N MAGAZINE Winter 2023

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N A N T U C K E T ’ S

PERSON of the YEAR TOMMY

BRESETTE

BABSON COLLEGE PRESIDENT

STEPHEN SPINELLI REMEMBERING

JIMMY BUFFETT THE POWER OF ENGAGEMENT

SALLY SUSMAN

WINTER 2023

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37 Main Street, Nantucket, MA 02554 | maurypeople.com Each Office is Independently Owned and Operated. Equal Housing Opportunity.

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Invest In nantucket

support the communIty FoundatIon For nantucket today at cFnan.org The Community Foundation for Nantucket partners with you to strengthen our community, now and for future generations through informed philanthropy and community leadership.

To make a gift, visit cfnan.org, or hold your phone camera up to our flowcode:

PO Box 204 | 508-825-9993

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L I G H T I N G T H E WAY TO A S E A S O N O F C E L E B R AT I O N

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CONTENTS / W I N T E R 2 0 2 3

14 CONTRIBUTORS Meet the talented group of writers and photographers who helped make this issue possible.

16 BY THE NUMBERS A numerical snapshot of Nantucket this winter.

18 NTOPTEN All the places you need to be and see this winter.

20 NECESSITIES Put these items on your winter wish list.

22 KID’N AROUND How to keep your kiddos entertained this winter.

111 Keeping Cozy

24 NGREDIENTS The island’s best bottles and bubbles to stock up on now.

26 HEALTH N WELLNESS Lavender Farm Wellness on the importance of oncology massage.

28 NEAT STUFF The “Seaquin” Collection by Susan Lister Locke.

30 NBUZZ All the news, tidbits and scuttlebutt that’s fit to print courtesy of the Nantucket Current.

34 NEED TO READ Tim Ehrenberg gives his winter reading list, including his top 10 books for 2023.

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HAIRBAND, JACKET, BLOUSE, AND JEANS: MURRAY'S TOGGERY SHOP RINGS: THE VAULT EARRINGS: KATHERINE GROVER

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2024 Design Trends

NOSH NEWS 36 Tuck Shop becomes a Nantucket confectionary staple.

NDESIGN

NVESTIGATE

38 Interior design trends for 2024, according to Audrey Sterk.

80 Warming ocean temperatures are impacting Nantucket waters.

NSPIRE 48

One local gardener is saved at the hands of the Nantucket Cottage Hospital.

66 Meet the Museum of African American History’s new president, Dr. Noelle Trent.

54

Nantucket remembers a favorite visitor, Jimmy Buffett.

60

Skyler Kardell has traveled the world in search of rare birds.

72 Tommy Bresette helps shape the future of young of islanders through the Nantucket Golf Club Foundation.

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Sweet Beginnings

Winter 2023

N

BRESETTE

The Local Magazine Read Worldwide

ON THE COVER Nantucket’s Person of the Year, Tommy Bresette

BABSON COLLEGE PRESIDENT

Photography by Kit Noble

REMEMBERING

JIMMY BUFFETT THE POWER OF ENGAGEMENT

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Nantucket Magazine

fishernantucket.com

86 Sally Susman and the power of engagement.

TOMMY

STEPHEN SPINELLI

n Street, Nantucket, MA | 508.228.4407

NQUIRY

N A N T U C K E T ’ S

PERSON of the YEAR

SALLY SUSMAN

M A G A Z I N E

WINTER 2023

92 Babson College President Stephen Spinelli on entrepreneurship and success factors.

NDEPTH 100 Summer resident Chris Bishop pops the hood on his auto-inspired whiskey.

NSTYLE

106 Lunasalt brings the ocean to your wardrobe through denim.

NVOGUE

111 Staying cozy and chic are of the utmost priority this season.

FOGGY SHEET

120 A recap of Nantucket’s hottest events.

NHA 129 A look back at the lives of Nantucket’s sailors.

