Susan and Howard Bloom have announced the Adam Bloom Scholarship Fund for children interested in attending the Maria Mitchell Association’s winter and spring vacation camp programs running in December and April. Applications, available at mariamitchell.org, are being accepted for the MMA’s Winter Discovery Camp from December 27 to 30. During […]
Tag: Maria Mitchell Association
What Is This? A Striped Bass Skeleton
~ by Katherine Brooks, Maria Mitchell Association ~ The story of the striped bass skeleton hanging in the Maria Mitchell Association’s Hinchman Natural Science Museum begins with an old Nantucketer, Granger Frost, who caught the striped bass off of Tuckernuck in 1971. The bass, lovingly named the 7th Earl of […]
What Is This? A Sundial!
~ by Katherine Brooks, Maria Mitchell Association ~ Sundial or Sun d’Isle, as so cleverly named and crafted by Robert A. diCurcio (Bob), was designed as a piece of functional art and commissioned for the Maria Mitchell Association in 1989. The sundial is designed based on the latitude (41 degrees, […]
What Is This? – Wood Fern
The Maria Mitchell Association (MMA) biological collections’ oldest specimen is the Wood Fern (pictured above). Maria Louisa Owen, an expert in mosses and moss-like plants, collected this fern in 1879. This was during the height of “Pteridomania” – also known as the Victo- rian fern craze – which was sweeping […]
What Is This? A Right Whale Skull
~ by Katherine Brooks, Maria Mitchell Association ~ Among the historic gray-shingled houses of Vestal Street and hidden in the gardens of the Maria Mitchell Association’s Hinchman House Natural Science Museum, sits a whale skull found thirty years ago at Cisco Beach. The bone belongs to a right whale: an […]
Astronaut Daniel Burbank Visits Nantucket
NASA Astronaut Daniel Burbank will be a special guest at the Nantucket Red-Tie Soirée on Sunday, July 10 from 7 to 10 pm at the Sankaty Head Golf Club, a fundraiser for Maria Mitchell Association (MMA). Astronaut Burbank will speak with guests about NASA and his experiences living and working […]