Same Equals Comfort

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • June 22, 2020

Sometimes the same routine, the same thing is a comfort. Especially now.


This was my view the other day. While we are in troubled times on so many levels, sometimes “the same” is a comfort. Routine is a comfort; a safe place. Sitting in the 1825 Kitchen, in my “sit-able on-able chair” as I like to call it, I could hear an American Robin who has a nest nearby and the Carolina Wren. It was just after lunchtime and I wondered if Lydia Coleman Mitchell could take a brief break after feeding her family, would she have heard similar things. Likely not the Carolina Wren – they seem to have become more of a staple up here then they once were due to climate change. But as I have noted before, the sunlight coming through the windows is mainly the same.


You might ask, if we are limited in what we may be able to do when we re-open, why have I “woken up” the Mitchell House. For a few reasons. Most importantly for the artifacts. They’ve been boxed or covered or placed away. They need to not be in that situation all year long and I need to be able to assess their conditions over the course of the months to come. I need to conduct various possible small conservation projects, to clean them. And, if I want to try and share some of them with you virtually, then I need easier access to them. I hope, too that we will be able to welcome people in at some point this season albeit in a very different way.

But personally, and as curator of the Mitchell House, it’s nice to see everything set back in its place. The same. Routine. It may only be me seeing it at this point but I drink it all in. It calms me. It makes me forget the rest of the world outside the door for a few moments. I wish that for everyone – a place you can have to yourself for a moment – even if its standing in stark quiet in your kitchen – where you can breathe in the quiet and exhale the calm and push your thoughts to everyone as we sit amidst this unknown and unsettled time. Hopefully, soon, we can be together again and the Mitchell House door will open out onto the street to welcome you again. Know that I am inside working and awaiting your return – as does Maria and the Mitchells. They are here too – as always.


JNLF

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Mallow!

By Jascin Leonardo Finger • August 31, 2026
I’m sure you’ve seen it as you trek about the island – near the beaches and ponds. This image is of the swamp or marsh mallow that we have on Vestal Street in our garden out front of the Observatory. It can grow in drier places – though it’s not as lush as at Capaum Pond or out in Quaise. It’s in the Hibiscus family – and is fairly tropical looking and always a delight to see.  “When in bloom, one of the most showy plants of the Island, for a mass of the magnificent, large flowers on the edge of a blue pond causes one’s heart to thrill at the wealth of deep pink colour . . .” from Nantucket Wild Flowers, Alice O. Albertson (cousin of Maria Mitchell), 1921. JNLF

A Piece of a Clay Pipe

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 24, 2026
I have always wanted to find a piece of a clay pipe. I know – weird – but if you have ever read any of my blogs here for the MMA then you know I have a thing for pottery shards. I sort of figured I would not find a piece of a clay pipe – not even a piece of a stem. But the other day, walking in a place where I have found quite a few shards, I found a piece of clay pipe! Now, I’m not talking about water pipes – I am talking about tobacco pipes. And I know very little about clay pipes. Yes, I am a curator of a historic house museum, but this family did not smoke. They were Quaker and among the many things they abstained from, tobacco was one of them. Therefore, I am not up on clay pipes so I am doing a bit more research.  For one, age can be determined by the width of the hole inside the pipe. So based on this one, I would say it’s fairly late. Since they were so fragile, and those holes pretty small, if it got filled with tobacco, the person just broke off the stem creating a shorter pipe and one that was not clogged with tobacco. Apparently, stems could be recycled – in fact, 15,000 broken stem pieces were uncovered at a historic walkway at Colonial Williamsburg – they were used as fill! And pipes were made into the early twentieth century – falling out of favor around World War One. It makes sense – they were cheap, easy to make, and affordable. Typically, one could last a few years – unless you dropped it of course. An,d pipes were used by men, women, and (eh, em) yes, children. I can see that Nantucket may not have had a lot of tobacco smoking residents – not just that some were Quaker – but because of the Quaker influence. I t does not mean people here do not smoke – I just think there may have been fewer smokers on the island in the nineteenth century and earlier. JNLF

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 17, 2026
August 19 {1857}. There are four great men whose haunts I mean to seek, and on whose footsteps I mean to stand: Newton, Shakespeare, Milton, and Johnson. To-day I told the driver to take me to St. Martin’s, where the guide-book says that Newton lived. He put me down at the Newton Hotel, but I looked in vain to its top to see anything like an observatory. I went into a wine-shop near, and asked a girl, who was pouring out a dram, in which house Newton lived. She pointed, not to the hotel, but to the house next to a church, and said, “that’s it – don’t you see a place on the top? That’s where he used to study nights.” It is a little, oblong-shaped observatory, built apparently of wood, and blackened by age . . . .” Blackened no doubt by the wood ash and soot found in the air throughout over-crowded nineteenth century London. We always think about London being very foggy in the nineteenth century but frankly a lot of it was wood and coal ash as the nineteenth century grew older, particularly as factories developed and belched all of that into the air – think Sherlock Holmes in the 1880s. But Maria Mitchell, while starting in Europe as a young woman’s chaperone, also knew that this tour of Europe was a great learning experience – the equivalent of a college education she could not have. Doors were thrown open to her around Europe – in particular at all of the observatories that dotted the continent. She was not just well-known – she was famous. JNLF
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