Mid April on Nantucket will fluctuate from a spectacular sunny t-shirt only day to one that requires a hooded neoprene jacket just to get to the mailbox. The wind howls, the boats are cancelled, and the rain pounds down in a sideways manner, just to remind you to stay inside. Which is what reasonable Nantucket people will do, of course. But fishermen are not necessarily reasonable people. And this is how I found myself standing in waders in the North Head of the Hummock, hands numb, eyes watering, trying to cast an ultralight pond rig into a 30 knot wind.
Recent Posts
Tidying-Up for Spring
Spring cleaning on Nantucket doesn’t just refer to sweeping away dust and cobwebs that have accumulated throughout the house during the winter months. It also includes several cooperative efforts to tidy-up our island roadsides, beaches, nature preserves, and town.
New Film Event Comes to Nantucket
Nantucket has a long history of empowering women. Because the Quaker population here valued equality and education, islanders educated their girls as well as their boys at a time that was not common. Nantucket women were independent, intelligent, curious, creative, and industrious. They were poets, artists, scientists, adventurers, writers, businesswomen, physicians—several of them world-renowned. Nantucket women were in the forefront in the fight for abolition and equal rights. On our island, women could express themselves.
For the Love of a Caterpillar
Spring seems to have finally arrived on the island. The Spring Equinox on March 19 officially marked the start of spring, but we all know not to be suckered in by those arbitrary dates. Traditionally, spring is marked more by the indicators of the changing season. It could be the Daffodil Festival which holds to the calendar date of the last weekend of April. Or it could be something more attuned to the spring climate: blooming forsythia, calling of spring peepers, and migratory birds arriving from their winter stays.
Do you have a favorite sign of spring?
Keep Nantucket More than a Beach Hotel
You can rent a house on Milk Street for $45,000 a week. For that money, you could buy, and own, a Camaro or a Mustang or a BMW 2 series. But if you were to go to a realtor and plunk your money down to rent this house on Milk Street, you could spend a week with three queen beds, a pool (of course), and “one of the best and most fun home bars on the island” in case you grow tired of paying $19 for a Negroni among the common people who spend their cash on sports cars.
Yesterday’s Island/Today’s Nantucket Page by Page
Now you can page through Yesterday’s Island/Today’s Nantucket to read each issue on your phone, tablet, or computer. See the photos, ads, and maps, as well as the editorial. READ YESTERDAY’S ISLAND/TODAY’S NANTUCKET PAGE BY PAGE! Read Past Issues Online
Limerick Challenge
This series of limericks first appeared in a June 14, 1924 edition of a Nantucket newspaper. It all began when the Princeton Tiger revived the then well-known limerick printed first below and the Chicago Tribune answered with the second limerick. The New York Exchange went one step further with the […]
Rising Waters and Reality
Keep up with changes of a warming world where the sewer plant is perched on the edge of the Atlantic, aquifer is getting salty, & creek is rising.
Watch the April 8 Eclipse on Nantucket with Maria Mitchell Astronomers & Staff
Join Nantucket’s Maria Mitchell Association for a free, safe viewing of the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse.