Amherst College Picks Emily Dickinson as New Sports Mascot

In Surprise Move, Amherst College Picks Emily Dickinson as New Sports Mascot
Edged Out Leading Contender: “Fighting Poets”

Image of Emily Dickinson from Amherst Colleges Archives and Special Collections

The long wait is over. Although the official announcement is not expected until sometime next week, sources inside the Amherst College administration revealed that, after months of controversy and speculation, they have chosen poet Emily Dickinson as their new sports mascot, replacing eighteenth-century British military leader Lord Jeffery Amherst, considered by many to be politically and morally unacceptable in this day and age. The move came as something of a surprise because, among the five finalists announced to the public, “Fighting Poets” was widely expected to get the nod. A few trustees, gathered for cocktails in the elegant and dimly lit bar of the Lord Jeffery Inn  (spoiler: yes, it’s ironic, but that name isn’t changing yet), late Friday night spoke on condition of anonymity about the process that had just concluded.


A Background of Controversy

The decision arose from the intersection of longstanding concerns and recent protests. For years, Native Americans and their allies have protested both the appropriation of American Indian culture and the related use of racist stereotypes as emblems of sports teams. American campuses have been roiled in conflict for several years over histories of white supremacy as well as continuing issues of institutional racism, but it was the recent activism associated with the Black Lives Matter movement that brought things to a head at Amherst.

The figure of Lord Jeffery Amherst, after whom the college’s sports team—the “Lord Jeffs”—was named, is no stranger to controversy on campus and beyond. In this case, the issue was not a symbol that appropriated  Native American culture, and instead, one associated with its destruction. As almost every Amherst resident and Amherst College student soon comes to learn, Amherst sought to exterminate Native Americans (“this execrable race”) during the “French and Indian War” through an early form of biological warfare by giving them smallpox-infested blankets.

For a long time his ubiquitous emblematic presence caused the administration no discomfort. The College commissioned elegant representations of him on “collectible” Wedgwood china.

Wedgwood plate on display in the library of Lord Jeffery Inn

a great way to start your day: old Amherst College dinnerware

And as late as the 1960s, a stylized depiction of Lord Jeff hunting down Indians was considered a light-hearted scene with which to greet the young WASP males of the “One Percent” as they began their day in the dining commons.

That dinnerware was in the meantime quietly removed, but the presence of Lord Jeff as sports mascot remained. When students of color and their allies rose up in protest in the fall of 2015, he became an obvious target.

Amherst Uprising protest poster, Frost Library, November 2015

A Symbol of Changing Times

The administration took the protests seriously, and President Caroline “Biddy” Martin  returned to campus from her travels to meet with protesters.  In January 2016, the College announced that it was giving Lord Jeff the heave-ho.

In late October, the College announced a public process to select a new mascot. By the end of the year, having received 2045 suggestions, the Mascot Committee chose 30 semifinalists. On Saint Patrick’s Day 2017, the College announced five finalists, to be winnowed through an online voting process ending March 31. They were:

• “Fighting Poets” (“celebrates multiple poets who have taught, studied or written poetry in association with the college or town of Amherst")
• “Mammoth” (a reference to fossils in the Beneski Museum)
• “Purple and White” (the College colors)
• “Valley Hawks” (“would reflect pride in the campus bird sanctuary and the college’s other connections to avian studies”)
• "Wolves" (“Known for their keen senses, intelligence and power, wolves collaborate and care for one another in packs, but they can also represent individuality and independence")

Trustee Coup? “Fighting Poets” or not “Fighting Poets”: that was the question

Some of the 2045 suggestions were easy to reject for one reason or another. For example, although “Hamsters” was considered clever by some because Hamster is an anagram of Amherst, it is also the nickname of students at nearby Hampshire College. “A’s” was unimaginative. And “Pride” was just plain mystifying. A younger left-leaning trustee provided particular insight into the deliberations. In his view, it was much like the Trump White House: characterized by chaos and infighting.

