News and Events for Nantucket Island
by Robert P. Barsanti My son has spent much of his summer elbow deep in mayonnaise, mustard, and meatballs. He has been apprenticed into the family trade down at Henry’s Jr. and has been feeding the working people of Nantucket one sandwich at a time. He has learned the special […]
by Robert P. Barsanti You can get anything you need on this island before eight o’clock in the morning. In the summer, we bring too many people onto the island, take their money, rent them cars, and then say a little prayer that nothing bad happens. And generally nothing does. […]
by Robert P. Barsanti You know that the Fourth of July has arrived when someone declares her independence by driving her BMW the wrong way down Main Street, parking on a crosswalk, getting the Sunday New York Times and an Americano, then trying to drive the wrong way up Union. […]
by Robert P. Barsanti “Family desperately seeking housing.” The sheet of paper has been rained on and faded in the early summer sun. It hangs on the message board near The Hub, next to the lost sunglasses, misplaced cats, and forgotten rock bands. They were being forced out. There were […]
by Robert P. Barsanti On Saturday, I was driving the island with the heir to my empire of dirt. After a solid month of damp and polar fleece, the rain crept north into the the Gulf of Maine and the fog line remained hung at the horizon off to the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
