Take A Breath And Look

Jascin Finger • Dec 15, 2020

Easier said than done, especially these days.  Being observant is important on many levels.  My friend and mentor, Edith Folger Andrews, always said, “You need to go out and look.  If you don’t look, you don’t see.”  She was an ornithologist – here at the MMA for countless years.  She was also the curator, for countless years, of the Mitchell House, and it was my involvement at a young age with the MMA that led me to Edith.  (Her daughter, Ginger, is the MMA’s field ornithologist and she quotes this from her mother at the beginning of her weekly bird column for the MMA.)

I am an observant person – I notice things that others do not.  Sometimes, I think it annoys people.  I got this from my Father and it certainly comes in handy with being a curator and preservationist.  (It certainly came in handy for an ornithologist like Edith!)  One thing I always forget to do though, when I am out walking, is to stop, listen, take a deep breath and look.  I reminded myself to do this not that long ago while out for a walk with my son and our Siberian Husky.  We chose to do a Town walk – something the Husky and six-year-old love – and we wandered along Angola Street and up onto Mill Hill another favorite place of the six-year-old.  We stopped, took a deep quiet breath, and looked back out over Town.  With the leaves down, you could see the harbor and all the house tops and chimneys.

When I see that, it makes me pause.  Because for the most part that’s the same image that someone saw 100 years ago or more.  Yes, some more houses and additions to houses, and more trees, but that view of Town, all the houses pushed up together, weather-beaten and grey.  That’s the view.  And my son even gets that.  He’s a fan of the Brinton Turkle Obadiah books – something my brother and I loved.  And we look to see what house Obadiah and Rachel might have lived in, where the blackberry bushes might have been that lost Obadiah the race, and of course the mill.  You can almost feel the presence of those who came before (real or even imaginary) us long ago.  If you just stop and breath and look.

So, in this hard time, try and stop.  Try and breath.  Try and look.  Find the beauty and hope in the simple things.  The red-tailed hawk soaring overhead, the chiming of a barn owl at midnight, the breeze and salt-spray against your face, the smell of the salt and seaweed.  The smell of a fire crackling in someone’s fireplace, the smoke curling and falling from the chimney top.

Be well.

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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“If you don’t look, you don’t see. You have to go and look.” -Edith Andrews

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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