The trustees faced a dilemma. Four of the five finalist names were anything but inspiring. Until just recently, “Fighting Poets” therefore seemed to be headed for victory: it was clever, had a light touch, and referred to the college’s intellectual legacy: Emily Dickinson did not attend Amherst College--it was among the last of the Ivies to go coed (1975), and only after great resistance–but her family was associated with the founding and administration of the College, and Amherst owns the Dickinson Museum, which attracts thousands of visitors to the town. Robert Frost taught at Amherst College, and the library is named after him. And Richard Wilbur, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and numerous other awards, is an alumnus (Class of ’41).

Still, as trustees weighed the choice, doubts arose. To begin with, none was really familiar with poetry. A few thought they had encountered Frost or Dickinson in a freshman English class but could not recall much else. Some remembered having seen Richard Wilbur at a dinner and admiring his tweed jacket. “Too bad that Joyce Kilmer didn’t go to Amherst,” one elderly gentleman mused over a Bone Dry Sapphire Gin Martini. “I really liked that poem about trees. But we didn’t let girls in back then.” “Wilbur who?” asked another. “Wasn’t he the guy on that show with the talking horse?” he snorted, as he took a sip from his third Macallan 18 Year Old Sherry Oak 1992.

A more politically aware younger trustee raised doubts even about Robert Frost: the poet came from a racist white nationalist family and was named for Robert E. Lee. His official biographer described him as (in the words of a reviewer) “a nasty piece of work, cruel to his family, dismissive and contemptuous of other writers, a liar and a manipulator.” The same reviewer summarized a fictional portrait of the poet by Joyce Carol Oates as: “racist, sexist, loathsome, bullying.” “’Fighting poets’?!” the trustee asked with some exasperation. “For the Confederacy? Against women? It would be worse than ironic if, after the anti-racist protests on campus, we picked this  guy. Just what kind of message are we sending?!”

“Besides,” another worried, “we might just be opening ourselves up to ridicule. “What are our boys going to yell when these ‘Fighting Poets’ take to the gridiron? You know that Haverford College football cheer: ‘Kill, Quakers, Kill!’ Come on. It’s the worst of both worlds.”


Purple and White Privilege: we’re the trustees and can do pretty much what we want

A group of more traditionally minded trustees therefore tried to come up with an alternative. When asked how they could circumvent the choices developed through an open public process, one who works in corporate law replied that it was perfectly legitimate, in the spirit if not the letter of the charge: “After all, you folks in town did the same thing: you held a flag contest calling for designs based on the theme of ‘the book and the plow’—which, I’ll have you know, was the invention of an Amherst College professor—and then chose the book and three sheaves of grain—even though they’re not a plow and no one ever grew wheat in Amherst. Sauce for the gander, you know. Anyway: we’re the trustees and can do pretty much what we want.”

This trustee faction settled on the figure of John McCloy as the new mascot. He was an alumnus, a major figure in twentieth-century American law, finance, politics, and government, and served on the Warren Commission: an ideal representation of Amherst men in the service of the nation. And of course he was male. That plan fell apart when a young leftish trustee pointed out that, as Assistant Secretary of War, McCloy had played a decisive role in the notorious internment of Japanese Americans, had refused to believe stories of Nazi artocities, and then, as High Commissioner for postwar Germany, had commuted or reduced the sentences of many of the worst Nazis:

“So: you’re dumping a guy who wanted to poison Indians but didn’t actually manage to do so—and replacing him with a guy who put loyal Americans in prison—and let German war criminals out? Bright move.” Besides, he added with a wink, “Just think about the nicknames: If the Lord Jeffs are known as ‘the Jeffs,’ then the ‘John McCloys’ would be known as ‘the Johns.’ I. Don’t. Think. So. Look, if you guys aren’t going to take the need for social change seriously, why don’t you just be done with it and call the team “Purple and White Privilege?”

