We’ve titled our journal Gandy Dancer after the slang term for the railroad workers who laid and maintained the railroad tracks before the advent of machines to do this work. Most theories suggest that this term arose from the dance-like movements of the workers, as they pounded and lifted to keep tracks aligned. This was grueling work, which required the gandy dancers to endure heat and cold, rain and snow.
Like the gandy dancers, writers and artists arrange and rearrange, adjust and polish to create something that allows others passage.
Train Station, Rochester, N.Y.
Courtesy of American Memory, Library of Congress
