Weekend Diversion: Diary of a Young Girl
There's something both creepy and moving about reading someone else's diary. (Reading your own diary is just plain creepy....)
The Martha's Vineyard Museum has a fascinating on-line exhibit: they've scanned the diary of Laura Jernegan, a 6 year-old girl who set out on a three-year whaling trip with her family in 1868.
It's here, and it's really amazing.
You see her handwriting change as she gets older, and her tone shifts, too. Less wonder, more wariness, which I suppose happens to all of us. There are boat sketches, whaling tales, glimpses of nineteenth century Hawaii, some adventure, and even a mutiny.
It's a quietly heartbreaking picture of family and childhood -- or, should I say, of a truncated childhood and a complicated family, in an unforgiving environment and a dangerous world.
- Comment (8)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (2)
Comments :
May '10
Re: Weekend Diversion: Diary of a Young Girl
Something about whaling. Moby Dick is sheer gorgeousness cover to cover, and there's a history sub-genre dealing with nautical disasters, shipwrecks, starvation and cannibalism (the custom of the sea). So I'm just going to assume the poor kid draws the short straw and gets eaten at some point, presumably ending the diary.
So how many cocktail parties did you attend while summering at Martha's Vineyard when you could have cleared brush? RINO!
Jun '10
Re: Weekend Diversion: Diary of a Young Girl
Moby Dick has brilliant parts, but cover to cover is a real stretch. Take the chapter on white, had Herman Melville had Laurence Sterne's courage, who in Tristram Shandy had an entire page printed black in contemplation of death, Melville would have left that entire chapter of pages blank, thus ensuring that his readers got more from those pages than they actually do.
Re: Weekend Diversion: Diary of a Young Girl
I have to confess that I skimmed, mostly, that chapter, Cas. "The Whiteness of the Whale" just never got its hooks into me -- and I've read Moby Dick at least 4 times, twice for school; once when I was teaching English; and the last time, a few years ago, when I was on a re-read-the-classics-after-30 jag. Still loved the book. Still skimmed that chapter.
Kennedy, she doesn't get eaten in the end. She just returns to Cape Cod. And her descendants, I'm pretty sure, now run some kind of coffee and muffin store. As far as my summers on the Vineyard go, as the hotel clerk says to Tony Hendra in "This is Spinal Tap," -- "I'm just as God made me, sir."
Sep '10
Re: Weekend Diversion: Diary of a Young Girl
I quite enjoyed the journal. It is such a poignant look at a little girl's thoughts during such a dangerous time. I doubt that the average six year old today would be able to write something like that. She did not have Sesame Street or computerized phonics, but she printed and punctuated very well. The sentences are complete and the grammar and spelling are perfect. Shows what simplicity and parental attention can do. Maybe our Department of Education should take a look.
May '10
Re: Weekend Diversion: Diary of a Young Girl
Can you imagine the grief this young girl's parents would get from social services today? Heck, I'm surprised that they don't prosecute posthumously. You know, seize the assets of all her heirs and make an example out of them.
May '10
Re: Weekend Diversion: Diary of a Young Girl
Wonderful find. I loved it.
And call me a heretic, but Moby Dick was a painful read. Slow and ponderous are probably the two words I would use. I've read it once (14? 15? Somewhere around there.) and never had the urge to pick it up again.
Jun '10
Re: Weekend Diversion: Diary of a Young Girl
As I crazy, or are Spinal Tap references the equivalent of the vulcan hand gesture - bringing delight to the faithful...
Note - if you want an eye opening perspective on Moby Dick, the book http://www.amazon.com/Spiritually-Incorrect-Enlightenment-Jed-McKenna/dp/0971435251 draws parallels between Ahab and Arjuna from the Bhagvad Gita. What is the consciousness of the spiritual warrior?
Jun '10
Re: Weekend Diversion: Diary of a Young Girl
Mark Lewis
As I crazy, or are Spinal Tap references the equivalent of the vulcan hand gesture - bringing delight to the faithful...
Note - if you want an eye opening perspective on Moby Dick, the book http://www.amazon.com/Spiritually-Incorrect-Enlightenment-Jed-McKenna/dp/0971435251 draws parallels between Ahab and Arjuna from the Bhagvad Gita. What is the consciousness of the spiritual warrior? · Sep 26 at 3:05pm
Mark you probably don't know this, but "Boston is not much of a college town."