NUPTIALS

134 Brittany Mayer and Peter Talieri tie the knot at the Siasconset Chapel before celebrating at the Wauwinet.

NOT SO FAST

136 Nantucket Shorts Festival Best New Filmmaker winner, Vivian Crosby.

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Warming Waters

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N PUBLISHER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Bruce A. Percelay

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Antonia DePace

EDITORIAL ADVISOR Robert Cocuzzo

ART DIRECTOR Paulette Chevalier

DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING & PARTNERSHIPS Emme Duncan

CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER Kit Noble

Cape Cod 5 is proud to serve the financial needs of Nantucket.

FASHION PHOTOGRAPHER Brian Sager

SENIOR WRITER

Personal & Business Banking • Wealth Management • Financing

Jason Graziadei

112 Pleasant Street | Zero Main Street

CONTRIBUTORS David Creed Tim Ehrenberg Greta Feeney Stacey Marcus JohnCarl McGrady Wendy Rouillard Jonathan Soroff

Reach out to us. We’re here to help.

PHOTOGRAPHERS Zofia Crosby Tucker Finerty Bill Hoenk Matthew Kisiday Charity Grace Mofsen

ADVERTISING SALES Fifi Greenberg

EDITORIAL INTERNS Olivia Cyr Brooke Wheeler

capecodfive.com | 888-225-4636

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PUBLISHER N. LLC

CHAIRMAN: Bruce A. Percelay Nantucket Times 17 North Beach Street Nantucket, MA 02554 508-228-1515

©Copyright 2023 Nantucket Times. Nantucket Times (N Magazine) is published six times annually from April through December. Reproduction of any part of this publication is prohibited without written permission from the publisher. Editorial submissions may be sent to Editor, Nantucket Times, 15 North Beach Street, Nantucket, MA 02554.

We are not responsible for unsolicited editorial or graphic material. Office (508) 228-1515 or fax (508) 228-8012.

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@Nantucket_Magazine

Nantucket Magazine

Publisher’s Letter

PERSON of the YEAR Nantucket is a tale of two islands: one, an intensely popular resort destination during the summer, and the other, a tight-knit year-round community that faces many of the same challenges experienced on the mainland. But the best of Nantucket is seen when the summer and year-round residents work together to benefit the island as one.

Over the years, we have witnessed how Nantucket’s complicated ecosystem of two distinct populations has come together to build an extraordinary new hospital, a new Boys & Girls Club, the Dreamland BRUCE A. PERCELAY Publisher Theater and more. Most recently, there is no better example of the symbiotic relationship between Nantucket’s summer and year-round population than the Nantucket Golf Club’s charitable foundation.

The brainchild of Ed Hajim, Fred Green and Robert Greenhill, the foundation this year generated $4.8 million from the club’s annual auction dinner, but the heart and soul of the scholarship program funded by the club is island local and club COO Tom Bresette.

A resident of Nantucket for 30 years, Bresette executes the foundation’s scholarship program, which is having a profound impact on the island’s youth.

Bresette is the perfect liaison between Nantucket’s two populations, and his efforts have made the foundation the largest charitable organization on Nantucket. He does not simply dole out scholarships to island students, but devotes an enormous amount of his time getting to understand each applicant, their interests and motivations and whether they are appropriate candidates for the club’s scholarship fund.

For his dedication to helping provide life-changing educational opportunities for Nantucket’s youth, N Magazine names Tommy Bresette as our 2023 Person of the Year and congratulates him, the club’s membership and club founder Ed Hajim for their contributions to the island.

As we approach the holiday season, the difficulties that surround us both nationally and internationally highlight what a special haven Nantucket truly is. During a time when there should be peace on earth and goodwill to men, our world is anything but. Let us hope that somehow the spirit of Nantucket will spread beyond our shores and we’ll see more peaceful times ahead.