Ironically, although he spoke those words with bitter sarcasm, they broke the logjam. The trustees began to think in concert about how to spin or improve upon the five final options. It was thus that they hit upon the idea of casting aside the generic “fighting poets” and singling out Emily Dickinson. It was an easy choice and a unifying one. For those on the left, it was thinking outside the box and a means to underscore the College’s commitment to diversity and modern values. For the conservatives, it was a cynical, cost-free choice. The Lord Jeff mascot was a clear liability, easily thrown off the back of the sleigh to appease the wolves. Choosing a woman as emblem would also help to distract attention from damaging news reports concerning an aggressive masculine sports ethos, ranging from rape culture to racist and misogynistic e-mail exchanges. Above and beyond that, the move would secure the future of athletics at Amherst. It is an open secret that, when the trustees reluctantly accepted former President Tony Marx’s demand for emphasis on greater ethnic and racial diversity, the quid pro quo was increased financial support for the sports teams. Was it only a coincidence that, when the trustees selected the first woman president as his successor, they chose Biddy Martin, a self-described “crazed sports fan”? The choice of Emily Dickinson as mascot thus hit the trifecta, solving numerous problems at once, changing things without really changing things.

even on March 31, search engines still show the description of the team under its old moniker

Early Reaction

Discreetly presented with the breaking news on Friday evening in the bar of the Lord Jeff, one professor of English sitting nearby looked up from her Chocolate Appletini and said, “Wow, that’s really disruptive!” “Transgressive, even!” chimed in her colleague from comp lit, giggling slightly as she took a sip from her squid-ink-garnished Firenze-Palermo cocktail. A member of the Hampshire College faculty known to be well versed in both academic and town politics happened to be at the bar, as well: “You know if I were conspiratorially minded—which I’m not: only idiots believe in conspiracy theories—I’d say that this was a cunning plan by the Emily Dickinson Museum to get the College finally to pay attention to its most valuable cultural resource. Everyone knows that, even though Biddy Martin was trained in literature, she has never really shown much interest in the Museum. She’s set foot there like, what: once in her life? But she always has time to go to a football game or tweet about sports.

With teams named after Emily Dickinson, she’d finally have to pay attention. It’s absolutely brilliant.” With that, he returned to his Vieux Carré and discussion of the upcoming Town Meeting with his two female companions.


Jeff, John, Dick, and Harried

Reached via telephone on Saturday, a spokeswoman for the Amherst College Office of Communications said that President Martin, on her way out of town for a full weekend of men’s tennis matches at Tufts, both women’s and men’s lacrosse at Middlebury, and women’s outdoor track and field at the Tufts Snowflake Invitational, would not be available for comment until late next week or whenever there is a break in the College’s sports schedule.

We pointed out that, although the choice of mascot was bold, there was one fly in the ointment. If the “Lord Jeffs” had been known as “the Jeffs,” then the “Emily Dickinsons” might come to be popularly referred to as "The Emilys"--or: “The Dicks.”

There was a brief but painful silence on the other end of the phone line. “Oh.” Pause. “We hadn’t thought of that. Boy, is our face red.” Another pause. “I’ll have to get back to you on that. First, I’ve got to check my calendar. Remind me: what day is this?”

Happy Dictionary Day

Dictionary Day is the anniversary of Noah Webster's birthday, for good reason.

I am remiss in not having gotten my full-fledged post up for Mr. Webster's birthday (it turned out some extra work is required), but in order to honor (or placate) his spirit, I have uploaded a large new scan of a portrait engraving from his lifetime, over on the Tumblr.

Stay tuned for more in the near future.

Melville Update: Diasppointing Sales of Moby-Dick Followed by Disappointing Trip to Middle East

Rushing around in August, I somehow omitted mention of a nice little story relevant to my post about Melville and Hawthorne. The fateful meeting of those two men in the Berkshires in 1850 was the beginning of a fertile friendship, as Melville set to work on Moby-Dick, which he dedicated to Hawthorne.

