by Robert P. Barsanti He is one of us. He stood at the checkout line at the Stop and Shop with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, a gallon of 2% milk, and a box of Cheerios. The cashier spoke to the woman in the next aisle in something like […]
Nantucket Essays
Lessons Learned & Meeting Mr. Rogers
by Robert P. Barsanti I met Mr. Rogers. Apparently, having met the man is a mark of length of servitude to the island. If you can remember him, met him, or fixed his roof, you get a medal or some sort of certificate. Since his show has been off the […]
Passengers
by Robert P. Barsanti Two couples ambled out of a Calvin Klein advertisement and down the middle of Crooked Lane. All four were of a certain age and credit score, with the right catalogs coming to their houses and the best stores, placed carefully by marketers, in nearby malls. Both […]
Hope Walks
by Robert P. Barsanti I think of my mother almost every day. She died on a snowy night in February, at the tail end of a long, painful, and humiliating retreat from cancer. My father called me in the middle of that night when I was living on Lyon Street, […]
The New Year
by Robert P. Barsanti The new year begins when the grass does. Sometime, after enough rain, and enough sun creep on through the fog banks, the grass returns to life and goes green. Crocuses and daffodils pop sometime before the easter eggs and the lawn, but they run a false […]
Privilege Wears Waders
~ by Robert P. Barsanti ~ The tide was draining out of Madaket Harbor in the early afternoon under the incandescent winter sun. Safe in waders, six of us stood in the cold water that lapped around our waists. Aware of the present danger and recent past, we watched each […]
The Judge
~ by Robert P. Barsanti ~ As you get older, your life becomes a lab experiment for doctors and nurses and a math problem for bureaucrats and insurance executives. I go off-island, from time to time, to confer with the young people who pick at me like a frog transfixed […]
The Hope Chest
~ by Robert P. Barsanti ~ Nantucket scars us. We are stewards to an island in the sea of time. The cobblestones remain as they always have, as do the moors and the gray buildings. The years seem to slide by us. History happens on the other side ot the […]
Mondays in September
~ by Robert P. Barsanti ~ By September, Monday leans back, gives himself a scratch, and looks around the backyard for a few minutes. It has all the time it needs. Nothing presses it. The phone doesn’t ring, the e-mail only contains spam, and the coffee is ready by the […]