Sincerely,

Bruce A. Percelay Publisher

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Contributors

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Jonathan SOROFF Jonathan Soroff is a Boston native and a graduate of Duke University. He began his journalism career at The Boston Herald, and for 28 years was the lead columnist for The Improper Bostonian magazine. He has written for publications ranging from People to the Royal Academy Magazine and The South China Morning Post. He is currently a columnist for Boston Magazine, writing a social column, the “Person of Interest” interview and most of the magazine’s travel content. He also produces travel stories for national and international publications.

He is a board member of the Boston Ballet, the Trustees of the Reservations, the NET Research Foundation and Beaver Country Day School. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts.

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Stacey Marcus portrait by Laura Kozlowski

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Greta FEENEY A regular contributor to N Magazine since 2018, Greta Feeney focuses her work on arts, culture and the environment. A graduate of Nantucket High School, Greta Feeney studied writing at Bennington College and then pursued a career in opera. She received formal training at the Juilliard School and was a featured artist at the San Francisco Opera for 15 years.

While working full time as a singer, she studied chemistry and environmental economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and completed a doctoral degree in music at SUNY, Stony Brook.

She performed and taught in the greater Boston area until moving back to the island full time in 2020. Most recently heard in a program of patriotic songs at The Kennedy Institute, she opened with the national anthem for the Boston Pops on Nantucket this past summer.

In addition to her work at N Magazine, Feeney serves as director of education at Nantucket Community Music Center and director of music ministries at St. Mary’s Parish.

Learn more about her at gretafeeney.com.

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Stacey MARCUS Stacey Marcus is a lifestyle and travel writer whose work has appeared in regional and national outlets including Boston Magazine, Boston Common Magazine, Destination I Do, New England Living Magazine, Reader’s Digest, and more.

Her work often takes her to otherworldy locales like the Galápagos Islands, Iceland and South Africa, but her heart remains in New England. She resides on Boston’s North Shore with her husband Mitch and her beloved Bichon Theo. The couple has two grown daughters.

Location, Location, Location

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nity for a unique development project, 39 Orange Street and its guest cottage offer a world of possibilities. Provenance and Proximity at its finest.

Contact me today for a private showing.

Marybeth Gilmartin-Baugher is a licensed real estate agent affiliated with Compass, a licensed real estate broker and abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. All material presented herein is intended for informational purposes only. Information is compiled from sources deemed reliable but is subject to errors, omissions, changes in price, condition, sale, or withdrawal without notice. This is not intended to solicit property already listed. Photos may be virtually staged or digitally enhanced and may not reflect actual property conditions.

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NUMBERS NANTUCKET BY THE

200 +

Estimated number of Secret Service and support personnel who accompanied Joe Biden last year for his Thanksgiving visit to Nantucket.

4 Years

Approximate time it will take to complete the new Maria Mitchell Aquarium, which will be located at 33 Washington Street.

1994

The year Nantucket artist Matty Oates’ Cadillac Fleetwood was made. Dubbed the “Land Shark,” the rainbow automobile is often seen around the island propelling bubbles from the roof.

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50

Number of island community members who helped save bay scallop seed that was pushed ashore during Hurricane Lee.

1:33.16

Time for Sejal Atluru, the top female finisher in the Nantucket Half Marathon.

$ 4.8 Million Amount of taxes generated from short-term rentals on the island in June, July and August.

Indefinite Number of years it will take to decompose a carbon fiber windmill blade in a landfill.

$44 Million

Final closing cost of 68 and 72 Monomoy Road.

The sale, which included approximately $2 million worth of furniture and amenities, broke the residential real estate record for both the island and Massachusetts…for now.

200 Feet

Average length of wind turbine blades used for the installation of the wind farm off Nantucket.

500

Number of juvenile scallops per square meter counted this year in some harbor sites on opening day of scallop season.

INTERIORS

CAPE COD

NANTUCKET

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ELF, THE MUSICAL

NOVEMBER 21-DECEMBER 9

Bennett Hall The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!

