Would Maria Tweet?

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • Mar 29, 2016

It’s Women’s History Month. Typically, I like to post a certain video about women’s suffrage set to a Lady Gaga song but sadly, they lost the right to use the song! So, here is another re-blog that I enjoyed thinking about and writing.

Really, I am not sure if she would. Maria Mitchell was a fairly private person. While she did keep journals, she kept them close and after the Great Fire of 1846, when she saw all of the papers and other articles blowing about the streets of Town that were not burned up, she destroyed all of her personal letters and journals. That is why most of her papers that we have today are dated after the Great Fire – there is very, very little from before the fire.


Would she Tweet “Discovered a comet tonight!” or “Gold medal from King of Denmark here boy is it heavy!” or maybe a “That Asa Gray, he wrote ‘Sir” on my letter of invite to American Academy of Arts and Sciences and crossed it off – what a slap in the face!” – maybe that was too many characters for a Tweet? But then she could Tweet her students to remind them of late night observing or maybe blog about it. She embraced technology – albeit of the late nineteenth century – and she was constantly learning – even teaching herself Greek at the age of 70.


But if she blogged or Tweeted, I think it would be more about science and education and conversing with her students and other scientists than anything personal. Maybe a Tweet after one of her daily nature walks, “Just back from walk round campus – saw Henery {the groundhog that lived around the Observatory} and Indigo Bunting. Don’t forget observing @ midnight girls!”


JNLF

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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

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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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