by Robert P. Barsanti On a bright Saturday in early May, one of the young men and I bought a dress shirt at Murray’s. Sometime in the winter, or at some other time when I wasn’t looking, the men’s section of the old store had been rearranged. It hadn’t been […]
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 […]
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 […]
Season of the Stick
by Robert P. Barsanti The ocean chewed the dark. Miles from the beach, the crunching and biting hung in the immediate present, distinct and clear. Overhead, the calendar roared and the power lines hummed. My boon companion and I were checking the fortifications as we do each night. We look […]
The Silence of September
by Robert P. Barsanti The radio rolled out with Presidential shenanigans, a new iPhone in California, and an update on the latest hurricane before it muttered out the September “Beach and Boating Forecast” and the tides for the day. Then I shut it off. Instead of the radio and the […]
Our Piece of the Pie
by Robert P. Barsanti On a crystalline Saturday for brides, I crashed a wedding. I had known the groom well in the days when I was able to collect his homework, assign him lunch detentions, and wonder if he would go to the prom. In the stretch of years after […]
Faith in the Hurricane
by Robert P. Barsanti Another hurricane has missed us; it slipped away to the south and east. It spun the fish and darkened the sunrise, but it passed on its one-way trip to Ireland without so much as a sprinkle. Nobody noticed but the surfers. In Madaket, where the waves […]
The Great Luxury of Life
by Robert P. Barsanti It took all summer, but I finally put the kayak in the water. It took one little white lie, one big bald faced lie, and a lucky parking place in Monomoy, but I was able to settle into the craft, deal with pegs that weren’t quite […]
Under the Blue of August
Between one thing and another, I missed the boat parade. First, a house needed to be turned over and, while I was at it, dishes needed to be cleaned. Then, the Burma March to the dump, then a hundred other things before I stood at the top of Step’s Beach, […]