At least, that is, according to Buddy the Elf. Celebrate with everyone’s favorite holiday character in Elf, The Musical, performed by the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket. Based on the 2003 cinematic hit, it’s bound to leave everyone with a hearty dose of holiday cheer, nostalgia and laughs. theatrenantucket.org

EVENTS for this Winter 4 4

ANNUAL CHRISTMAS TREE LIGHTING & COMMUNITY CAROLING CEREMONY NOVEMBER 24, 4 PM

Main Street Gather under the twinkling stars at Main Street for the magical tree lighting ceremony.

With the flip of a switch, over 150 trees will burst with colorful lights, illuminating the night sky. Join fellow islanders and visitors in caroling, and let the season’s joy warm your heart. nantucketchamber.org

2 2 NOVEMBER 21

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THE STROLL PARTY DECEMBER 1, 7 PM

Nantucket Dreamland With music by the Hess Twins, rock out to the holiday season with lite bites, a photobooth, cocktails and plenty of fun. nantucketdreamland.org

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FESTIVAL OF WREATHS Whaling Museum Celebrate community and artistic excellence at the Festival of Wreaths. These exquisite wreaths are crafted by local artists and designers, representing the holiday season’s beauty and generosity.

The wreaths can be bid on through a silent auction, with proceeds supporting a cherished local charity, turning this festive event into a heartwarming gathering of neighbors and friends. nha.org

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HOLIDAY SMALL WORKS

NOVEMBER 24-DECEMBER 22

Artists Association Gallery Experience the richness of Nantucket’s artistic community at the Artists Association Holiday Small Works exhibition. This cherished annual event showcases a diverse collection of small-scale artworks, all crafted with exceptional skill and creativity by local artists. Ideal for finding unique gifts or adding to your art collection, these pieces capture the essence of the holidays. nantucketarts.org

49TH ANNUAL CHRISTMAS STROLL WEEKEND DECEMBER 1-3

Downtown Nantucket Step into a winter wonderland during the Stroll Festival in downtown Nantucket.

From twinkling lights to joyful carolers, this festive event marks the start of the holiday season on the island. Enter the ugly sweater contest, shop Santa’s village and meet Saint Nick himself as he arrives via nautical sleigh at noon on Saturday. nantucketchamber.org

COLD TURKEY PLUNGE NOVEMBER 23, 10 AM

Children’s Beach Dare to start your Thanksgiving Day with a thrilling plunge into the crisp Atlantic waters during the annual Cold Turkey Plunge.

A tradition for locals and adventurous visitors, this lively event promises laughter, excitement and a holiday experience like no other. nantucketatheneum.org

6 6 FESTIVAL OF TREES NOVEMBER 30

Whaling Museum The annual event kicks off the island’s Stroll weekend with community-crafted trees designed by local merchants, nonprofit organizations, artists and children. Peruse the sparkling trees within the Whaling Museum—you might gather some inspiration for your own! nha.org

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NEW YEAR’S EVE PARTY

DECEMBER 31, 8 PM - 1 AM

The Nantucket Hotel Dress your best and ring in the new year with The Nantucket Hotel’s annual gala— dancing, dinner and a great start to 2024 is promised with hosts DJ Billy Voss and Adam Dread. thenantuckethotel.com

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COMMUNITY GAME SHOW JANUARY 27, 2024, 7 PM

Nantucket Dreamland

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Compete for cash prizes during Nantucket’s curated version of Jeopardy.

To apply to be a contestant, email josh@nantucketdreamland.com. nantucketdreamland.org

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necessities ARC BOTANICAL GIN

MANYMOONS SWEATER KNITS COLLECTION

Exclusively designed by Manymoons, this collection is a small-batch limited run of sweater knits made from Climate Beneficial Wool sourced locally in NYC. Made to keep you warm and cozy for many moons to come, they’re available in sizes from newborn to 6 years—as well as for women, too!

