Balding, with long hair and spectacles; classic aging-uncle vibe
Wanted turkeys to be America’s national bird
May or may not have been a plot point inNational Treasure
Here was what I had learned in the past three years about Benjamin Franklin, after my dad’s attention-grabbing essay focused on BF himself, along with several significant chapters in the first book:
Benjamin Franklin’s maternal grandmother belonged to a prominent Nantucket family.
As postmaster general, Franklin was tasked with increasing the speed of the mail. This meant finding faster ship routes. With the help of his Nantucket relative Captain Timothy Folger, he mapped out and named the Gulf Stream, then told ships to avoid the current, and voilà, faster ships and faster mail.
Franklin’s great-grandson Alexander Dallas Bache headed the United States Coast Survey for two dozen years. He mapped the US coastline and instituted a lot of other real great stuff, probably, and also served as the first president of the National Academy of Sciences. (Bache got several chapters in the first book, too.)
Did I want to know these things? Not particularly! But you can only attend so many book events before knowledge seeps in. And while I couldn’treallyblame Benjamin Franklin for my father’s summers on Nantucket, I would have been much happier if Dadhad been enthralled by some dude in Boston instead.
After the bus dropped me off in town, I wandered through the streets, the gentle breeze whispering of the summer to come. I was painfully aware of being on my own while everyone else my age moved in groups. Plucking up my courage, I entered a café’s patio, the pancakes from earlier now a distant memory. Had I ever eaten by myself? Such a small thing, but I wasn’t sure I had. I snagged a seat at a communal outdoor table, put in an online order, and tried to figure out what to do next.
If my dad didn’t want my help, I’d need an actual job. I had three years of waitressing and hostessing experience, and I’d seen a few boutiques withNow Hiringsigns. Maybe if a thrift shop needed help, the employee discount would allow me to buy clothes here.
But I was more bothered than I’d expected by Dad not wanting my help. Sure, I wasn’t the most academic person in the world, but I was good at math and I liked science, and while I sort of thought history was stuffy, I wasn’t anidiot. I could be good at the kind of things Dad respected. And I wanted to prove it.
I googledscience jobs Nantucketand winced at the results. They were almost all for an oceanographic institute back on the Cape called WHOI. Also, most of them wanted me to have a PhD.Summer science job Nantucketsurfaced better results, including internships and fellowships at a place called the Maria Mitchell Association. Clicking through, it looked like the MMA had an aquarium and a science center. Most of the teen opportunities were volunteer work taking care of animals and directing visitors.I glanced idly at adult opportunities. Education, development, natural sciences, astronomy.
I blinked. Astronomy?
Docent needed for Vestal Street Observatory tours, it said.Cashier needed for Open Nights at Loines Observatory.
Nantucket had an observatory? Potentially two observatories? Excitement bubbled up within me, fizzy and effervescent. I searchedVestal Street Observatory, which brought up another page from the Maria Mitchell Association’s site with pictures of a quaint house with a dome, built in 1908.Loines Observatorybrought up a more modern observatory with domes built in the 1960s and 1980s. I navigated to the About tab:The Maria Mitchell Association was founded in 1902 to preserve the legacy of Nantucket native astronomer, naturalist, librarian, and, above all, educator, Maria Mitchell.
The MMA’s astronomy department was created over a hundred years ago, with help from Harvard. They had internships for undergrads studying astronomy and astrophysics. Past projects made my brows shoot up. Dark matter and exoplanets, star clusters and galaxy formations…
Maybe if I swung by the Maria Mitchell Association, I could get the inside scoop on any jobs. I finished my lunch, then plugged the address into my phone. It was a short walk; everything in town seemed to be a short walk.
Inside the small, neat building, a gray-haired woman greeted me. “How can I help you?”
