are still on the windows, metal doors still close and lock with a heavy thud, and razor wire remains coiled atop the chain link fence surrounding the schoolyard.
There are fifteen 9th, 10th, and 11th graders currently enrolled in the researcher’s classroom at the JRC. Twelve of those students have Individualized Education Plans (IEPs); eight have a primary disability listed as Emotional; four have Multiple Disabilities.
Method of Intervention and Inquiry
The researcher interviewed three school staff members: one high school principal, one teacher/yearbook adviser, and one veteran special education teacher. Eight students were interviewed: five were from the researcher’s classroom and three were from the dropout prevention program for seniors. All students were interviewed in person at the JRC. The teacher/yearbook adviser was interviewed in person in her classroom; the principal and special education teacher responded to emailed surveys. The special education teacher and the teacher/yearbook adviser were from one sending school and the principal was from the other. All in-person interviews were audio taped and transcribed, and all participants were given pseudonyms to protect their identities. Students were chosen based on their availability and their willingness to be interviewed; every student invited to participate agreed to be interviewed.
The researcher chose to query staff members based on her prior relationship with them: Did she know them? Did she have a prior relationship with them? Did she like them?
During this part of the process the researcher recognized her bias about forming partnerships with her co-workers and realized that she may be missing out on fruitful collaboration experiences because she was hesitant to work with people whom she did not know well (see Canter et al, 2011).
Survey questions were as follows: “What, in your opinion, are the past and present barriers which have prevented the JRC’s inclusion in your high school’s yearbook?” and “Is there a way that the JRC’s programs could be more visible in a positive way in your school?” The last question, aimed at the yearbook advisers, sought to introduce the intervention objective: “Is it possible to schedule a time for you to visit and photograph students at the JRC?” In-person interview questions generated more conversationally but they were based on the survey questions.
Findings: “Off –Site, Out of Mind”
Interview data showed that the staff and most of the students agreed that the JRC should be included in the sending schools’ yearbooks, but staff and students identified different barriers to inclusion. The interviews also generated data about how the students felt they were viewed by others, how students and staff viewed the JRC, and how photography could help – or hurt – the facility’s identity as an alternative school and a former jail.
In addition to the barriers of separation from the sending schools’ campuses, social stigma, and lack of knowledge about the JRC by the school population at large, which were identified by the researcher’s students, three seniors in the dropout prevention program noted that the relatively transient nature of the JRC’s population made it difficult, or even undesirable, to be photographed for their sending schools’ yearbooks. Students enter and exit the programs at the JRC throughout the school year and this emerging theme of transience suggested that some JRC students may not wish to be remembered as being a part of the school. This transient theme was exclusive to the high school senior participants.
“This is my first year in the school [district] so I don’t have many memories,” said Violet, 18. Like the other two 18-year-old seniors interviewed for the study, she hadn’t gotten her senior portrait taken.
When asked if he was disappointed about not having his portrait or any other picture in his yearbook, Virgil shrugged. “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t lose sleep over it. It’s just a picture. In a stupid yearbook.” Earlier, he mentioned that he had just moved to Pittsfield from out of state. Despite their indifference to their presence in the yearbook, the seniors interviewed said they wouldn’t mind being associated with the JRC in candid photographs. “I would do it,” said Natalie.
The researcher had more time and access to the students in her own program, allowing for more in-depth interviews. The researcher’s students identified barriers that were different from those identified by the seniors. Carl, a 16-year-old 9th grader who was enrolled in the researcher’s full-time program, said that one barrier to inclusion in the yearbook was the JRC’s relative invisibility to the school population at large: “Most of the regular students haven’t even heard of programs like this,” he said.
At the start of the interview, Carl expressed his hesitation about being photographed for a product that didn’t matter much to him. “The yearbook is just a means … to reflect on what happened over the year and who your peers are,” he said. “It’s not a big thing to me but I’m … not much of a people person.” He suggested that the yearbook was for students who were “more attached to what the school does.”
Although Carl suggested that he wasn’t “attached” to his school, he became intrigued with the idea of having a photographer from both high schools visit and take pictures for the yearbook, noting that the JRC’s separateness (both physically and philosophically) had kept it out of the camera lens. Inclusion in the yearbook, Carl said, would be a way to “get our program out to the rest of the school,” and he “would actually find that interesting, seeing as how we’re a different program from what it normally would be. I haven’t heard of anybody actually taking pictures of a program like this.”