MANYMOONS @manymoons • manymoons.com

24K GOLD SCALLOP SHELL PENDANT

Handcrafted by Full Circle Craft Distillers Co. in the Philippines by island residents Matthew and Laurie Westfall, multi-award winning ARC Botanical Gin offers a wonderous array of botanicals and is the perfect choice for your next cocktail.

Now available in fine bottle shops across the U.S., this exquisite spirit offers a citrus-forward flavor profile framed by fresh pomelo, calamansi and mango.

FULL CIRCLE CRAFT DISTILLERS CO. @fullcircledistillers fullcircledistillers.com

Available in two sizes, this scallop shell necklace captures the spirit of summer and stretches it all year long with the timeless elegance of 24k gold. Pairs equally as beautifully with an LBD as with jeans and a tee!

KATHERINE GROVER FINE JEWELRY @katherinegroverfinejewelry katherinegroverfinejewelry.com

WINTER

WISH LIST

ACK LOVE DOG COLLAR

Unleash your love for Nantucket with this beautifully made, soft (yet strong) collar and leash, perfect for your furry canine friend.

Exclusively designed for Geronimo’s & Cold Noses by Belted Cow Company, your doggo will want to sport this on and off the island!

GERONIMO’S & COLD NOSES @geronimos_coldnoses • geronimos.com

ATLAS 150 PASTA MACHINE

Start a new holiday tradition the entire family can enjoy… all you need is acqua (water), farina (flour) and Marcato!

Rather than going out this season, invite the family into the kitchen for quality time, authentic Italian pasta making and memories to last a lifetime.

MARCATO @marcopasta marcatousa.com

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NANTUCKET: THE ULTIMATE PLAYGROUND

This photographic coffee table book captures the essence of our idyllic island through a child’s eyes, showcasing Nantucket’s unique magic and family-friendly attractions. Whether you’re a longtime resident or a first-time visitor, consider this a must-buy for yourself or anyone you know who holds the island close to their heart!

BY TARA MOSS AND REBECCA LOVE @ladyhattan • @rebeccalovephotography nantucketbookpartners.com

GIVE’R 4-SEASON GLOVES

Made of top-quality leather and lined with a layer of insulation, these Give’r gloves are the perfect blend of durability, comfort and warmth. They can be worn for virtually any activity, from extreme snow sports to walking the dog on a freezing day—and added bonus, they are waterproof, so you don’t have to worry about your hands getting wet in the rain or snow!

GIVE’R @giverjh • give-r.com

POLPIS · 6 KELLEY ROAD · $2,495,000

Three-bedroom home abutting conservation land

CLIFF · 10A DELANEY ROAD · $6,300,000

Furnished five-bedroom home with a pool and spa

SURFSIDE · 3A FIELD AVENUE · $1,875,000

Well-maintained and spacious home on three floors

TOWN · 4 YORK STREET · $2,450,000

NAUSHOP · 3 GOLDFINCH DRIVE · $2,995,000

SCONSET · 14 & 16 COFFIN STREET · $13,250,000

TOWN · 21 PINE STREET · $4,135,000

NASHAQUISSET · 31 WASHAMAN AVENUE · $2,795,000

SCONSET · 10 CENTER STREET · $1,950,000

Antique comfort & modern charm in a 19th C. home

Sconset Estate with a guest house and pool on two lots

Southern exposure five-bedroom home

Unique home with four finished floors & spacious yard

Storybook house and cottage in the Historic District

Antique gem in the heart of Siasconset Village

Locally owned with two offices, in Town and Sconset.

1 NORT H BEACH STREET

6 MAIN STREET

NANTUCKET, MA 02554

SIASCONSET, MA 0256 4

508.228.2266

508.257.6335

Over $900 million in sales in the last two years.

In 2022, we sold 27% of all listings on the island.

