Spy Ponders – Arlington (MA) High School

Ponder:  verb, “to think about (something) carefully, especially before making a decision or reaching a conclusion”

So, are they pondering the sky? Going to make a decision about it? Come to some conclusion (“It’s blue!”)? What the heck is going on here?

Well, Spy Pond appears to be a large part of the town. It’s pretty smack dab in the center of it, and used to be an important source of income, providing ice that that they sold all over the northeast. A local businessman, Frederic Tudor, was known as the Ice King (which would not be a bad mascot – hint, hint).

The mascot dates back only to 2020. Before that, they were the very non-PC Indians. Previous monikers include the Trojans (in the 1970s) and the Red & Grey. Any of which would be just fine.

So, what’s a spy ponder look like? I honestly have no idea. 

It looks like they don’t either. In fact, it looks like they punted, going with Cyrus the Mastodon instead. So, why a mastodon? And why Cyrus?

Well, sounds like it’s another reach. First, we’ve got a a 42,000-year-old mastodon tusk that was pulled from Spy Pond in 1959 by some ice cutters. Next, we’ve got the Cyrus Dallin Art Museum. Now, the tusk isn’t displayed there … Interestingly, Dallin just so happened to be the sculptor of the Menotomy Hunter, the source of the old logo for AHS:

The high school dates back to 1858 and currently has 1,500 students. It ranks in the top 5% of HSs in the country. They list almost 30 “notable alumni,” but Olympia Dukakis is the only one I’ve heard of.

As for Arlington, it has over 46,000 people and dates back to 1635. It’s just outside Boston, is close to Harvard and Tufts, and is a pretty expensive place to live. It’s also the birthplace of Uncle Sam, the location of the first public children's library, and the scene of extensive fighting in the Revolutionary War.

Spy Pond on the right