Theodora JohnsonAdvanced NonfictionJanuary 27, 2014

Elephants: Mascot or FetishEvery room in my house has one or more. One sits on the file cabinet in my classroom. The curio cabinet is full of them. A gold-tone metal plaque depicting a herd of them marching hung on the wall in the den. I have a lamp made of one and a table. I collect elephants. This collection of elephants started in 1974 after I pledged and was inducted into Delta Sigma Theta, Inc. Sorority. As pledgees, my line sisters and I were told that the elephant was our groups mascot and that we should strive to collect at least twenty-two of them to represent the twenty-two founders of the sorority. Not only was the mandate to collect twenty-two elephants, but they also had to be trunk-up elephants. Being newbies, we set out to do just that, but as financially-challenged college students, my line sisters and I couldnt afford such frivolity, but we tried to acquire at least one during our undergraduate tenure. Once we graduated and entered the workforce, however, the hoarding began. I use the term hoard because although the suggested requirement is to only have twenty-two, most Deltas have surpassed that number. Deltas have elephant jewelry, elephant wall plaques, elephant pictures, and, of course, we have elephant figurines of all sizes, all textures, and all colors. On last count, I have amassed 28 figurines, three pair of elephant earrings, two elephant necklaces, five elephant pins and one elephant bracelet. I dont buy all of these elephants; most of them are gifts because relatives and friends feed the fetish because they know Deltas are obsessed with them, so the well-meaning gifters see them as easy gift choices. I, myself, have given many away as gifts to not only seasoned sorors, but also to the neophytes to get them started on their collections. I am not alone in this collection endeavor. I did some talk research to learn how many elephants other sorors had collected since going over. The largest number reported so far is 62. One soror in Maryland reported that she has 45. Based on these numbers, it is evident that upon entering the home of any Delta woman, one thing is apparent: the elephants are in the rooms.After deciding to write about the elephant collection for this assignment, the first task was to embark on what Phillip Gerard calls deliberate research since it is for this particular project. Driven to learn about the connection between the long tradition of the elephant mascot and the sorority, I started an electronic search for information. After viewing two sites, I was shocked to learn that according to the research, the elephant is not the official symbol of Delta Sigma Theta, Inc. As it turns out, this long-held tradition of the Deltas and elephants dates back to founder Florence Letcher Toms who had already started collecting trunk-up elephants. Toms believed they were a symbol of good luck, so she kept them around. It turns out that her belief was not farfetched; it was based on folklore and Eastern superstitions that elephants with their trunks up are not only good luck, but if pointed (the elephant, not the trunk) towards your front door, it is supposed to bring money to your home. From that notion, based on the collection of Founder Toms, the elephant and Deltas have been linked for over 100 years.. The beauty of research is that even though the writer, in this case me, starts out conducting deliberate research on a particular project, it doesnt take long to realize that there is more information to be considered on that topicobject. After seeing that Founder Toms had an affinity for elephants, I began a search to learn why elephants? What was the allure other than the good luck aspect? What symbolic value do they have? According to Ina Woolcott, a writer for Shamanic Journey states in the article that the elephant is a power animal as well as the symbol of commitment, royalty, and strength.True to Gerards quote in the article The Art of Creative Research, the answers you find beget the questions you ask yourself. The act of writing is the final phase of research. The research about the royalty and good luck that elephants have been credited with led me to learn about the mascot of the University of Alabamathe red elephantsand why the school chose this particular animal to represent their school. It turns out that the original name for the team was the Thin Red Line, however, Everett Strupper, an Atlanta Journal reporter who was covering a ballgame during the 1930 season, changed that. According to reports, Coach Wallace Wade had assembled a great football team that year. During the Alabama-Mississippi game, is a typical Wade machine, powerful, big, tough, fast, aggressive, well-schooled in fundamentals and the best blocking team for this early in the season that I have ever seen. When those big brutes hit you, I mean you go down and stay down, often for an additional two minutes.Coach Wade started his second team that was plenty bigAt the end of the quarter, the earth began to tremble; there was a distant rumble that continued to grow. Some excited fan in the stands bellowed, Hold your horses; the elephants are coming! Right then, out stamped this Alabama team. It was the first time I had seen it and the size of the entire eleven nearly knocked me cold. Strupper and the other writers continued to refer to the Alabama linemen as Red Elephantsthe color referring to the crimson jerseys. Although this piece is not about collecting elephants, it still has some commonality to the theme of misnamed mascots or symbols. The elephant is not the symbol of Delta Sigma Theta, and the elephant was not the original mascot of Alabamas Crimson Tide; yet, even though I know, now, that collecting elephants was adopted from another sorors fetish for trunk-up elephants, the fetish is now mine. I will continue to populate my home, office, and car with these pachyderms. They may just land Publishers Clearing House or the million-dollar lottery ticket at my door.

ReflectionI enjoy research. I love looking up information to learn more information, so this assignment was fun to do, to some extent. When I saw that one of the options you posted could be an object, I immediately thought about this elephant collection in my house and wondered why my sorority chose that particular animal to represent this group of women. The readings I chose to use to embark on this learning journey were Phillip Gerards The Art of Creative Research and Lee Martins The Least You Need to Know: A Blog about Writing, Publishing, Teaching, and Other Stuff. Gerards wisdom about Resurrection Man and his information about deliberate research and accidental research was a wealth of techniques and approaches to research that I had never heard of. I also employed two of his seven kinds of archives to research my elephants. I found out during my research that deliberate research can cause the researcher to accidentally stumble upon more information. The fact that one of the founders collected animals because they were associated with good luck was found out during deliberate research, but because I accidentally stumbled upon that news, it led to research about the connection between elephants and luck. Martins article just offered suggestions about how to approach writing about objects. I didnt lean on his teachings too much for this project, but I will be using to teach nonfiction writing in my classroom at work. He has some strong suggestions to get students interested in writing.This was an awesome learning experience for me. Although Ive done research for other writings, this one was more focused on the research element of nonfiction writing and how important it is to give the document more credibility.