Bagha Rosin

The Girl at the Museum

In the days when the building was erected, it was customary for men to sail from Nantucket on the Atlantic coast all the way to the middle of the Pacific in what, by today’s standards, would be considered precarious vessels. Thousands of miles away, deprived of communication with the terrestrial world, they would locate, track down and manually harpoon adult sperm whales with enough precision to puncture their hearts. A long rope attached to the harpoon would be tethered to the small boat used for this maneuver, and the velocities they reached while being pulled with great force by such a giant, terrified animal just before the end of its life I do not know. The men would then somehow haul the massive carcass aboard the main ship and process one of the most valuable commodities of their time - whale oil- which they would ultimately store in wooden barrels. The fact that the gruesome work shifts would often last well over a year and that they did everything without access to electricity or any subsequent technology, of course, might be difficult for the modern man - who needs but the flip of a switch to summon light - to fully appreciate. The point here, however, is merely to illustrate that the aforementioned building was old. Built in the early 1800, its lamps did burn whale oil. Its appearance, nonetheless, was immaculate; recently painted and well maintained, it stood rather imposing amid peculiar palm like trees somewhere in San Francisco, and its most recent iteration was as a museum.