Proven track record of success that spans more than two decades.

Our team of 31 agents call Nantucket home.

We look forward to helping you Find Your Nantucket. N - M A G A Z I N E . C O M

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WRITTEN BY WENDY ROUILLARD

Also look for upcoming special events such as its 2024 Nantucket Science Festival and courses in scientific exploration. All programming is open to the public. For more information about its fall and winter programs and to view the calendar of events, please visit mariamitchell.org and follow @maria_mitchell_association.

AROUND SPEND THE WINTER WITH DREAMLAND THEATER There’s a full season of family-friendly musicals this winter at Nantucket Dreamland and Dreamland Stage Company—including the production of Madeline’s Christmas, where audiences will be whisked away to Paris for the holidays. This special holiday show runs December 7-17. For even more festive fun, join the Dreamland for High Tea at Bemelmans before the performance. After the holidays, the enchanted world of Beauty and the Beast Jr. arrives on stage (February 8-18).

This beloved Disney classic features a cast of local performers ages 7-18. Registration is now open. For more information and tickets, please visit dreamlandstagecompany.org and be sure to follow them @nantucketdreamland.

EXPLORE AND LEARN WITH MARIA MITCHELL THIS WINTER One of the island’s must-do family activities is visiting the Maria Mitchell Hinchman House Natural Science Museum at 7 Milk Street. There, children of all ages can learn more about the history of Nantucket, explore hands-on activities, see live animals and discover more about Nantucket’s biodiversity. The Hinchman House hosts a series of programs this winter, including Ravenous Reptiles, Nature Story Hour and weekend science programs.

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FIND MATCHING HOLIDAY CHILDRENSWEAR AT PEACHTREE KIDS Peachtree Kids is Nantucket’s favorite children’s shop on Main Street, featuring stylish clothing, shoes and accessories for infants and children through size 12. Visit the shop to see the selection of iconic sweaters, matching holiday outfits and pajamas from brands like Sammy + Nat, Nanducket, Petit Peony, Joy Street Kids, Nikki Rene, Maddie & Connor, Little Paper Boat, CJW and Henry Duvall, as well as traditional favorites Piping Prints, Barnaby Bear, Hatley, Busy Bees, Bailey Boys and more. Plus, during Stroll Weekend, meet designer and illustrator Christina Wang during the CJW pop-up.

Stop by in person or online at peachtreekidsnantucket.com and be sure to follow @peachtreekidsnantucket.

CELEBRATE THE HOLIDAYS AT BARNABY’S TOY & ART SHACK Barnaby’s Toy & Art, located at 12 Oak Street in downtown Nantucket, is offering a variety of art classes for children ages 2 and up for Thanksgiving and Stroll, including Holiday Ornaments, Gingerbread Houses, Holiday Winter Wonderlands and much more! Barnaby’s toys have been carefully hand-selected for the holiday season to provide functionality, handson interactive play and entertainment. For more

at-home fun, check out the Barnaby’s Art Kits to Go. And be sure to visit the new Barnaby’s Beacon Hill at 15 Charles Street in Boston—art classes are offered daily there too! You can find a full calendar of programs for both stores at barnabystoyandart.com.

Or for more information, call 508.680.1553, email barnabyack@gmail.com, or follow @barnabystoyandart.

EXPLORE WINTER PROGRAMS AT THE LINDA LORING NATURE FOUNDATION Looking for an adventure? This winter, head out to the Linda Loring Nature Foundation at 110 Eel Point Road! Stop by anytime to enjoy the Story Walk. Each month, a new children’s book is posted along the trails so children can enjoy reading as they hike, taking in the sweeping views of grasslands and the Nantucket Sound. Resident birds like cardinals, chickadees and harriers can be seen across the property, and views are even better in the winter with the leafless shrubs. For more information and a schedule of its winter programs, please visit llnf.org and follow @loringnatureack.