Carl also said that he had negative experiences with being photographed for school. During the interview, he pulled his school ID out of his pocket and showed his picture to the interviewer. “The photographer was telling me to do this special pose, like sit up straight,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t know why every single picture taken of me looks mean. He wanted me to sit up and look proper.” In the photograph, Carl is slumped over and scowling. When asked if the photo was a fair representation of him, he said, “half the time, yes.”
This exchange about Carl’s annoyance about being asked to do a “special pose” was reminiscent of the themes in “School Picture Day and Self-Concept” (Pfeiffer & Pfeiffer, 2011), where the authors’ son, normally a child with a “wide smile and twinkling eyes” was not encouraged to smile in his school photograph; instead, he started vacantly into the lens “with an expression that screams DISABILITY.” The authors also noted that these bad photographs become “permanent records of the student and class identities,” (2011, p. 50), thereby furthering the permanently negative views of students with disabilities. Studying his glum expression on his school ID, Carl said:
I’ve actually been referred to as like a ‘special ed person’ and that actually offended me. I’m not really special ed. I’m perfectly capable, it’s just harder for me in certain situations. Like with … a classroom full of people, I’m not too comfortable with that. The school system is just attempting to put labels on us. It’s just not fair.
Other students who took part in the study echoed Carl’s desire to be photographed if it would be a positive form of public relations for the JRC. “I wouldn’t care [about being photographed],” said Samantha, a 17-year-old junior and part-time JRC student. “I would just sit here and smile if someone were taking a picture of me.”
Samantha said she liked being a student at the JRC but she was uncomfortable with being in a former jail. “[The bars on the windows] don’t make me feel comfortable here,” she said. “It just reminds me we’re in a jail and we can’t get out.” Carl also mentioned that being “wanded” by sheriff’s deputies and having to pass through a metal detector hen he entered the building made him “feel like [he] was being treated like a criminal.”
Another student, 15-year-old Kevin, felt that yearbook photography wouldn’t help the JRC’s identity. “Pictures aren’t going to change anything,” he said. Then he added, “the bars on the windows ain’t cool. Don’t let them take pictures of the bars.” This last comment suggested that the building (and its students) were vulnerable to being photographed in an unflattering way if they (outsiders unfamiliar with the JRC) were insensitive to how the JRC students wanted to be seen.
In contrast to the students, the high school principal felt that the JRC’s primary barriers to inclusion in the yearbook were related to access, namely, a “lack of communication with the JRC regarding picture day and a lack of access to JRC students.” In addition, the principal reported that “if [JRC students] do not participate in extracurriculars at [the high school], it is highly unlikely they will be photographed.”
Anne, the teacher/yearbook adviser (who also acts as the main photographer), echoed the principal’s statement that a lack of access and non-participation in extracurricular activities contributed to the JRC’s absence from the yearbook. Anne has been the high school’s yearbook adviser for the past 22 years, and in that span of time, more and more off-campus programs have been created. As more and more school programs are located in different parts of the city, it has become a “challenge” to find all of the 210 seniors in the graduating class and managing the yearbook requires “a little bit of detective [work].”
Even the on-campus students who were enrolled in vocational study and didn’t have time to take part in extracurricular activities often were excluded from the yearbook, according to Anne. “They spend three periods a day in their shop,” she said. “They’re not even passing by at bell time. They’re not being seen.” The JRC’s invisibility to on-campus life, compounded by its geographical separation (the JRC and Anne’s school are 2.5 miles apart), made it even more unlikely that the JRC or its students would be included in the yearbook (1).
“I know [the JRC] exists but I don’t know a great deal about it,” she said.
When the researcher mentioned that her students “felt like they have been forgotten,” Anne was candid.
“And they have!” She exclaimed. “To be honest we kind of … yeah, that’s very true. It’s very clear like every single day, whether I can keep up with it or not, what events are going on here. You know and that keeps us busy.”
Anne also mentioned that a lack of time to go off-campus and photograph other programs was a barrier. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t go out to the other places where the students are. I don’t have the time, I’m a teacher,” she said. Anne did try to visit the JRC on one occasion to take photographs, but she had to cancel her visit because she could not get a substitute teacher.
