© 2012 ISHRA Volume 21 Issue 2 Fall 2012 Our mission is to locate, collect, organize, preserve, expand and make available information and knowledge relating to the natural and human history of the Isles of Shoals With Roland Thaxter in Patagonia Will be the subject of our Fall Meeting Program Tuesday November 13, 2012 (Details on Back Page) Celia Thaxter’s third son Roland became a prominent mycologist (fungus expert) at Harvard, and one present-day expert on Thaxter and his work has literally followed in his footsteps: our November guest speaker, Harvard professor Donald Pfister. Dr. Pfister grew up in Ohio and went to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he was first introduced to fungi through a professor in the Botany Department. After Miami he went on to graduate work in mycology at Cornell University in the Department of Plant Pathology where he took up the study of cup -fungi. Classical education in mycology under Dr. Richard P. Korf prepared him for the field, the lab and the library. Donald Pfister, Mycologist, Teacher and Interim Director Of the Harvard University Herbaria His Ph.D. thesis was on a confusing group of cup-fungi that occur on wood in fresh running water. Following completion He has been active in campus life teaching, of his degree at Cornell he went to the University of Puerto Rico serving as House Master and most recently as the Dean as an Assistant Professor where he taught general biology and of the Harvard Summer School. He is currently the Asa mycology, continuing his research on cup-fungi, with a new focus Gray Professor of Systematic Botany and Curator of the on tropical species, and collecting around Puerto Rico and Farlow Library and Herbarium, has intermittently Guadeloupe. served as Director of the Harvard University After three years in the tropical climes of Puerto Rico he Herbaria and is presently its Interim Director. was appointed Assistant Professor in Biology and Assistant With students, post-doctoral fellows Curator of the Farlow Library and Herbarium of Cryptogamic and collaborators from around the world the lab now Botany at Harvard where he held the position that had been conducts research into a wide range of related topics. occupied by Roland Thaxter. A project that has been on his desk for some With the world class collection (built in part by time is the publication of Roland Thaxter’s South Thaxter), in both the herbarium and library, he took up a variety American Diary. This is a lively journal covering of studies alongside work on the cup-fungi. This research Thaxter’s collecting trip to Argentina and Chile in 1905 included bibliographic studies, documentation of collections, and -1906. Part travelogue, part mycological jottings, it historical studies of W. G. Farlow and Roland Thaxter. allows one to reflect on the stresses and rewards of field With changes in scientific methods, particularly work in far away places. Pfister visited some of these molecular phylogenetic studies, he and his students moved into areas in Southern Chile and is currently working on this new arena producing major works on the relationships among descriptions of new species, some of which were select groups of ascomycetes or sac fungi. observed by Thaxter but never formally published. Don takes pleasure in gardening at home in Arlington, MA where he lives with his wife Cathleen. They enjoy hiking together and on woodland walks are ever alert for the fungi that, although frequently One of the Laboulbeniales studied by Roland Thaxter (edit) clandestine, are to be found almost everywhere. Drawing by Roland Thaxter - Courtesy Harvard University Herbaria Page 2 ISHRA Newsletter Vol. 21 Issue 2 A Note From Your President The Historian in All of Us ISHRA June Conference Looking Beneath the Waves In my spring newsletter message, I mentioned that you don’t need a Ph.D. in history to help ISHRA June’s ISHRA conference “Under the Amazing locate, organize, preserve and expand knowledge about Sea at the Shoals” entertained, educated, and actively the natural and human history of the Isles of Shoals. involved those who attended. We enjoyed lectures, A wonderful example came to light this summer photography, walks, socials, crafts, campfire S’mores, when ISHRA board member Dorothy Healy tracked marine lab hands-on exploration, fishing, boating down a handwritten memoir touching on the victims and adventures, and of course the hospitality and ambiance of convicted perpetrator of the Smuttynose murders of 1873. Star Island. Thanks to all who participated and While attending a presentation at the York contributed in large and small ways! Library, Dorothy happened to hear mention of the ISHRA’s name includes “Research,” and Steven existence of such a memoir in the Maine Women