Welcome to Green & Gold Digest

What's up, everyone?

When I first published Green & Gold Digest in 1990, I said that I did so because the staffs of the Catalyst and the Retrospect "had their hands full" making their respective publications.

You deserve a better explanation than that.

It all started when I was inducted into Harrison High School's chapter of the National Honor Society. I bought the next issue of the Catalyst expecting to see an article about the inductions, and was disappointed that they did not publish that article, after covering that story in previous years. So I asked Mrs. Kathy Nyberg, the Catalyst advisor, why that story was left out, and she explained that it was an issue of timing: The previous issue had come out just before the NHS inductions, and by the time the next issue was ready, that story had become too "old" and "stale."

I figured right there and then that the Catalyst was leaving a lot of slack that another publication could pick up. For example, supposing there was another publication that could run every three weeks (as opposed to every month as the Catalyst had been doing), it could occasionally scoop the Catalyst. That's on top of all the stories coming from the classrooms of HHS that the Catalyst might think were too "trivial" to publish to begin with.

I also knew that what I wanted to publish didn't fit well with the other two publications HHS had to offer.

• Consider the Aquilla, the literary magazine: Having worked with that staff for a couple of years, I knew firsthand that my articles about various things happening in my classes just wouldn't fit in with its poetry, essays and short stories. Besides, the Aquilla had a mid-February deadline for submissions; that deadline just didn't work where "year-in-review" articles are concerned (this issue of G&G has two).
• The Retrospect, like any yearbook, is mostly photographs and not a lot of text; G&G is the opposite, with lots of text and next to no photographs or graphics (a fine example is The Top 5 Events Witnessed by the Class of 1990). Furthermore, the Retrospect is an annual publication; I had wanted G&G be published every three weeks (starting with the 1990-91 school year, provided I found a faculty member willing to serve as G&G's advisor).

And thus, I began work on what I thought could become "Harrison High School's fourth publication."

I had a slogan for G&G, too: Building Bridges Over Borders. In my view, Harrison's three publications had built "borders" regarding what could and could not fit in them, and yet (here's where the "bridges" part comes in) G&G did have certain things in common with each of those publications:

• Most of its articles had the look and feel of a newsmagazine (the format the Catalyst had adopted in 1988);
• Like the Retrospect, it preserved memories (my AP Math teacher, Mr. Walt Boluch, even said to me on May 25, 1990, that I had "invented the poor man's yearbook"); and
• If G&G had somehow continued as Harrison's fourth publication, then, like the Aquilla, any student could write and submit articles for possible publication, but a dedicated staff would decide which submissions would go in and which would not.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy looking at this refreshed online version of G&G today. It's infinitely more colorful, and I corrected a few errors found in the 1990 printed version. Articles in this online version also have links to other sites (such as articles from Wikipedia and the Farmington Observer archives). And this version is much easier to read than the printed one was.

I also have online versions of two other G&G issues: the Green & Gold Reunion Issue (created with the 2000 reunion in mind, although some of you may be seeing it for the first time) and the Green & Gold Time Capsule (which I compiled for this year's reunion).

Thanks for taking the time to read them. Now have an excellent time!

Sincerely,

Mark Rabinowitz

G&G Editor-in-Chief