COPY:"English was a class all students were familiar with, since all students needed four years of English to recieve a high school diploma. Junior ---said, "Education is a priceless asset,attain all you can." Graduates also needed at least four credits to get into college. English department head Deborah McFarland said,"Well, basically for our juniors the English department had a Pacesetter program that required research projects and critical thinking assignments. It's not an open-the-book-and-find-the-answer class. It deals with mostly comprehension." A Pacesetter student , (they did not have this comma!) junior __ _____said,"Well, if you ask me, Pacesetter English is relatively easy, because all we talk about is Sept.11th and Saddam Hussein." CUTLINE ON PAGE: "Junior _- studies for his next English test and was really conservative about what he thought was inportant about life. "Education is a priceless asset. Attain all you can, "__ said. ----He "studies" but he "was" conservative? -Wake up, Yearbook staff! Your cutline repeats your copy!I don't think we 1968 yearbook staffers would have gotten away with : "the teacher said,'Well'...'the student said,"Well,...' "...especially  2 sentences apart! I know we'd have found our cutline in the garbage if it suggested a putdown of a faculty member; she wasn't allowed to refute the charge.

The yearbook sold for $75 the last day Blake High School students could purchase one for 2003. "I'll never understand why  they don't buy it when it's $30 but all line up when it's so much higher at the end of the year, " the yearbook advisor said. In my case, I didn't have the money when the flyers came home advertising it for $35, $45, $50, and $55.That left Mary only one chance to get her yearbook-- at the top rate at the end of the year. So we had to. I wanted one because in this the year of our destitution we could not afford film to photograph our daughter during her entire soccer season. We could only afford to go to one game at $4 a peice, and now they are going to raise the price of admission to school sports events. it was already preclusive. The second reason I wanted the yearbook is because we couldn't afford to get Mary's class pictures paid up the day they were taken so we were not given another chance. They took it anyway for the yearbook and office but never sent a copy home for us to try to buy. So now we would finally get to see her 9th grade class picture; We have a round thing in a frame with little school portraits of her in every hole but 9th grade's.It hurts, especially if you are a nostalgia buff. Mary's reason for getting the yearbook included -perusing it to figure out who certain folks are and what extracurricular activities or team sports school  offers -posessing an actual photo of her crush posessing photos of her "friends for life" photos of beloved teachers and  proof to her kids that she played soccer in high school since there are no other photos and a book to reminisce with in her twilight years as I sometimes show my kids my own. So I'm glad we got it. it wasn't easy.

top-Mary in yearbook (braid) middle--soccer game going on below-soccer team , Mary 3rd from left in back row

Then I found out about high school yearbooks. Have you seen one lately? They have a lot of new features, a lot more brazen use of words like "pee" and "pregnant", than we had in the 1970s. This particular yearbook, put on by a historically black high school made into an arts  magnet school  with a current makeup of 55% black, is  worse in every conceivable way from the one I helped make in 9th grade for my junior high. We learned basic rules of layout and copy size that these kids are ignoring.They utilize small font for cutlines, which are extraordinarily long, and large font for copy, which makes each page a mess. Some of the copy runs like "Mr. Jerry Englbinder points to a book.. "with one word to a line, while the cutlines under the photos run 60 words to a line. Hard to read, kids! Other mistakes as follows:(there was at least one per page so I'm only showing a few. Plus I liked the sections on hairdos,fashion, tattos, and siblings--neat ideas) --spelling President"presidant"

Words left out--concepts repeated--and come on, did someone take truth serum on this staff? Why would you say the guys just went to the bathroom? Can't they just meet in the hall? Two brothers meeting up after using the bathroom and you say they aren't slackers?  How'd they both come to have to go at the same time? "returning to their classes after returning from the bathroom"  ?  Us 9th grade yearbook staffers of 1969 would have told the writer to find a different word for one of the "returnings." This yearbook is filled with copy stating things like "Most students were tired of the hard work"  followed by a student quote that he gets so tired of the hard work.  A lot of wasted words!

above--fashion page. "Senior Arsenio ___  said, "Girbeud was his favorite brand of clothes because many people don't wear it." No--!  He said it (without quotes) or he said, quotes, but he didn't say the sentence they put in quotes! (or who was the he he referred to?)

Use your magnifying glass. The girl over the red-head "shows off her unique hairstyle"; the redhead  says of her color,"I like it because it is very unique." The green-haired boy to her left says"I like my hair like this because I like expressing myself uniquely." The spiky guy's cutline reads" Freshman Ryan __ chose to wear spikes. Many students preferred hairstyles that made them unique." The girl in the collar 's cutline says," Many students chose to express themselves, not only through their unique fashion taste, but with their unusual hairstyles as well." And the last girl on bottom right is said of," ..One of the few females to wear her hair in dreads, which was very unique."

The Piercing and Tattoo Page.

."Since a great number of the student population did not participate in extra-curricular activities, most just got a job." --Just?---- And what a lousy lay- out?

Weekends. Wish my yearbook had tried this.Girls in swimsuits???

Blake siblings--cool concept,poor writing

Below--student-paid ads: a new thing ( for us 70s grads)

We'd never have gotten away with it! "oh mom check out my cool underwear!" "He's wearing --boxers!" "it's not sexual enough for her !" "Darkroom rendezvous""jow's our alien love-child?" "I have to pee!"--- ----Say what?

Another student ad.Copy includes "Gorgeous boobies!" "Primitive mating call" "Mom! I'm pregnant! I mea..." "The adventures of Afrobite and Afrobutt" "I mastermate" "actually size does matter". Whatever gets you off, I guess.

Unnessesary words galore ""Being a senior was very costly.It involved spending money on (senior things). "I spent a lot of money on my ring, " one girl says. Seniors wanted to purchase their  senior pictures  or buy a senior t-shirt. However, some seniors chose not to spend money on class rings  and letterman jackets because of their budgets." "Yearbooks always cost less the sooner you bought them." I think it should be, the sooner you buy them.. There was a past-tense voice throughout the yearbook, as if they wrote it 50 years later.

I expected better from a school specializing in the writing arts along with the performing ones. They should have turned the writing majors lose on the copy, then had a  schoolwide vote. Say the same thing 4 times in the copy and in the same words in the cutline , or say this nutty creative stuff that is not repititous, already totally known , boring--i mean at least let the creative writers pose the questions and pick the best answers , get rid of those "well., ..."s !