Nantucket Essays

Foggy Flag | Nantucket, MA
Nantucket Essays

America Is Hard to See

by Robert P. Barsanti The Fourth of July slips onto Nantucket under cover of fog and in a long series of jammed ferry boats. Then, on a someday around noon, we find ourselves stuck in traffic by the high school in front of New Jersey and behind Connecticut. The Fourth […]

Well Kept Hedge | Nantucket, MA
Nantucket Essays

Well-Kept Hedge

by Robert P. Barsanti Close friends of mine are lucky enough to live at one of the right addresses. As a result, nine months out of the year they have no neighbors within a well struck two iron. In the summer, the street is a hive of activity. They tell […]

Aqua Wall Phone | Nantucket, MA
Nantucket Essays

Wall Phones

by Robert P. Barsanti I stood in a kitchen in Tom Nevers and watched a phone ring. My life had skipped back twenty years while an aqua wall-phone was going through its famous paces. For a half second too long for my own comfort I wondered if someone’s pocket held […]

Flowers in Mist | Nantucket, MA
Nantucket Essays

June-uary

by Robert P. Barsanti June-uary has come upon us from the east. In this season, the visitors, the brides, and the bachelor parties race to the island with their daffodil swim suits, rent aqua bicycles, and head off to Cisco in cotton fog. When they arrive at the brewery, the […]

lawnmower | Nantucket, MA
Nantucket Essays, Nantucket History & People

Last Islanders

by Robert P. Barsanti I woke up to dubstep. The Bulgarian Power Team who tend the realtor’s houses on our street had keyed up some Central European Trap Music to blast over the sound of the riding mowers and their earphones. They had pulled into one of the empty gravel […]

Box of Tears | Nantucket, MA
Nantucket Essays

Box of Tears

by Robert P. Barsanti My son came back from April vacation with a date for prom. This fact rose up from the sea and flopped up onto the beach in front of me. I looked at this heaving thing and, as one does, accepted that this is what must be. […]

Stilt House | Nantucket, MA
Featured Articles, Nantucket Essays

Spring Sweeps In

by Robert P. Barsanti My neighbors are selling their summer place for seven million dollars. The websites tell me that the mortgage on that will break down to a neat 29,000 dollars a month. The house has been improved over the last two years, down to the foundation. It now […]

Nantucket Essay
Nantucket Essays

Measuring Days by Cup & Teaspoon

~ by Robert P. Barsanti ~ Somehow, the years have given me a set of cookbooks. They could have given me trust funds, summer houses, or a graceful sense of rhythm for the mambo, but the old calendars gave those to someone else and left me their cookbooks. My mother […]