Now, as we all know, Moby Dick, although one of the greatest American novels, was a commercial failure. It is with this fact that David Sugarman begins his essay on Melville in Tablet Magazine:

Herman Melville, the popular writer of adventure stories, all but lost his readership with the publication of Moby-Dick; or The Whale. “Mr. Melville has survived his reputation,” one critic wrote in 1851 of the “imposing” novel, with its diatribes, tangents, and verbosity. “If he had been contented with writing one or two books, he might have been famous, but his vanity has destroyed all his chances for immortality, or even of a good name with his own generation.” While some reviewers recognized the greatness of Moby-Dick, it failed to achieve the success Melville had hoped for, selling only a scant 3,100 copies during his lifetime. “Though I wrote the Gospels in this century,” he lamented to his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, “I shall die in the gutter.”

However, the "failure" of the novel is just the point of departure (no pun intended) for the real subject of the piece: the resultant trip that Melville took to the Middle East in 1857 as a sort of spiritual and psychological compensation. (And in the process, Sugarman gets to talk about Pittsfield and the Berkshires and the present-day Call Me Melville celebrations.)

There is quite a tradition of such trips to the "Holy Land" in the nineteenth century. Mark Twain undertook one, too, and didn't like it much better. As the subtitle of the essay puts it, "The Moby-Dick author sought spiritual connection on an 1857 Holy Land trip. He found dust and rocks instead." Sugarman sees Melville's frustration as a reaction to both the objective decrepitude of the scene and the particular disappointment that he felt as someone who, although neither observant nor orthodox in belief, nonetheless intellectually and psychologically identified with the Christian tradition.

Worth a read. And a look, just for the whimsical image of the white whale's tail by Rockwell Kent superimposed on a historic photograph of the Ottoman-era walls built by Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent.

Reference:

David Sugarman, "Melville in Jerusalem: The Moby-Dick Author sought spiritual connection on an 1857 Holy Land Trip. He found dust and rocks instead." Tablet Magazine, 16 August 2012.

August Anniversaries: Melville Meets Hawthorne in the Berkshires, 1850

Summer always seems in some way to be Melville season, in western Massachusetts, at any rate.

On August 1, we mark his birthday.

Part of the Literary Arts Issue, this postage stamp (Scott # 2094), based on a portrait by J. O. Easton in the Fogg Museum at Harvard, was designed by Bradbury Thompson, modeled by Frank J. Waslick, and printed by the American Banknote Company in a run of 117,125,000. It was issued at the New Bedford Whaling Museum on the anniversary of Melville's birth, August 1, 1984.

The summer also brings multiple Moby Dick marathons in New England. Whereas New Bedford holds its group reading of the novel in frigid January, other locales opt for the war season. Mystic Seaport held its marathon from July 31 through August 1, whereas Pittsfield, Massachusetts, locale of Melville's home, Arrowhead, has chosen for its "Call Me Melville" program leisurely chapter-a-day online reading schedule, stretching over 135 days, from Memorial Day weekend through Columbus Day.

And, the gods must be smiling upon us, because an appropriately snarky little piece about stupid new Olympic sports even managed to work in the opening line of Moby Dick:

Call me Ishmael, but I don’t care about the synchronized-diving competition the Chinese won yesterday, except trying to figure out how exactly one decides to go into synchronized diving.

August 5 marks the anniversary of his famed and fateful meeting with Nathaniel Hawthorne. And as chance would have it, that date in 2012, as in 1850, was marked by a great thunderstorm (in our case, a welcome relief after a terrible drought and the hottest July on record).

Mass Moments has seen fit to include the event on its calendar of significant days in Massachusetts history, though the description is rather anodyne:

On this date in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville were among a small group who climbed to the top of Monument Mountain in the Berkshires for a picnic. Hawthorne had recently published The Scarlet Letter and was living in nearby Lenox. Melville was visiting Pittsfield. The two writers were meeting for the first time. A passing storm drenched the hikers, but the day marked the beginning of a warm friendship between the authors of two of the greatest American novels of all time. Melville dedicated Moby Dick to Hawthorne, with "admiration for his genius." 

The bulk of the piece deals with Hawthorne's literary career.

