Tyrannosaurus Jeff?

I visited Dinosaur Land the other day, and I thought of Emily Dickinson! 

Dinosaur Land’s website is HERE.

Their entry on Atlas Obscura (as Dinosaurland) is HERE.

LOL – no I don’t think of Dickinson as a Dinosaur. It’s because Dinosaur Land has a statue of a mammoth, and the mascot of Amherst College, around the corner from the Dickinson Homestead, is a mammoth.

And BTW:  The college isn’t just “around the corner”; no, the family of Emily Dickinson was intimately involved in the life of Amherst College from its very origins:

Dickinson's grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson, was one of the founders of the College; her father, Edward Dickinson, was College Treasurer from 1835 to 1873; her brother William Austin Dickinson (Class of 1850) took over as Treasurer from 1873 until his death in 1895.

For years the college had no “official” mascot, and “unofficially” their mascot was “Lord Jeff,” named for Field Marshal Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, (1717 – 1797), a British Army officer who is credited as the architect of Britain's successful campaign to conquer the territory of New France during the Seven Years' War.

Lord Jeffery had no connection with the college and died a generation before its founding. However, “Lord Jeff” was adopted unofficially by students as a mascot – but dropped in 2016.

By that time, many students came to see Lord Jeff, as a symbol of white oppression for advocating that Native Americans be given blankets infected with the smallpox virus.

A press release came in April 2017 to announce that Amherst College had selected the Mammoth as the college’s first official mascot.

Info from Amherst about their new, "official" mascot is HERE. 

More tomorrow!

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CONTINUED...

Yesterday I mentioned my recent trip to Dinosaur Land, and Amherst College’s adoption of the Mammoth as their official mascot in 2017.

Why the Mammoth?

Well, there was quite an extensive process for selecting a mascot, and I believe it all started with at least thirty submissions for possible mascots which were then narrowed down to five:  The Fighting Poets, Mammoths, Purple & White, Valley Hawks, & Wolves.

The election went through four rounds of voting before the Mammoths were selected with a majority of the vote. You can see the results for each round of voting HERE.

Part of the reason why the Mammoth won is that mammoths pay homage to Amherst College history: 

“The Beneski Museum of Natural History houses a skeleton of a Columbian mammoth discovered by Amherst professor Frederick Brewster Loomis and brought to the College in 1925. Amherst’s archives also include a drawing of a mammoth skeleton by scientific illustrator Orra White Hitchcock, wife of Amherst’s third president, Edward Hitchcock.”

Did Dickinson ever use the word “mammoth” in any of her poems?  Nope.  

What about “dinosaur” or “fossil”?  Nope.

How about “purple” – since Amherst hosts the “purple” mammoths?  

Yep – Dickinson used the word “purple” in 55 different poems.

If you’re somewhat familiar with Dickinson’s poetry, does one “purple” poem in particular come to mind?  

I’ll post the one that popped into my head tomorrow!  ;-)

And in response to my visit to Dinosaur Land, @grayman (on Counter Social) sent me this reply:

"Down the road from Amherst College, there was this:" HERE.