I suspect if you are reading this blog, you are aware that I have been in the process of writing a book about Hog Island in Muscongus Bay, Maine, for some time now.
Currently, the island -- just about an hour’s drive north of Portland -- is home to the Audubon Camp in Maine. (The camp’s name has gone through a series of changes over the years, starting as the Audubon Nature Camp for Adult Leaders when it opened in 1936, through the Audubon Ecology Camp in Maine when I got there in 1981, to its current iteration.)
The primary focus for my book project is Mabel Loomis Todd, the first editor of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, who in 1908, started the process of buying tracts of Hog Island to save its mature stands of spruce from being harvested for making wooden boxes.
Theodore Roosevelt, who was the US President at the time, was promoting the newly-minted idea of conservation on a nationwide scale. America must not waste her resources. Use raw materials wisely. Did Mrs. Todd save Hog Island’s primary growth because of Teddy Roosevelt? As an educated woman and lover of Nature, she was most certainly aware of such developments. I look forward to making some of those connections clear in my book.
Following her purchase of about three-quarters of the 330 acre island, the family created a summer camp on Hog where they spent many warm seasons when they weren’t traveling to other destinations. It was there, in fact, in the fall of 1932, where a 75 year-old Mrs. Todd suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died.
For all of the years I’ve told the island’s story and through all of the articles written about the place, Mrs. Todd and her daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham, get top billing. Mabel may have saved the place from cutting, but it was Mrs. Bingham who sought out the Audubon Society and witnessed the formation of the Camp for Adult Leaders there. Except for a few summers ever since, the camp has been teaching folks about birding, the sea, and the interactions of ecology. Audubon will be at it again summer 2012. [see: Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine]
Today, however, I would like to turn attention away from the girls and onto Mrs. Todd’s husband, David Peck Todd. Mr. Todd hardly gets a mention in island history, but it is clear when looking at the family’s camp on the west side of the island that there was a lot of testosterone expended to make the place as comfortable as it was. We know David was responsible for ordering roofing & nails, lumber, and keeping the boats sea-worthy, because of assorted notes and receipts preserved in the family archive at Yale.
And on this very day -- 5 June 2012 -- David Peck Todd deserves a special mention in astronomical history.
As you have most likely heard, a transit of Venus across the face of the sun takes place this evening, visible from across the United States, cloud cover permitting. This event is special because it happens so rarely.
As it turns out, Venus’s orbit around the sun is not on line with ours. It’s orbit is tipped about 4 degrees different from Earth’s, so as a result, eyes on our planet can’t see Venus pass between Earth and the sun except for every hundred years or so. If you miss seeing the event tonight, you won’t see it again on this planet until 2117.
Last time the transit of Venus occurred, photography was barely 60 years old. David Todd was working at the US Naval Observatory in Washington DC at the time and had a stellar track record observing eclipses of the moons of Jupiter. His boss, renowned astronomer Simon Newcomb, liked David’s work and put him in charge of photographing the transit of Venus to take place on 6 December 1882.
David Todd was a technical wonk. He loved creating stuff. He loved playing organ, too, and whet his mechanical chops on keeping those instruments up and running. By late fall 1882, David was developing a thing for photography, as well. [As an aside, transits of Venus come in pairs when they occur, separated by 8 years. When the 1874 transit came along, David took copious notes and made sketches. By 1882, he was ready to try his hand at photographing the event.]
Story goes that David Peck Todd was the first person in astronomical history to succeed in photographing Venus’s transit across Sol from Earth’s perspective. He traveled west to Mount Hamilton in California to accomplish his feat, where a solar photographic telescope was prepared for his use. In all, Professor Todd took 147 “superb” exposures on glass negatives. But as good as his work was, astronomy had turned to other techniques for determining the size of the solar system. His transit negatives were stored in a mountain vault beneath the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton and remained largely unknown for over a century. [For a piece on the animation of David Todd’s transit photos, see the July 2012 issue of Sky & Telescope: David Todd's photos of the transit of Venus]
Hog Island is about some great stuff. I feel blessed to have found it in my life. Along with birds and sea critters and island habitats, though, it was the first place I ever saw moons at Jupiter -- one clear night through somebody’s birding scope. Astronomy has a story to be told on Hog Island, too, right along with Audubon, Mabel Todd, and Emily Dickinson.
Today’s Elder Idea: Earth, air, and water are always with us. We touch them, handle them, ascertain their properties, and experiment upon their relations. Plainly, in their study, laboratory courses are possible. So, too, is a laboratory course in astronomy, without actually journeying to the heavenly bodies; for light comes from them in decipherable messages, and geometric truth provides the interpretation.
David Peck Todd
from A New Astronomy (1897)
Venus triptych by David Peck Todd (1882).
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