The Tale of Tanglewood,* an early chronicle of the summer home of the Boston Symphony in Lenox, tells the story with more detail and verve. The book begins by noting the significance of two thunderstorms: the first being the aforementioned, the other, one in the year 1937, which destroyed the festival tent and led to the construction of the now-famous Koussevitzky Music "Shed" (which took the place of Eliel Saarinnen's more ambitious design).

Hawthorne, who had his first big commercial success with The Scarlet Letter in March 1850, rented a cottage on the estate of the Tappan family (whose Highwood House is today the Tanglewood visitor center) from that summer through the fall of the following year.

His Notebooks record his enthusiasm for the beauty of the setting, overlooking Lake Mahkeenac and the more distant mountains. At times, though, he grew frustrated, missing the sea, the city, and his wife. He had some choice comments about our classic western Massachusetts weather:

This is a horrible, horrible, most horrible climate. One knows not, for ten minutes together, wheter he is too cool or too warm . . . I detest it! I detest it!! I detest it!!! I hate Berkshire with my whole soul, and would joyfully see its mountains laid flat! (31)

Although he claimed to miss urban comforts, he also did not go out of his way to socialize.  As The Tale of Tanglewood puts it:

It was in the summer of 1850 that Melville and Hawthorne, meeting as strangers to each other on a picnic party near Stockbridge, were driven by a violent thunderstorm—according to a persistent legend—to seek refuge together in the crevice of the rocks of Monument Mountain. Neither had yet made a full discovery of the other as a great writer, and Hawthorne in particular was extremely war of strangers; but there they were, face to face, in close quarters, exquisitely adapted to the breaking down of reserves. There were two hours of it, and when the romancers emerged, they had laid the basis for a rapidly ensuing intimacy. (19)

      Two days after the meeting on Monument Mountain, Melville with others called on Hawthorne at the Red Cottage, drank champagne, and walked to the lake. From that time forth, the meetings with Melville, who lived only a few miles away at his Arrowhead farm in Pittsfield, were frequent and intimate. Melville would appear, sometimes in the guise of a Spanish cavalier, often with his large black Newfoundland dog; and on horse or dog he would give 'the old man' or 'the little gentleman,' as Hawthorne in his diary called his son Julian, a ride in which the boy took a terrified delight. Melville told his stories of the South Seas with such zest and reality that once after his departure, Mrs. Hawthorne began looking for a club which had figured in a tale of his adventure. There was an evening visit, of which Hawthorne wrote: 'Melville and I had a talk about time and eternity, things of this world and of the next, and books and publishers, and all possible and important matters, that lasted well into the night.' When Melville stayed for the whole night, one can only imagine how far and wide the talk must have ranged.

At this very time Hawthorne was writing his House of the Seven Gables, and Melville, not more than half a dozen miles away, was writing Moby-Dick. They must have had many things to say to each other. When Melville, the more outgoing of the two, could not talk he wrote, in long letters with whole-hearted admiration of Hawthorne and his genius. 'I shall leave the world, I feel,' said one of these letters, 'with more satisfaction for having come to know you. Knowing you persuades me more than the Bible of our immortality." (34-35)

The Red Cottage burned down in 1890, but a plaque has marked the site since 1929. After World War II, the National Federation of Music Clubs presented the Boston Symphony with a reconstruction of the Cottage, also known as the Little Red House.

* Source: M. A. DeWolfe Howe, The Tale of Tanglewood, Scene of the Berkshire Music Festivals. With an Introduction by Serge Koussevitzky (NY: The Vanguard Press, 1946).

December 10, 1830: Birthday of Emily Dickinson; recorded in doctor's journal

Emily Dickinson was born on this date in 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Below, the entry from the records (Special Collections of Jones Library, Amherst) of local doctor Isaac G. Cutler, who delivered her.

On the same page is the entry for Emily's future friend Helen Fiske, who, as Helen Hunt Jackson, earned a name as an author and an activist for Native American rights. Fiske's entry is is fourth from the top of the right-hand page, and Emily Dickinson's, tenth from the bottom.