VIEW THE FESTIVAL OF TREES WINTER WONDERLAND The Nantucket Historical Association is hosting its 30th annual Festival of Trees December 1-30. More than 80 trees will deck the halls of the Whaling Museum from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., all designed by local merchants, nonprofit organizations, artists and schoolchildren. There will also be holiday activities for children of all ages to enjoy. Admission is free for the year-round community and NHA members.

For more information, please visit nha.org or call 508.228.1894.

Follow all of the NHA’s properties @ackhistory.

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ngredients

A Matter Of

TASTE WRITTEN BY ANTONIA DEPACE

The island’s best bottles and bubbles to stock up on now.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE

W

ith the holiday season upon us, it’s time to reflect on a very important topic—the best ways to ring in the season and the best sips to accompany them. N Magazine has checked in with some of Nantucket’s experts on the best bottles and bubbles to pop now and for the new year.

THE EXPERT: ELISABETH ENGLISH, Founder of Current Vintage THE BOTTLE: Laurent-Perrier Champagne Grande Siècle Grand Cuvée No. 25 FLAVOR PROFILE: Citrus fruits, grilled almonds, brioche “My favorite bottle for the new year is Grand Siècle, the tête-de-cuvée [top wine] from Champagne Laurent-Perrier. A blend of three prime vintages from nine Grand Cru vineyards, it is somehow both rich and elegant, racy and luxurious, with a silky finish that lingers on and on. The 12-year extended lees aging is longer than most top champagnes and contributes much to the sophistication and complexity. It is not inexpensive at nearly $300, but it delivers beyond many higher-priced champagnes. Grand Siècle is the ultimate celebratory sip in that it pairs beautifully with festive holiday fare such as caviar, oysters, lobster and Nantucket bay scallops—and the metal cage packaging is instant glamour! Enjoy it in a Zalto champagne glass for the ultimate sensory experience.” ”

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THE EXPERT: CHRIS SLEEPER, Owner and Wine Director at Pip & Anchor THE BOTTLE: Tissot ‘Indigène’ Crémant du Jura FLAVOR PROFILE: Lemon zest, toasted almonds, brioche “It’s an unexpected treat! A darker color in the glass and a little residual sugar, which is not usually my thing, but it works here.

Because of the darker color, it’s festive and there’s this acidity that cuts the aforementioned residual sugar, making it loveable for those that like a drier style. It’s an easy crowd pleaser that would pair well with all the light bites and cocktailing that happens during the holidays.

In my experience, once someone tries this one, they come back for it again and again. And it doesn’t even have to be the holiday season!

Oh, and it’s super affordable—it’s under $25 on the shelf. ”

THE EXPERT: ALANNA LUCAS, Owner of Nantucket Wine and Spirits THE BOTTLE: Domaine Lingot Martin Bugey-Cerdon Sparkling Gamay Rose FLAVOR PROFILE: Red berries, baking spice, brown sugar “I’d choose this bubbly beauty from the hills of the Jura over most champagnes this holiday season. It calls for celebration without being pretentious. You can leave your pinky down and gnaw on a turkey leg because this wine calls for the dark meat! Tissot’s wines always show high energy and excitement, and when I drink a wine to celebrate, I want it to be celebrating with me. This one sings in the glass and dances on the palate. This high-elevation alpine wine has a strong acid and mineral backbone to accompany your favorite holiday cheeses and slow roasts, because when paired with a little bit of salty, savory and fatty food, the melon, stone fruit and zesty lemon notes shine.”

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healthnwellness

HEALING from Within WRITTEN BY ANTONIA DEPACE PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE

Lavender Farm Wellness on the importance of oncology massage

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n 2019, Nantucket Bake Shop’s Louise Hubbard was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that forms in plasma cells in bone marrow. In April 2022, nearly three years after her diagnosis, Hubbard was chosen to join a trial for CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T-cell therapy at Massachusetts General Hospital. But between going back and forth to Boston and developing side effects like plantar fasciitis (an inflammation of the plantar fascia that causes sharp pain in the heel or bottom of the foot), one thing was clear: Hubbard needed to take care of herself in more ways than one. “One of

Louise Hubbard

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the things that was stressed to me by my oncologist, Dr. [Andrew] Branagan, was to have massages and do things that made me more comfortable,” Hubbard says.

