News and Events for Nantucket Island
~ by Amy Jenness ~ For centuries Nantucket mariners used the ocean as a global superhighway that took them away on business ventures to almost every continent. But when the United States entered World War I, the island’s culture of the sea shifted to the sky. The months around the […]
~ by Jascin N. Leonardo Finger, MMA Deputy Director and Curator of the Mitchell House, Archives & Special Collections ~ In 1848, Nantucket-born and raised Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) was invited to become the first female member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This […]
Nantucket’s Maria Mitchell Association (MMA) is operating a free shuttle this season, “The Starlight Express,” from three locations in downtown Nantucket to its Loines Observatory to encourage visitors and residents to stargaze each Friday night during the Observatory’s Open Night. The shuttle will operate three round-trip loops with the first […]
Author David O. Dowling will present his latest book Surviving the Essex: The Afterlife of America’s Most Storied Shipwreck on Monday, June 20 at 6 pm in the Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street. In this book, Dowling explores the survivors’ accounts of the ill-fated voyage of the whaleship Essex and […]
Artistic endeavors are being celebrated across our island this week as one festival honoring writing and another that salutes the visual arts share the venue of Nantucket. Plein Air Nantucket The Artists Association of Nantucket’s Plein Air Festival began Tuesday and continues through Sunday, June 19. The public is invited […]
by Richard Trust Herman Raucher has spent only two weeks on Nantucket, but those 14 days have created a lifetime of bittersweet memories – and then some. Don’t dismiss the “then some”—it has paid a lot of bills. Raucher’s fortnight on Nantucket 74 years ago was captured in the 1971 […]
Through fall, winter, and spring, we waited and we dreamed. We waited for the days to grow longer and for the cold winds to change to soft sea breezes. We dreamed of spending afternoons at the beach, basking in the summer sunshine and listing to the soothing rhythm of the […]
~ by Amy Jenness ~ In 1778 Captain James Cook and his crew were the first westerners to visit the islands of Hawaii, and they found there a rich Polynesian culture built over many centuries. But things did not go well for Cook, who was killed by the locals after […]
~ by Robert P. Barsanti ~ In the last week, we have had our share of rain out here on the outermost dune. Those tropical downpours that usually spend themselves in North Carolina or, at least, on the mainland, have slipped up a stalled front and dumped inches of rain. […]