Writers Keating’s ROV research was successfully tested during Collection. She wrote the curator, who invited her to the conference. Keating, an MIT researcher, designed his Portland to examine the notebook in person. “DIY ROV” (Do It Yourself Remote Operated Vehicle) to The writer, Mollie Lee Clifford (born Mary Jane be able to withstand the crushing pressure of ocean Lehee in 1865), may have been the only child ever to be depths while costing less than $100 in materials. His born on Lunging Island. She came to know Celia Thaxter, previous prototypes had been tested only in fresh water, who gave the young girl books, trinkets and even a pet in the MIT swimming pool and pressure chambers. homing pigeon, according to an account by Mollie’s The first tests in salt water happened June 25 as granddaughter. part of our conference. As the unit sank to the depth of Before Mollie’s family moved to Portsmouth a the Rutledge Marine Lab trench (3 feet, LOL), it was year before the murders, when she was seven, she already learned that electrolysis produced tiny bubbles in salt had met Karen and Annethe Christensen and the man water. In the next test, as the ROV plunged to the depth who would be convicted of their murder, Louis Wagner. of the Star Island dock (in the pouring rain), it In her notebook, a retrospective penned in 1901, successfully recorded data and popped to the surface Mollie wrote of having met the “sad-looking” Karen and exactly on schedule, beacon light flashing. her sister-in-law Annethe with “her bright blue eyes We all enjoyed the spirit of creative problem which were always laughing.” solving (including the metal nametag shorting out the “How well I recall the gentleness of those power), the ingenuity of the design process and testing Norwegian people,” she wrote. “Their neatness, and their protocols, and the sense of wonder at true state-of-the-art spirit of hospitality, which one may always expect to inventive scientific research. meet in the house of a Norwegian.” Jean Stefanik and Cassie Durette, Co-chairs Mollie’s memories of Louis Wagner’s visits to her Lunging Island home were dark ones. “His face was evil- looking although he could smile the blandest kind of smile,” she recalled. “My father, whose perceptions were unusually keen, declared that Louis Wagner has a black past and would bear watching.” More nuggets of Shoals history doubtless await discovery in unlikely places. Let’s keep our eyes peeled! Joel Plagenz, ISHRA President [email protected] ISHRA Media Contacts Cassie Durette The ISHRA Newsletter is Produced ISHRA Webmaster and Edited by Richard Stanley [email protected] [email protected] June Conference Attendees Vol. 21 Issue 2 ISHRA Newsletter Page 3 A Remarkable Life Review by Richard Stanley In the fading light of an autumn evening four- year-old Celia Laighton stepped onto White Island, looking up in awe as the beacon lights in the tower were kindled against the dark background of sky, and stars began to twinkle. Thus began the life of an island sprite, the sandpiper, who later in life described herself at age eight as “a little savage.” At twelve she was “the pretty little Miranda” to Nathaniel Hawthorne and, just five years later, found herself the young mother of a disabled infant. This was the first of many challenges that were to forge her character with an uncommon strength belied by her gentle nature and cultivation of the aesthetic life. Beyond the Garden Gate The Coming of the Swallow, n.d. The Life of Celia Laighton Thaxter Ribbon Bound Publication of Two Thaxter Poems By Norma Mandel Ballard Art Publishing Company Courtesy Bill and Sharon Stephan Illustrated, 197pp. Norma Mandel presents a unique and comprehensive account University Press of New England of Celia’s life that should be read by any and all with an interest in her, the Laighton and Thaxter families, and their part in Shoals history. In support of this contention I will confess that when introduced to the book, like many familiar with the coverage that Celia and her life has received, I wondered if more was needed. I soon dismissed any such reservation, and discovered a strength and honesty in this narrative of a talented and unusual family that is rare throughout much of literature. I have searched the text in vain for the particular words or sentences that inform the quality of Dr. Mandel’s writing, but found that, like attempting to identify what it is that makes a great painting—the use of certain colors, this or that brush stroke—the answer is elusive. The best I can manage is to say that there is an uncommon quality of humaneness—perhaps it is the empathetic and patient nature that we associate with the feminine gender speaking— which informs this persuasive narrative of a great woman’s life.