Discussion: The Border Crosser
In “The School Photograph: Portraiture and the Art of Assembling the Body of the Schoolchild” (2007) authors Burke and de Castro make the point that school photography is a “ubiquitous marker of schooling,” and its familiarity makes it “easily overlooked,” thereby hiding its importance (2007, p. 214).
The observations of Carl and Kevin indicated that the two youngsters understood the importance of their photographed presence in their school’s yearbook; Kevin in particular, with his plea to not let them take pictures of the bars, suggested an understanding of the risks involved: Risk to his identity, his classmates’ identity, his school building’s identity, and how he will be seen in perpetuity.
Carl’s comment that photographing him and his classmates would be “a ... way of getting it out there” suggests that the JRC students want recognized and connected to other schools and to the community. At the same time, the students feel conflicted about the JRC’s identity as a former jail. Despite this conflict – or perhaps because of it -- the students are willing to partner with the school and try to “get it out there.” School photography is emblematic of that connection between school, home, self, and the community:
It seems that the school photograph and in particular the embodiment of school in the annual portrait that finds its place in the home is neither public nor private but straddles the two domains acting as a border crosser encouraging emotional investment in the notion of school. Crucial here is the inexorable order, regularity and persistence of form and style generating assurance and belief and indeed hope in the effects of education on generations of children (Burke & de Castro, 2007, p. 216).
Conclusion
The JRC’s absence from the high school yearbooks is seen by the district staff as a fault of geographics, lack of access to students, and time constraints; the JRC students see it as the fault of continued stigmatization. Although these views are different, everyone interviewed for this project agreed that the JRC should be a presence in the yearbooks of the city’s two high schools.
Taking the next step – a visit from the yearbook staff for candid and group pictures – has yet to happen. This project, like many partnerships, has no clear end in sight. Anne’s busy schedule has prevented her from visiting the JRC and taking pictures, but she recently made this remark, via email, to the researcher: “Why don’t you take your own photographs and send them to me. Just about any [electronic] format will work. There’s still time.”
The suggestion that we (the JRC population) take responsibility for our own images is a new and welcome development in this study and will make it much easier for the JRC to become part of the yearbook – on the JRC students’ own terms. However, presence in the yearbook is only the beginning of the process of helping the students forge a positive connection to the JRC and their community.
References and Notes
Burke, C. & de Castro, H. (2007). The School Photograph: Portraiture and the Art of
Assembling the Body of the Schoolchild. History of Education, 36 (2), 213-226.
Canter, et al. (2011). School librarians: The forgotten partners. Teaching Exceptional
Children 43 (5), 14-20.
Pfeiffer, M.A., & Pfeiffer, K.T. (2011). School Picture Day and Self-Concept. Teaching
Exceptional Children 43 (3), 50-54.
All in-person interviews took place on February 29th, 2012 and March 6th, 2012.
(1) At this point in the conversation, I asked Anne if she thought that the increasing popularity of social media Web sites (like Facebook) has decreased the yearbook’s significance among modern high schoolers. Are students more apathetic about the yearbook now? “A little bit. I think so,” Anne replied. “And I think it’s because we have so much more access to images now. I mean if you were in a yearbook years ago … that’s what you got. It’s kind of an old fashioned thing in a way. I mean, kids want them, but as far as the excitement of it …” The possible connection between the increased use of social media and the decrease in the popularity of the yearbook warrants further study.
April 2012
Introduction
In the three years since the founding of the Juvenile Resource Center (JRC), the Pittsfield Public School district’s new alternative school, the yearbook photographers from the district’s two high schools have never visited the JRC to take pictures of the students. The objective of this intervention was to form a partnership with the high schools and have the yearbook staff visit the JRC and take pictures of the students.
At the same time, the researcher (who is a teacher at the JRC) sought to discover, through interviews and surveys with students, teachers, and administrators, what past and present barriers have prevented the JRC students from being included in their yearbooks. On a deeper level, the study sought to help students become connected to their school, classmates, and community through inclusion in their yearbook.
