Looking Good at 200
Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • March 26, 2018
Every year is a special and important year at the MMA. But this year, even more so. Maria Mitchell turns 200!
We will be hosting an extensive array of activities from special lectures to a bigger birthday, a symposium, pop-up science events around Town, and a whole host of other activities. I will post about them periodically but to get you excited, take a listen to the radio segment of the MMA’s Executive Director, David Gagnon, and myself – recorded March 21, 2018. And check out the website and our calendar for all of the events. Next up, the MMA’s astronomer, Regina Jorgenson, Ph.D., will present a four-part lecture series on the planets at the Nantucket Atheneum – and its free!
JNLF
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I have posted this during Women’s History Month before but because it is March and Women’s History Month, I think it’s worth repeating. It’s clever and helps to tell an important story in women’s history while giving it a bit of a 21 st century twist. It comes via the National Women’s History Project . JNLF
“If you don’t look, you don’t see. You have to go and look.” -Edith Andrews
Lynn, Ap. 25 1869 My dear President, I am not sure I told you how long I must be away from the College. If I took only the Sunday’s rest, it would be possible for me to reach the Obs. By Tuesday, but I feel the need of more than one day of quiet, before I enter upon the new and incomprehensible life before me . . . William Mitchell died on April 19, 1869 and for the first time, Maria Mitchell was alone. Save for her trip to the southern United States and Europe in 1857 and 1858, her father was always by her side. She did not know much of a day in her life without him nearby and she knows that. It was difficult for her – and her siblings worried about her and this new world she was now in. She had been – expect for that trip – the caregiver for both of her parents. Her mother, Lydia Coleman Mitchell, died in 1861 on Nantucket and Maria had cared for her as well. She was the child who became the caregiver of the family – both in her youth as her siblings sought her out for care, humor, love, and adventures while their mother was busy with younger children and household duties – and then her parents as the only child who did not marry and remained by their sides. JNLF