Author: Taryn McBryde

Just Like Old Times
Nantucket History & People

Just Like Old Times

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.

NEW Moon Fest
Nantucket Arts, Nantucket Events

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.

Eastern tent caterpillars
Island Science

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?

Nantucket Essays, Nantucket Voices

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.

Hilderbrand’s Winter Street series
Nantucket Arts

TWN Brings Beloved Books to the Stage

Every November and December, Theatre Workshop of Nantucket brings warm feelings of joy and happiness to audiences during their annual holiday production. This month, the TWN curtain goes up on the first-ever adaptation for stage of Elin Hilderbrand Christmas novels. TWN’s Producing Artistic Director Justin Cerne put his prodigious talent to work in creating a 90-minute stage production based on Hilderbrand’s Winter Street series, published from 2014 to 2017.

Steve “Tuna” Tornovish
Nantucket History & People

The First Rule of “Fish Club”

The cross-examination was withering: question after question, each one seemingly a tripwire cleverly placed to snare my plodding steps. The law yer pressed me relentlessly, stepping up his attack by the slightest degree, sensing that I was a moment away from falling apart. And he was right—my confidence was waning, and I was f loundering. I couldn’t play his game any longer. I reverted to what I did best, what had gotten me this far, what has always been the key to my survival I counterpunched.

Nantucket Essays

Everyone Knows

Around ten this evening, my boon companion rests his heavy head on my knee. He knows nothing of the Bruins or the British Baking Show; he only knows the call of the wild. If I don’t move for him and his needs, he puts one paw up on that leg. If I somehow have failed to hear his silent cry, both legs come up along with eighty pounds of golden retriever to fill my lap.