The Clicker

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • Nov 30, 2015

Instead of moving to the Library for the heat this year, I can’t. It’s going to be a bit of a job site with some of the work it’s going to have to become a lab/classroom. It won’t look too different however!


So, that said, I needed to find a new home for the winter. I will miss my view of Mitchell House and the Observatory as I sit at the original library desk but now I will be in the Observatory – or at least the 1987 seminar room. So now I will be looking back at the Library building instead. A new view.


So anyway, I was over there cleaning off the desk and cleaning out one drawer of probably 20 years worth of office supply debris and what did I come across? The clicker! And I really did exclaim out loud “Oh look, the clicker!” For the tow of you who read this (haha), this clicker was used at open nights all through my youth (and perhaps Vladimir used it too, I don’t remember). But I noted its use by Lee Belserene the MMA’s Director of Astronomy in the 1970s and 1980s. She used to let my brother click us in when we arrived for an open night – I think she had a soft spot for him. I had written a short piece about her a few years ago. So nevertheless, I was very excited to see it and maybe I was exclaiming to her or to Maria, who knows what was going on in my unconscious. But now, for the winter anyway, I will look at it as it sits over my winter desk. I will have to introduce it to our new Director of Astronomy who starts in January – Regina Jorgenson – she may have met it before too when she worked with Vladimir but maybe not. We will find out!


JNLF

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Vestal Street Updates

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • 08 Apr, 2024
Vestal Street has seen a bevy of activity of late. In January, we began the renovation of the Maria Mitchell Vestal Street Observatory’s (MMO) Seminar Room addition – as it has been referred to since it was built in 1987. When it was created, the point was for it to serve as meeting, lecture, work space on three floors for the Astronomy Department – in particular the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduate (NSF REU) interns we have each summer, visiting astronomers, and the astronomy staff. Believe it or not, it was the first time the Observatory had a bathroom! And, it connected to what we refer to as the Astronomer’s Cottage (ca. 1830 and purchased for the MMA in 1922) so that staff could move between the house and the Observatory without going outside – convenient! With a gift from board member and Mitchell family descendant, Richard Wolfe, we have been able to renovate this space, bringing it up to date and adding HVAC, an accessible bathroom and kitchenette, three office spaces, a seminar/meeting area, and space for intern workspaces. Lighting and interiors are being improved as this is written and we hope to have the space ready by June 1, 2024. A special thank you goes to John Wise, another Board member, who has been working with the MMA to make sure this renovation happens in a short timeframe. The work here dovetails nicely with the conservation of the historic observatory to which the Seminar Room is connected. The historic MMO, built in 1908 with a 1922 addition, has seen exterior conservation work over the last several years with support from the Community Preservation Act and the M. S. Worthington Foundation. This fall, we will move inside with more grant funding which will allow us to conserve the historic interiors and install a proper HVAC system to protect the historic fabric and historic astronomical equipment and papers. We will restore the floor in the Astronomical Study from 1922 – it’s hidden under wall-to-wall carpet and 1950s tile but it’s still there – and allow us to conserved the historic plaster and all of the original varnished woodwork. Stay tuned on this project. JNLF

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Tumbledown Fence

01 Apr, 2024
To me, Nantucket was always tumbledown fences. Covered in lichens, worn with wind and salt spray – grooved even – and a deep grey. Pieces broken, swinging in the wind as this broken one was with the 50mph gusts. Held together by vines – ivy or rambling climber vines, or honeysuckle. You do not see as many nowadays. This one is in town along a lane – possibly older than the house it wraps around as there was once a much older house there in the 1950s/1960s. Taken down to make room for this one – in a not so kosher manner – but that’s a story for another day. The lichens and mosses that grow on them, the vines that cover them, provide food and shade and coverage for a myriad of life – from the tiniest insects to small birds hiding from red-tailed hawks or even people and cats. Architecturally they speak of our past. While this one is very simple and not as old as others, it hearkens to a time in which cars were fewer, the island was quieter, and life was simpler. A fix was one picket not a whole fence. And some of the much. much older fences make me think of Maria Mitchell and her day when there were a lot of fences too – but not to keep people out or to create a “privacy screen.” They were there to keep animals in the yard – and more often to keep wandering animals OUT of the yard. JNLF
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