Interview data suggested that students who spend all or part of the day away from the campuses of their sending schools are unlikely to be represented (either through formal portraiture or informal photos) in their yearbook, and this absence may have negative repercussions for the student. Research suggests that yearbook and school photos provide a connection between the student, the school and community and “[w]ithout a school portrait, a modern childhood, at least as an aspiration, is in a sense incomplete” (Burke & Ribeiro de Castro, 2007, p. 215). At the same time, unflattering or insensitive school photography may also perpetuate stigma toward students with special needs and “[underscore] their status as less than desirable” (see Pfeiffer & Pfeiffer, 2011, p. 50).
The JRC is the campus for 52 high school students and 10 middle school students with moderate to severe behavioral issues from the Pittsfield Public School district. Students attend classes at the JRC for all or part of the school day; part-time students at the JRC return to their sending schools for other classes or go to work and/or volunteer commitments in the community.
The JRC is run by the Berkshire County Sheriff’s Department and the school district and is located in the county’s former House of Correction, a 140-year-old building that still retains much of its visual identity as a jail. The original bars are still on the windows, metal doors still close and lock with a heavy thud, and razor wire remains coiled atop the chain link fence surrounding the schoolyard.
There are fifteen 9th, 10th, and 11th graders currently enrolled in the researcher’s classroom at the JRC. Twelve of those students have Individualized Education Plans (IEPs); eight have a primary disability listed as Emotional; four have Multiple Disabilities.
Method of Intervention and Inquiry
The researcher interviewed three school staff members: one high school principal, one teacher/yearbook adviser, and one veteran special education teacher. Eight students were interviewed: five were from the researcher’s classroom and three were from the dropout prevention program for seniors. All students were interviewed in person at the JRC. The teacher/yearbook adviser was interviewed in person in her classroom; the principal and special education teacher responded to emailed surveys. The special education teacher and the teacher/yearbook adviser were from one sending school and the principal was from the other. All in-person interviews were audio taped and transcribed, and all participants were given pseudonyms to protect their identities. Students were chosen based on their availability and their willingness to be interviewed; every student invited to participate agreed to be interviewed.
The researcher chose to query staff members based on her prior relationship with them: Did she know them? Did she have a prior relationship with them? Did she like them?
During this part of the process the researcher recognized her bias about forming partnerships with her co-workers and realized that she may be missing out on fruitful collaboration experiences because she was hesitant to work with people whom she did not know well (see Canter et al, 2011).
Survey questions were as follows: “What, in your opinion, are the past and present barriers which have prevented the JRC’s inclusion in your high school’s yearbook?” and “Is there a way that the JRC’s programs could be more visible in a positive way in your school?” The last question, aimed at the yearbook advisers, sought to introduce the intervention objective: “Is it possible to schedule a time for you to visit and photograph students at the JRC?” In-person interview questions generated more conversationally but they were based on the survey questions.
Findings: “Off –Site, Out of Mind”
Interview data showed that the staff and most of the students agreed that the JRC should be included in the sending schools’ yearbooks, but staff and students identified different barriers to inclusion. The interviews also generated data about how the students felt they were viewed by others, how students and staff viewed the JRC, and how photography could help – or hurt – the facility’s identity as an alternative school and a former jail.
In addition to the barriers of separation from the sending schools’ campuses, social stigma, and lack of knowledge about the JRC by the school population at large, which were identified by the researcher’s students, three seniors in the dropout prevention program noted that the relatively transient nature of the JRC’s population made it difficult, or even undesirable, to be photographed for their sending schools’ yearbooks. Students enter and exit the programs at the JRC throughout the school year and this emerging theme of transience suggested that some JRC students may not wish to be remembered as being a part of the school. This transient theme was exclusive to the high school senior participants.
“This is my first year in the school [district] so I don’t have many memories,” said Violet, 18. Like the other two 18-year-old seniors interviewed for the study, she hadn’t gotten her senior portrait taken.
When asked if he was disappointed about not having his portrait or any other picture in his yearbook, Virgil shrugged. “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t lose sleep over it. It’s just a picture. In a stupid yearbook.” Earlier, he mentioned that he had just moved to Pittsfield from out of state. Despite their indifference to their presence in the yearbook, the seniors interviewed said they wouldn’t mind being associated with the JRC in candid photographs. “I would do it,” said Natalie.
