Tag: Robert Barsanti

Saving the Seed
Nantucket Essays

Saving the Seed

Photo by Allyson Bold
Summer often ends in a storm. One of the great whirling tempests of the Caribbean forms somewhere off the Azores and begins the slow dance across the warm Atlantic and around the Bermuda high. Those Who Know watch the glass and the Weather Channel to see how close and how far away the storm will pass. Then, when prudence and procrastination crash together at the boat ramp, summer gets towed away, shrink wrapped, and plopped onto a rack.

Nantucket Fire Department
Nantucket Essays

The Next Fire

The Veranda House burned and nobody noticed. 
Oh, we saw the pictures. We saw the plumes of smoke extending over the town, riding up, washing through the windmill and then out over the south shore. And we saw the pictures on social media and TV. However, the fire was an isolated event, much like the fireworks, the Pops, and Christmas Stroll. We hosted a news event that got our name onto local and national news. Any advertising is good advertising: My AirBnB views went through the roof. 

Stilt House | Nantucket, MA
Featured Articles, Nantucket Essays

Spring Sweeps In

by Robert P. Barsanti My neighbors are selling their summer place for seven million dollars. The websites tell me that the mortgage on that will break down to a neat 29,000 dollars a month. The house has been improved over the last two years, down to the foundation. It now […]

Nantucket Essay
Nantucket Essays

Measuring Days by Cup & Teaspoon

~ by Robert P. Barsanti ~ Somehow, the years have given me a set of cookbooks. They could have given me trust funds, summer houses, or a graceful sense of rhythm for the mambo, but the old calendars gave those to someone else and left me their cookbooks. My mother […]

Nantucket Island in winter
Nantucket Essays

Nantucket in Winter

• by Robert Barsanti • On winter Sundays, I like to sit on a bench on Main Street. The weather rarely drives me inside or keeps my front door locked. The ocean has her gifts; one of her minor ones blows over the island and sends you to the sweaters […]

Nantucket Essays

Autumn Entry

• by Robert P. Barsanti • The light remains in September.  The air clears, the fog settles, and sky glows throughout the afternoon into an operatic sunset.  To own a summer home on Nantucket is to also own the bankrupting irony of island living; the best weather comes after you […]

Nantucket Essays

Sharing September

• by Robert P. Barsanti • She stood at Children’s Beach at six o’clock in the morning.  The Eagle hummed with lights and activity, but otherwise the harbor was quiet and still.  Four ducks paddled past the sailboats, and their wake, eventually, rolled up on the beach.  The sun rose […]

Nantucket Essays

In the Spotlight

• by Robert P. Barsanti  • He has stopped in the crosswalk by the Hub at nine o’clock at night.  His phone and my headlights put him in a spotlight; however, because his earphones are in, he cannot hear my car.  Instead, he hits himself in the thigh, then begins […]

Nantucket Essays

Freedom Has No Tip Jar

• 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 […]