Like Small Clams at the Bottom of their Chairs

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • July 22, 2019

I posted this a few years ago but given our humidity, I felt it appropriate to re-blog.


I came across this beautiful little line-up the other day when I went to drop off more of my books at Mitchell’s Book Corner for them to sell and a certain line immediately came into my head.  “ . . . . that to the very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering as to the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.”


I am hoping that you will recognize that as the early part of the chapter on Nantucket in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick .  And all the more appropriate because it was at the bookstore!  Yes, they are not clams but mushrooms but that is what I immediately thought of.  Perhaps there is another book out there that refers to mushrooms all in a row but I was taken by these when I saw them.  Proudly standing up along Orange and Main Street; squished between brick wall and sidewalk.


And I have recounted before the connections between Melville and Maria Mitchell.  And add to that  ̶  Mitchell’s Book Corner was founded by Henry Mitchell “Mitch” Havermeyer, the only grandson of Maria Mitchell’s youngest brother Henry Mitchell, in 1968.


JNLF

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10mo 1, 1847. {October 1, 1847} This evening at half past ten Maria discovered a telescopic comet five degrees above Polaris. Persuaded that no nebulae could occupy that position unnoticed it scarcely needed the evidence of motion to give it the character of a comet. From the journals of William Mitchell, father of Maria. One hundred and seventy-nine years later! JNLF
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