News and Events for Nantucket Island
Nantucket sings and swings on consideration. You can’t act without thinking of others because the others are thinking of you. You must drive with your eyes up and your windows open, because the guy in the Miles Reis truck has to see you before he turns. Your Freedom To runs smack dab into Freedom From, then gets a load of garbage on the hood. You have to look, you have to wave, you have to wait.
The storm missed.
It formed off the coast of North Carolina and, instead of following the time honored path of the Gulfstream, it hooked left over New Jersey and New York, leaving us with fog, a stiff breeze, and some rolling surf.
by Robert P. Barsanti The seventh hole at the Sconset Golf Club rumbles down hill, over an irrigation ditch and up to a shaggy green for 150 yards. In the fog of history, you can see some smart fellow in plus fours swinging a niblick and dropping a ball, with […]
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 […]