The researcher had more time and access to the students in her own program, allowing for more in-depth interviews. The researcher’s students identified barriers that were different from those identified by the seniors. Carl, a 16-year-old 9th grader who was enrolled in the researcher’s full-time program, said that one barrier to inclusion in the yearbook was the JRC’s relative invisibility to the school population at large: “Most of the regular students haven’t even heard of programs like this,” he said.
At the start of the interview, Carl expressed his hesitation about being photographed for a product that didn’t matter much to him. “The yearbook is just a means … to reflect on what happened over the year and who your peers are,” he said. “It’s not a big thing to me but I’m … not much of a people person.” He suggested that the yearbook was for students who were “more attached to what the school does.”
Although Carl suggested that he wasn’t “attached” to his school, he became intrigued with the idea of having a photographer from both high schools visit and take pictures for the yearbook, noting that the JRC’s separateness (both physically and philosophically) had kept it out of the camera lens. Inclusion in the yearbook, Carl said, would be a way to “get our program out to the rest of the school,” and he “would actually find that interesting, seeing as how we’re a different program from what it normally would be. I haven’t heard of anybody actually taking pictures of a program like this.”
Carl also said that he had negative experiences with being photographed for school. During the interview, he pulled his school ID out of his pocket and showed his picture to the interviewer. “The photographer was telling me to do this special pose, like sit up straight,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t know why every single picture taken of me looks mean. He wanted me to sit up and look proper.” In the photograph, Carl is slumped over and scowling. When asked if the photo was a fair representation of him, he said, “half the time, yes.”
This exchange about Carl’s annoyance about being asked to do a “special pose” was reminiscent of the themes in “School Picture Day and Self-Concept” (Pfeiffer & Pfeiffer, 2011), where the authors’ son, normally a child with a “wide smile and twinkling eyes” was not encouraged to smile in his school photograph; instead, he started vacantly into the lens “with an expression that screams DISABILITY.” The authors also noted that these bad photographs become “permanent records of the student and class identities,” (2011, p. 50), thereby furthering the permanently negative views of students with disabilities. Studying his glum expression on his school ID, Carl said:
I’ve actually been referred to as like a ‘special ed person’ and that actually offended me. I’m not really special ed. I’m perfectly capable, it’s just harder for me in certain situations. Like with … a classroom full of people, I’m not too comfortable with that. The school system is just attempting to put labels on us. It’s just not fair.
Other students who took part in the study echoed Carl’s desire to be photographed if it would be a positive form of public relations for the JRC. “I wouldn’t care [about being photographed],” said Samantha, a 17-year-old junior and part-time JRC student. “I would just sit here and smile if someone were taking a picture of me.”
Samantha said she liked being a student at the JRC but she was uncomfortable with being in a former jail. “[The bars on the windows] don’t make me feel comfortable here,” she said. “It just reminds me we’re in a jail and we can’t get out.” Carl also mentioned that being “wanded” by sheriff’s deputies and having to pass through a metal detector hen he entered the building made him “feel like [he] was being treated like a criminal.”
Another student, 15-year-old Kevin, felt that yearbook photography wouldn’t help the JRC’s identity. “Pictures aren’t going to change anything,” he said. Then he added, “the bars on the windows ain’t cool. Don’t let them take pictures of the bars.” This last comment suggested that the building (and its students) were vulnerable to being photographed in an unflattering way if they (outsiders unfamiliar with the JRC) were insensitive to how the JRC students wanted to be seen.
In contrast to the students, the high school principal felt that the JRC’s primary barriers to inclusion in the yearbook were related to access, namely, a “lack of communication with the JRC regarding picture day and a lack of access to JRC students.” In addition, the principal reported that “if [JRC students] do not participate in extracurriculars at [the high school], it is highly unlikely they will be photographed.”
Anne, the teacher/yearbook adviser (who also acts as the main photographer), echoed the principal’s statement that a lack of access and non-participation in extracurricular activities contributed to the JRC’s absence from the yearbook. Anne has been the high school’s yearbook adviser for the past 22 years, and in that span of time, more and more off-campus programs have been created. As more and more school programs are located in different parts of the city, it has become a “challenge” to find all of the 210 seniors in the graduating class and managing the yearbook requires “a little bit of detective [work].”
