WLLP Television Interview on the Emily Dickinson Museum and the 180th Birthday Celebrations

Emily Dickinson's birthday

Updated: Tuesday, 07 Dec 2010, 4:10 PM EST
Published : Tuesday, 07 Dec 2010, 3:55 PM EST

* Ashley Kohl

AMHERST, Mass. (Mass Appeal) - In just a few short years, the Emily Dickinson Museum has established a vibrant presence in our community and encourages a broad appreciation for this remarkable poet's work. Jane Wald, Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum tells you more about the rich history it holds...

A Very Bookish Day in the Valley

Getting back to posting, and what better occasion? An embarrassment of riches in the Valley today:  the poetry marathon and kick-off events for Museums10's "Table for Ten" program on food in culture at the Emily Dickinson Museum, and a conference on the History of the Book (which I'm co-chairing) at the Massachusetts Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies.

(And in the meantime, in Washington, DC, it was time for the National Book Festival. When it rains, it pours—figuratively speaking.  Here, the weather has been beautiful and unseasonably warm this week.)

Emily Dickinson Museum Now on Twitter

It's National Poetry Month, and the Emily Dickinson is in the midst of an especially ambitious and successful program: the "Big Read," in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Amherst 250th Anniversary Committee (more on individual events on another occasion).

The Museum has also gone modern. Although Emily once famously called publication "the auction of the mind," she also had a fascination for and mastery of the compact form, which poses such steep challenges to the writer. In a way, then, it is both ironic and fitting that the Museum is now on Twitter, in which every utterance must be contained in a mere 140 characters.

EDM thus joins over 200 of its sister museological enterprises--not to mention Ashton Kutcher and CNN Breaking News, recently locked in battle over their quest for mega-followings (nominally gathered in the service of charitable giving).

It's just too bad that the real Emily was so reticent and did not live in the age of Twitter. I would love to be able to read her concise and uncompromising tweets on these declarations by Ashton Kutcher & Co.:

"At the end of the day, we all have ego, we all have some level of ego," he said. "But if we can use our ego to actually create good charitable things in the world in some way, and use our ego -- originally, I defined Twitter as an ego stream when I first saw it. But then what I realized is if we can transform that into something that's positive that can actually effectively change the world, that can be a really valuable tool."

and

"I think it's really important that Twitter is not about celebrities. It's not a platform for celebrities," he said. "In all these interviews and things, it's been celebrity -- you know, people know have been on TV. It's really about everyday people having a voice. And I don't want it to be dwarfed by celebrity."

Sean 'Diddy' Combs, who joined Twitter and threw his support behind Kutcher, told Larry King that he views Twitter as an important medium for him to share who he "really" is, and give fans a direct line of communication to him. "It's a chance for people to know the real me," he said. "Due to my own fault there's such a persona of the Hamptons and the bling-bling and the "Forbes" list and who I'm dating. There's more substance to me than that. Over time I've just wanted to make sure that that has gotten out."

One can't exactly imagine one of them writing,

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you-Nobody-too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Dont tell! they'd banish us-you know!

How dreary-to be-Somebody!
How public-like a Frog-
To tell your name-the livelong June
To an admiring Bog!

And that's just the point (though in 210 characters, alas).

As for me, in the end, I'm just as glad to let Dickinson speak to the ages through her poetry, and to let the Museum speak to those who value her work and her world--on Twitter or anywhere else.

New England Celebrates Noah Webster 250th

Cross-posted on the history blog.

Dickinson Break-in Update: Finally, the Facts

Press stories at last confirm what early clues suggested: that the break-in at the Dickinson Museum early this month was a random act of antisocial behavior.

The Daily Hampshire Gazette reported Saturday that the man who broke into the Museum was the same one who attempted a break-in at a private residence a short time later:

A University of Massachusetts student faces criminal charges for allegedly causing $600 in damage at the Emily Dickinson Museum after attempting to force his way into the building in the early morning hours of Sept. 5. Police say he was very drunk at the time.
[ . . . . ]
The man first smashed a window and door at the museum in an unsuccessful attempt to get inside, and in the process lacerated his right hand and bled extensively. A bookcase inside the museum was tipped over when he reached inside to unlock the door. Police said the cost of cleaning up the broken glass and the blood was $600.

(Full story: Scott Merzbach, "Man to face charges for museum damage")

Dickinson Break-in Update

No news, actually.

The Amherst Police Arrest and Call Log records the initiation of a breaking-and-entering incident at the Museum as of 8:30 a.m. on Friday, 3 September (incident # 08-545-OF), and today's Amherst Bulletin notes same in its famous police blotter. However, no details are available, and no reports seem to have appeared yet in the traditional media.

Breaking News: attempted break-in at Dickinson Museum

There was an attempted break-in Friday morning at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, specifically, the 1813 Dickinson Homestead in which the poet spent most of her life.

Partial and unofficial information suggests that this was a case of disorderly and antisocial behavior (one might speculate about alcohol or drug abuse) rather than any sort of attack on the museum, as such.

The publication of Brock Clarke's provocatively titled and darkly comedic novel, Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England(2007)--which begins with the narrator's confession, "I, Sam Pulsifer, am the man who accidentally burned down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Massachusetts"--of course set preservationists everywhere on edge, though he was welcomed to the Valley as part of his book tour last year.

Fortunately the Dickinson Museum is adequately protected and well monitored, but the incident underscores the need for vigilance. Many other small museums and historic structures, whether due to meagre resources or for other reasons, lack proper security measures against both human mischief and natural disaster. Installation of such systems even in the best of cases poses stiff aesthetic and technical challenges. And of course, large-scale natural disasters can overwhelm even the best security measures. Preservationists breathed a sigh of relief when Hurricane Gustav failed to develop into the catastrophe that was Katrina. They are still struggling, not without controversy, to save what can be saved from the destruction of three years ago.

The near misses this past week in both New Orleans and Amherst remind us just how fragile and precious our historic resources are. That they have survived this long is due in no small measure to good luck, but we cannot rely on good luck alone to protect them in the future.