News and Events for Nantucket Island
Two years ago, Someone spray painted racist graffiti on on the front of the African Meeting House on Nantucket. Two years later, that Someone is out there drinking coffee and waving at the cops when they drive by. The police department “will vigorously pursue the perpetuators of this hate crime,” which, I suppose, they are still doing.
On Saturday afternoons, I have been driving around the island and taking pictures. While the weather continues to be stuck in a damp June-uary, the season has begun. I drove down to Straight Wharf to photograph the boat basin, then out to Cisco Brewers, Cisco Beach, and then back to the head of Main Street. At nine o’clock, in May, with trees laden with leaves, cherry blossoms clustered, and absolutely no cars. Aside from people like me, memorializing the absence and remarking at the silence.
I was standing in front of the ice cream in the Stop & Shop when I got shouted at by a former student, enraged, hopping, eye-popping at my mask. He was a house painter, but there was not a spot of paint on his clothes today. Instead, he had a cart with milk, Cheerios, Huggies, broccoli, two loaves of Arnold White bread, and one canister of grated parmesan…
by Robert P. Barsanti The ocean, they say, is a great bluffer. I am a person who checks the weather. I fell to bed last night to the threat of a great storm that would scour the land, lash the water, and shatter the bluffs. I woke in the early […]
by Robert P. Barsanti The land forgets. It will forget the children that ran on it. It will forget the builders who put up the summer house. It will forget the golfers driving over the rise and watching their balls roll down the fifth fairway. Eventually, even, it will forget […]
by Robert P. Barsanti The Fates were drinking wine. The 2:30 Hy-Line left Hyannis fully loaded with brides, guests, and consorts. Once out of the harbor, the swells came broadside at the ferry and rolled it in wind and spray across the Sound. The Fates sat outside, under baseball caps […]
by Robert P. Barsanti This is a weird year. Not only do Washington, London, and Hong Kong seem out of kilter, so does the school calendar. This year, unlike last year, school will begin after Labor Day. In my beautiful and eternal childhood, the school year always began on the […]
by Robert P. Barsanti September is here and the fields are calling. Football fields, soccer fields, field hockey fields—if you can still find them. The exodus has swollen in earnest. Yukons and Suburbans and Defenders, laden with the surfboards and beach chairs, are rolling onto the boat and heading back […]
by Robert P. Barsanti We were all out of the water, while the sharks swam with the jellyfish. They could have been swimming with killer whales and mermaids, the fog was so thick you could only see one wave out to sea. On the other hand, the air remained warm […]
