Go Figure
Created | Updated Sep 3, 2017
Go Figure
See that photo and poem? We were first drawn to this wonder in the 1915 issue of the Normalogue, the yearbook of the North Adams, Massachusetts, Normal School, because of the principal's moustache. It is a magnificent moustache. It has Presence. That moustache could have its own Facebook page.
And then there was the poem. Unfairly, no credit is given to the actual author of the poem. Never fear, if it's anywhere in cyberspace, the Post Editor will find it. . . aha! In the Friends' Intelligencer of First Month [January, Quakers are worse than French Revolutionaries] 25, 1908, the poem is credited. Good for the Quakers. . . oh no: the poem is by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Ms Gilman is generally adored by feminists for her evocative piece of fiction, The Yellow Wallpaper. But this poem. . . 'he', 'each man', what gives?
Ah, well. This Normal School – a teacher-training college – must have been full of young males. They probably wanted to emulate the principal's moustache. . . let's see if we can find a class picture of these fine fellows. . .
Times change. People were shorter then. The past is another country. Pick your cliché. Pah.
