Category Archives: Publications

The Jester (1967)

by Rick Teller '70, Williston Northampton Archivist

1967: Williston Academy’s Literary Society had, for many years, published an oh-so-serious magazine called The Scribe.  Imagine, then, the excitement when the Society announced that they would depart from venerable tradition and attempt a humor magazine.  The first, and only issue of The Jester appeared in the winter of 1967.  Almost immediately, certain elements in the administrative hierarchy objected to the cover on grounds of taste, until it was pointed out that the navel in question, which belonged to our champion diver, was on display in the pool every afternoon.

51 years later, this seems relatively innocuous.  Tasteless, yes, but hardly provocative.  But our plan to republish substantial excerpts here was somewhat modified when we realized that by 2018 standards, the magazine was so replete with trademark violations, potential libel suits, and what are now called “trigger warnings,” that we had to be very selective.  Plus: some of it was too insider-obscure to resonate today, or just wasn’t very funny.

The persons responsible, plus a couple of ringers.  As with all these images, you may click to enlarge.

But much of it was funny, or clever, and still is.  Perhaps against our better judgment, here are excerpts, beginning with a parody of that prep-school classic, The Catcher in the Rye.

Poetry.  After all, The Jester was published by a Literary Society. Continue reading

Entrance Exam

by Rick Teller '70, Williston Northampton Archivist
Principal Joseph W. Fairbanks (served 1878-1884)

1879.  Williston Seminary, transitioning not altogether painlessly into the post-Samuel Williston era, had a new Principal, Joseph Whitcomb Fairbanks.  Fairbanks was finishing up his first year, having replaced the unfortunate James Morris Whiton, who had failed to finish his second.  Innovation was not Fairbanks’ strong suit,  His greatest talent lay in getting along, a skill that had escaped his predecessor.  (Yes, class, we’re setting you up for a future story!)

But in that first year, he had an idea: printing the Williston entrance examination in the Annual Catalogue.  It had not been done before.  For a variety of good reasons, including the possibility of scaring away potential candidates, it would not be repeated.  But 138 years later, it opens a window on what the entering Junior (i.e., 9th grade) or Junior Middler (10th grade) was expected to know.

Note that this is a “specimen” exam.  The actual test would have had different questions.  But try them!  Would you have been admitted to Williston in 1879?  (Please click images to enlarge.)

From the Annual Catalogue of Williston Seminary, February 1879

One confesses that many of these questions seem written to be annoying, demanding multiple conversions of equivalent measures or, in the geography section, asking for a deal of trivial knowledge.  To travel from Vienna to London by water requires cruising down the Danube some 1,000 miles in the wrong direction, east to the Black Sea.  And so on.  But how did you do?  (You weren’t expecting an answer key, were you?) Continue reading

Summer Reading

by Rick Teller '70, Williston Northampton Archivist

June — the seniors have graduated, the underclassmen have finished assessments (which are what we at kinder-gentler Williston used to call “exams”), and a lazy green quiet has settled onto the campus.  Our parting shot to our returning students: “Goodbye, and don’t forget your summer reading!”  It has been so for nearly a century.

I have a confession.  Back in the summer of 1966, prior to my entering Williston Academy’s 9th grade, I was handed a list of perhaps half a dozen books.  Now, I loved to read, almost at the expense of any other summer activity.  And there was good material on the list, most especially Walter Edmonds’ Drums Along the Mohawk, which was an exciting story, although in retrospect, I don’t recall its subsequent mention even once in David Stevens’ English 9.  But also on the list: Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.  Now imagine yourself in 1966, as a 13-year-old boy who has recently discovered the works of Ian Fleming and is anxious to get back to them (albeit under the covers with a flashlight), but is faced with endless pages of prose about living in the woods and planting beans.  I tried.  I really did.  But I couldn’t do it.  And in the ensuing 51 years, I’ve tried several more times but, apparently scarred by my adolescent experience, I still find Walden barely readable.  I think of Thoreau as the guy who put the “trance” in “transcendentalism.”

A summer reading requirement at Williston appears to date from the 1920s.  No syllabi have surfaced from that early date.  However, we have a list from 1941, which is worth reproducing in its entirety.   (Please click images to enlarge).

Once one gets past the still-valid point about a “foundation for effective expression,” as well as whiff of testosterone, one notes that the requirement – a minimum of three books – isn’t especially onerous, despite a suggestion (“hearty cooperation”) that one attempt “as many as possible.”  Where something doesn’t appeal, students are encouraged to move on.  And nowhere is there even a hint of a test or paper in the fall.It is interesting to note what is, and isn’t, here.  So many of these authors have fallen utterly out of fashion, never mind out of the canon, that some names are unrecognizable even to a pre-elderly librarian.   And with few exceptions, almost everything is by American or English authors, the overwhelming majority of them male, and only one identifiable as an author of color. Continue reading

Williston Boys at Home (1932)

wbahcover1932.  The national economic depression was at its worst.  President Herbert Hoover, forced to defend his record, was about to receive the worst electoral whipping ever at the hands of Franklin Roosevelt, who promised a New Deal for the American People.  But even FDR’s most rabid supporters knew that recovery would take years.  And the people who managed tuition-dependent private schools weren’t sure they had years.  Williston Academy’s Headmaster Archibald Galbraith (served 1919-1949) was no exception.

To be sure, Williston was in somewhat better shape than some of its competitors.  The 1920s had been reasonably good years for fund-raising.  When the 1929 crash came, much of the school’s assets were liquid, since Williston was midway through a major construction project.  So we were less affected by the implosion of the investment market.  The construction of the Recreation Center (see previous post) proceeded on schedule, and the building was opened in 1930.  But endowment was nearly nonexistent, and the pool of academically eligible students whose families could afford boarding school was shrinking.

wbahtitleOne answer was more aggressive marketing.  Gone were the days when a combination of alumni networking and discreet ads in a few prestigious magazines was sufficient to create a viable group of applicants for admission.  Galbraith needed to cast his net wider, to appeal to families that perhaps had never considered private schools.  Among the products of this re-thinking was a 1932 pictorial pamphlet entitled “Williston Boys at Home.”

The booklet is nearly devoid of text, in contrast to the dry, text-heavy and pictureless Annual Catalogue of the time.  It manages to avoid nearly any mention of Williston’s crumbling Old Campus, although more than half the students lived there and all classes met there — in fact, whether through oversight or design, there is no reference to the academic program at all.  This Williston is a place of hockey and dancing, theatricals and swimmin’ holes.  Times are good.  Williston boys are indeed at home.

(“Williston Boys at Home” was generously donated to the Archives in 2008 by Gordon Cronin of Taurus Books, Northampton, MA.)

The sole evocation of the "Old Campus" in the entire booklet.
The sole evocation of the “Old Campus” in the entire booklet.

Continue reading