• by Robert P. Barsanti • At the Juice Bar, the scoopers put up a sign over the ice machine that read “Relax, things could be worse. You could be on this side of the counter.” When I found this sign, I was one of about thirty people with my […]
Nantucket Essays
Summer’s End Standby
• by Robert P. Barsanti • He stands in board shorts and Yacht Club flip-flops at dawn on the Steamship Wharf and watches the colors spill over the eastern horizon. Then he puts his sun glasses back on. Summer can’t leave yet. He remains on the stand-by list. He parked […]
Why I Walk
by Robert P. Barsanti I attended the funeral in Hillsboro, New Hampshire recently. My uncle, Nandy, had died relatively unexpectedly at age 88, at the end of a long laughing life. Those who had survived gathered up in a small church in the hills of central New Hampshire to try […]
Billion Year Beach
• by Robert P. Barsanti • I was thinking about how strange it is. My two boys and I have spent much of the summer at Cisco this year. Freed from the predictable pattern of the pond, they run through the dunes, spray themselves with sun screen and plunge into […]
Missing Blueberries
• by Robert P. Barsanti • I missed the blueberries this season. On a day in the middle of the week, I walked to a spot in the middle of the island and found the branches bare. Rather, they only held small BB’s which could have been blueberries in a […]
No Seats Reserved for the Mighty
• by Robert P. Barsanti • Through a happy accident, I spent ten days on Kauai. Hawaii is everything Elvis promised us it would be: beautiful flowers, great surf, and barbecue. We spent days in a different ocean and nights under unfamiliar stars. By the end of our stay, all […]
The Touchstone
• by Robert P. Barsanti • His father and I sat in the wicker chairs and considered Sunday afternoon from the living room of the family summer house. We sat in fifty-year-old bamboo chairs, with cold drinks, and the ticking of the afternoon soft in our ears. Sometime soon, he […]
Couch Surfing
• by Robert P. Barsanti • In late June, Nantucket sets us apart. For the rest of the country, and the state, the first burns of summer arise. The air builds a curtain of water, the heat pins everyone and everything down, and the clouds ascend into towers of thunder. […]
The Eternal Circle
• by Robert P. Barsanti • Thirty-five weddings went off this weekend. Thirty-five brides in big white dresses, thirty-five nervous grooms. Thirty-five wedding parties heading off to town, then to the Box, and then finally to a boat. All of those friends and family, along with their Greek brothers and […]
