Paper, Please!!

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 7, 2014

I think I have said this before, perhaps many times before, so I apologize but I think it needs to be repeated every so often (though this is a completely different piece of writing). I fear for the historians, curators, archivists, researchers, and other who come after us. Our devotion to email, the Internet, and text messaging is leaving a vacuum of documents. There is no paper. There is no paper trail. There is no information found in a file, a letter, or a journal for those in the future to learn about us and what we do, choices made, our thoughts. We still have books – though people do not treasure or respect them as they should. But very few still write letters or keep journals.

I rely on paper for my research into the Mitchell family, Nantucket history, Nantucket women . . . I rely on paper – letters, receipts, bills, 1933 specifications for the MMA’s Science Library. This particular information has allowed me to determine how the building was built, even the original color of the stucco as we move through the conservation process of the exterior of our Library building as it becomes an ecology lab/classroom and natural science collections storage space. To me, it’s not just fascinating “Stuff” to read, it is paper I learn from, words that inform me, words that help me learn, information that I pass onto others so that we may all learn, learn from mistakes, learn from discoveries made but forgotten but that are more relevant today than ever before. From paper, I have learned how the concrete roof frame of the Library Wing is attached to the walls – something the structural engineer needs for the conservation work. From paper, I see notes in the margins; see notes written on envelopes; see ephemera stuck between pages of books; and a small bloom from a rare plant found at Quidnet in 1922 that was pressed between the pages of a plant book, noting where on island it was found, when it bloomed, and how it had never been found anywhere else on island before. This information can be used by scientists – not just MMA’s but others from on and off-island.

If so much of our conversation is by text or email, what will those of the future know of us? Will they consider us to have gone backwards? Will they know why you made a decision if it was only in an email, never printed, and their future computers cannot read any computer data from 200 years before? CDs don’t last forever – and technology changes rapidly no matter the “safeguards” technology seems to think it puts in place so that we can access old computer data.

So this here is a plea for more paper – try and keep a journal, record the weather, write some letters. Because if it wasn’t for paper, I wouldn’t know what Maria thought of her travels through Europe with Nathaniel Hawthorne and neither would you and William Mitchell’s important weather data would not be available for climatologists to use for predicting hurricanes and other storms

JNLF

Recent Posts

The Ancient Vine

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • May 11, 2026
A repost – with my apologies – from last year. It started budding the week of April 30 this year. This is what our landscaper for the MMA calls it. “The ancient vine.” He tells the people who work for him not to touch the “ancient vine.” I have probably made him – and all of them – terrified of it. I am even terrified of it to some degree. I refer to the grape vine behind the Mitchell House that is supposed to be Peleg Mitchell Junior’s grape vine – Maria Mitchell’s uncle who inhabited the house from about 1836 to his death in 1882. It has two trunks but one died several years ago. Because of that, each year I try to root shoots. It’s fairly easy to do – when you cut back the vine in late fall/early winter. I have had success but not success protecting the shoots I baby all winter from bunnies and other critters once I plant them – try as I might. I started doing this when the one trunk died – I was PANICKED! The landscaper stays away because I have told him if anyone is going to accidentally harm or worse yet, kill, this grape vine it would be me so I only have myself to blame. So each November/December – once ALL the leaves have fallen off – I climb my ladder and quietly, carefully, and fearfully cut back the stems typically to two buds. I have been somewhat successful in spurring grape production – and these grapes attract some amazing birds in the fall. It takes me some time – and I pretty much hyperventilate the entire time – and then, I stare at it all winter. Passing under it multiple times a day to reach my office. Hoping, and yes, praying, it will come out in the spring. It’s a late budder so just recently the buds started to show themselves – thank goodness! – and I was rewarded today (May 5, 2025) with this wonderful hot pink color on the edges of the leaves as they are uncurling. JNLF

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • May 4, 2026
May 6, 1878 Between the clouds, Miss Spalding obtained 7 photographs of Mercury on the Sun. It is comfort to me to be able to plan and do a new kind of work. The large telescope worked better than usual, Clark having just been to the Observatory. Clark, as in Alvan Clark, a man who would become the premier telescope maker in America and who built Maria Mitchell’s 5-inch Alvan Clark refractor that she purchased from him (after working with him to build it per her specifications) with money gifted to her from “The Women of America” led by Elizabeth Peabody. More than likely, it is this telescope she is referring to as she did use it in the Vassar College Observatory with her students – and it is also taking center stage in photographs, along with her (first her father’s) Dolland telescope.  Maria had decided she would photograph the Sun on every clear day, and this was one of those results. She would use these images, with her students, to study sun spots and their changes. With her students, Maria would photograph the transit of Mercury as noted above. She would also photograph the transit of Venus a few years later with her students. JNLF

Spring Has Sprung!

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • April 27, 2026
And with it, some of the heirloom daffodils I purchased for the Mitchell House last fall. A place was recommended to me by two longtime friends of the MMA and gardeners extraordinaire. It is called Old House Gardens. I ordered a small amount as we now have a plethora of voles on Vestal Street – I believe I complained about them here last year. They won’t eat daffodils so I got a few of “Butter and Eggs” (1777) and “Conspicuus” (1869) as either of these could have appeared in William Mitchell’s gardens. They were not listed in a letter from John Quincy Adams that I have mentioned before. But, Adams was not here visiting the Mitchell family when the daffodils would have been in bloom. The one pictured here is “Butter and Eggs” not completely unfurled. JNLF
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