Even the on-campus students who were enrolled in vocational study and didn’t have time to take part in extracurricular activities often were excluded from the yearbook, according to Anne. “They spend three periods a day in their shop,” she said. “They’re not even passing by at bell time. They’re not being seen.” The JRC’s invisibility to on-campus life, compounded by its geographical separation (the JRC and Anne’s school are 2.5 miles apart), made it even more unlikely that the JRC or its students would be included in the yearbook (1).
“I know [the JRC] exists but I don’t know a great deal about it,” she said.
When the researcher mentioned that her students “felt like they have been forgotten,” Anne was candid.
“And they have!” She exclaimed. “To be honest we kind of … yeah, that’s very true. It’s very clear like every single day, whether I can keep up with it or not, what events are going on here. You know and that keeps us busy.”
Anne also mentioned that a lack of time to go off-campus and photograph other programs was a barrier. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t go out to the other places where the students are. I don’t have the time, I’m a teacher,” she said. Anne did try to visit the JRC on one occasion to take photographs, but she had to cancel her visit because she could not get a substitute teacher.
Discussion: The Border Crosser
In “The School Photograph: Portraiture and the Art of Assembling the Body of the Schoolchild” (2007) authors Burke and de Castro make the point that school photography is a “ubiquitous marker of schooling,” and its familiarity makes it “easily overlooked,” thereby hiding its importance (2007, p. 214).
The observations of Carl and Kevin indicated that the two youngsters understood the importance of their photographed presence in their school’s yearbook; Kevin in particular, with his plea to not let them take pictures of the bars, suggested an understanding of the risks involved: Risk to his identity, his classmates’ identity, his school building’s identity, and how he will be seen in perpetuity.
Carl’s comment that photographing him and his classmates would be “a ... way of getting it out there” suggests that the JRC students want recognized and connected to other schools and to the community. At the same time, the students feel conflicted about the JRC’s identity as a former jail. Despite this conflict – or perhaps because of it -- the students are willing to partner with the school and try to “get it out there.” School photography is emblematic of that connection between school, home, self, and the community:
It seems that the school photograph and in particular the embodiment of school in the annual portrait that finds its place in the home is neither public nor private but straddles the two domains acting as a border crosser encouraging emotional investment in the notion of school. Crucial here is the inexorable order, regularity and persistence of form and style generating assurance and belief and indeed hope in the effects of education on generations of children (Burke & de Castro, 2007, p. 216).
Conclusion
The JRC’s absence from the high school yearbooks is seen by the district staff as a fault of geographics, lack of access to students, and time constraints; the JRC students see it as the fault of continued stigmatization. Although these views are different, everyone interviewed for this project agreed that the JRC should be a presence in the yearbooks of the city’s two high schools.
Taking the next step – a visit from the yearbook staff for candid and group pictures – has yet to happen. This project, like many partnerships, has no clear end in sight. Anne’s busy schedule has prevented her from visiting the JRC and taking pictures, but she recently made this remark, via email, to the researcher: “Why don’t you take your own photographs and send them to me. Just about any [electronic] format will work. There’s still time.”
The suggestion that we (the JRC population) take responsibility for our own images is a new and welcome development in this study and will make it much easier for the JRC to become part of the yearbook – on the JRC students’ own terms. However, presence in the yearbook is only the beginning of the process of helping the students forge a positive connection to the JRC and their community.
References and Notes
Burke, C. & de Castro, H. (2007). The School Photograph: Portraiture and the Art of
Assembling the Body of the Schoolchild. History of Education, 36 (2), 213-226.
Canter, et al. (2011). School librarians: The forgotten partners. Teaching Exceptional
Children 43 (5), 14-20.
Pfeiffer, M.A., & Pfeiffer, K.T. (2011). School Picture Day and Self-Concept. Teaching
Exceptional Children 43 (3), 50-54.
All in-person interviews took place on February 29th, 2012 and March 6th, 2012.
(1) At this point in the conversation, I asked Anne if she thought that the increasing popularity of social media Web sites (like Facebook) has decreased the yearbook’s significance among modern high schoolers. Are students more apathetic about the yearbook now? “A little bit. I think so,” Anne replied. “And I think it’s because we have so much more access to images now. I mean if you were in a yearbook years ago … that’s what you got. It’s kind of an old fashioned thing in a way. I mean, kids want them, but as far as the excitement of it …” The possible connection between the increased use of social media and the decrease in the popularity of the yearbook warrants further study.
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