Nantucket Essays Archives

Siasconset Ghosts

June 20, 2024

She had come down to open the house for the summer, again.

When the boys were younger, they had all come down over spring break to take the shrouds off of the chairs, stock the pantry, and restart the water and the electricity. Her husband, Benjamin, was a marvelous Professor of Economics and a force to be dealt with in the Faculty Senate, but he was not particularly handy. A degree in economics and a hand full of thumbs meant that he tried to turn the water on himself, broke something, and she always called a plumber to make sure it was done right.

Stand by Me

June 13, 2024

There’s a scene at the start of the fantastic 1986 movie “Stand By Me” where Richard Dreyfuss is sitting in his car, trying to come to terms with the death of one of his childhood buddies. As this character looks up from the newspaper article that had delivered the bad news, he sees two kids who look about thirteen pedaling by on their bikes. We see the Dreyfuss character immediately taken back in time, back to that age, back with his neighborhood gang. It’s a poignant moment that starts this brilliant coming-of-age movie (based on the Stephen King novella The Body).

An Island Point of View, Nantucket Essays, Nantucket Voices

You’ll Need a Bookcase

June 13, 2024

I can’t buy a decent bookcase. If I want, I can get one on Wayfair or from Ikea that looks like a bookcase, but the shelves won’t hold anything heavier than a take out meal. I can find one created by a craftsman made of walnut and sturdy enough to hold the Harvard Library in leatherbond, but the bill is roughly what you would pay for a used Toyota. And it won’t buy the groceries.

Nantucket Essays, Nantucket History & People

Spreading the Fishing Bug

May 30, 2024

Not every type of fishing involves rods and reels. Nantucket has an abundance of quahogs, hard shell clams that live in the shallow sandy areas around the island. When I was in my early teens, it seems that once or twice each summer I’d end up on a trip with Oscar Bunting, a commercial fisherman, to go with him and scratch up those tasty morsels. Oscar looked like he was from central casting’s selection for “The Old Man and the Sea.” He was a very strong guy with forearms that rivaled Popeye’s, a real-life Cap’n Quint. Oscar had a steely look in his eyes that told you he was a serious man but he softened that look with a frequent and wonderful deep laugh. I loved those quahog digging trips with him!

Nantucket Essays, Nantucket Voices

Go Bucktails!

May 16, 2024

Yikes—it’s the second week of May and no Nantucket anglers have caught a striped bass yet! The first striper of 2023 showed up on May 3. I remember this well as my wonderful, crazy wife Beth landed it! She didn’t know that it was a big deal at the time. I certainly did. So here we are, us Nantucket fishing types, waiting in anticipation. Antici-paaaaaation…it’s keeping me waaaaaaaiting…

Nantucket Essays, Nantucket Voices

Easy to See, but Hard to Recognize

May 16, 2024

We have had a run of remarkable weather. May, on Nantucket, is no longer wedding season: brides don’t plan fun activities for guests in the raw rain and fog. But when the weather does break, the sky glows, the trees and bushes gobble up as much warmth as they can absorb, and God is in his heaven.

Rising Waters and Reality

April 9, 2024

Keep up with changes of a warming world where the sewer plant is perched on the edge of the Atlantic, aquifer is getting salty, & creek is rising.

Nantucket Essays

Everyone Knows

November 16, 2023

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.