Last year's entry describes the 180th birthday celebrations at the Emily Dickinson Museum, as well as the "baby book" and the relations between Emily Dickinson, her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson (who shares a December birthday), and Helen Hunt Jackson.

This year, the annual celebration of the poet's birth, sponsored by the Emily Dickinson Museum, features a lecture—"Emily Dickinson - Outlaw"—by Jerome Charyn, author of the recent fictional account The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson.  The book has a popular Facebook page.

Riders and Romances

This spring, as the Amherst Historical Commission put forward a request for Community Preservation Act funds for the restoration of paintings hanging in the Jones Library (still need to post about that), it occurred to me that most residents had at best a dim awareness that we owned an art collection. In preparation for any questions in Town Meeting, I took a stroll through the building in order to re-familiarize myself with the location of each work of art.

Lo and behold, I came across one of the canvases—Paul Dominique's late 19th-century "Arabs Mounted in Battle"—hanging over: the romance collection.

I'll bet that even some of the more dedicated lovers of this beloved institution didn't know that we owned this one, much less, where to find it. And beneath the venerable painting, we find such alluring titles as One Fine Cowboy: He's got a way with horses. . . and with women . . . .

What's the connection (besides physical proximity—and studs on stallions)? Actually, maybe more than you think.


Read the rest on the book blog:  Gotta Love Those Romance Titles (or: the price of freedom is eternal kitsch).

Moby-Dick Aboard the "Morgan"

August 1

Speaking of the "Charles W. Morgan," it was time again for the annual Moby Dick Marathon at Mystic Seaport, which took place from noon yesterday to noon today—today being Herman Melville's birthday. This was a special year for the event, for not only is 2011 the 170th anniversary of the launching of the "Morgan" and the 70th of its arrival in Mystic: It is also the 160th anniversary of the publication of Moby Dick—which a reviewer of the new film version for today's Daily News rather perversely described as "Sometimes called the greatest of all American novels (though we Fitzgerald fans, among others, would argue that point)." Well, I'm sure that Twain and Hawthorne fans, too, "would argue that point." For that matter, so would Danielle Steele fans, but that doesn't make them right. But I digress.

A distinguishing and welcome feature of the event this year was the new embrace of social media. Not only was there a live video feed. In an addition, and in particular, Mystic made use of Twitter:

"Twitter is an innovative way for us to share this special event with a global audience," said Museum president Stephen C. White. "Nowhere else does 'Moby-Dick' come alive the way it does on the decks of the Morgan, the sole surviving ship of the fleet that inspired Melville."

I've followed Mystic Seaport on Twitter for quite  some time. For this occasion, however, staff not only live-tweeted the readings, but also tweeted on three related themes: Melville's novel in popular culture, images from Mystic Seaport collections, and scientific information related to the novel. They created a special hashtag for the event (#MDM2011), as will as separate accounts for each of the three supplementary themes:

http://www.twitter.com/MbyDickMarathon
http://www.twitter.com/MS_Collections
http://www.twitter.com/MS_PopCulture
http://www.twitter.com/MSeaportScience

This is all to the good.

There is a lot of debate (and consternation) concerning the use and abuse of social media in the museum, preservation, and scholarly worlds, and I'll have more to say about that in the near future. I recently returned from a conference on the history of the book in art and science, at which participants not only tweeted, but were officially encouraged to tweet. As I have noted, some participants were put off by the typing at the panels (though this really should be no different than taking notes on a laptop, which is already common practice). Others, made of heartier stuff, nonetheless questioned the validity of the endeavor. Like any other social-networking technology, Twitter is only as good as the purpose to which it is put.
Most participants judged it a great benefit and success: it allowed us to expand the conversation at the conference, it allowed those unable to attend in person to take part vicariously, and it provided a record of both the events and the evolving reactions to themes.

I'd like to think that Melville would have understood. The narrator in Typee recounts how the news of an incoming boat was circulated on his tropical island by shouts from person to person:

This was the vocal telegraph of the islanders; by means of which condensed items of information could be carried in a very few minutes from the sea to their remotest habitation. . . . one piece of information following another with inconceivable rapidity.