This led her to Lavender Farm Wellness, where Nantucket Cottage Hospital nurse practitioner Ugne Aleknaite promotes functional medical tools for better health. These steps include massage therapy, Gyrotonics, craniosacral therapy, advance bodywork therapies, meditation and oncology massage, through a partnership with Cape Wellness Collaborative. Internal funding from the wellness center itself helps reduce the cost of massages for patients with cancer. “The application process was very easy,” Hubbard, now 79, says. “The staff works with you in order to begin the process. So for those who can’t afford them, this is something that’s available for all cancer patients.”

Hubbard was placed on a regimen of massage every two weeks, which has now been extended to once a month based on need. “I would come out of

Brandon Jellison with Ugne Aleknaite of Lavender Farm Wellness

there feeling like a million bucks,” she says, noting that in addition to helping her pain, it has also helped her to relax during her treatment and in her current remission.

According to Aleknaite, what Hubbard experienced is exactly the

massage therapist notes that massage can also help with peripheral neuropathy, a common side effect from chemotherapy that damages the nerves and can often lead to tingling, numbness, weakness, discomfort, pain and

“The most powerful thing about massage therapy specific to the cancer population is the ability to experience wellness in one’s body even for a short period of time, by bringing down the level of stress and supporting the trajectory of wellness in one’s being.”

– Ugne Aleknaite

type of benefits intended for what she defines as lifestyle medicine.

“The most powerful thing about massage therapy specific to the cancer population, is the ability to experience wellness in one’s body even for a short period of the time, by bringing down the level of stress and supporting the trajectory of wellness in one’s being,” explains Aleknaite, who also serves as the oncology program leader providing Mass General cancer services.

Other benefits of oncology

massage include the possibility of relieving pain, improving sleep and lessening fatigue.

The nurse practitioner and

cramps in the hands and feet. “With movement of the strokes, massage is really good at improving circulation in the extremities and bringing the

nutrients to the tissues to help with symptoms of peripheral neuropathy,” Aleknaite explains.

Given these benefits, oncologycatered lifestyle medicine that addresses the health impact of nutrition, physical activity, social connections, stress reduction, avoidance of risky substances and proper sleep needs to be more widely accessible both on and off the island, according to Aleknaite.

While there’s a lot of growth needed, she’s taken a personal stride toward providing better education about the benefits by creating a webinar series with the multidisciplinary professional

team at Mass General Brigham Cancer Center that patients and clinicians can access on demand on the center’s website. She recently presented the series at the American College of Lifestyle Medicine Conference and hopes it will eventually be used to bring more positive impacts to those with cancer as well as survivors.

Lifestyle medicine, which goes beyond pharmaceuticals and conventional Western treatments, can be equally effective at increasing patient comfort and improving their state of mind.

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neat stuff SPONSORED CONTENT

Gifts from the INTERVIEW BY ANTONIA DEPACE PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE

Sea

THE “SEAQUIN” COLLECTION

by Susan Lister Locke

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ell known on Nantucket for her timeless, one-of-a-kind designs, Susan Lister Locke delights once again with the “Seaquin” Collection.

With the holiday season upon us, it comes as no surprise that she’s gracing clients with stunning additions that are sure to dazzle. Here, N Magazine chats with the custom jewelry designer about the line, as well as what’s in store for 2024.

any stone that I set into it. Like the ocean—or a favorite song, it can hold a sentimental/special yet different meaning for each person that wears it.

my creative process and be open to new thoughts and ideas.

What is your design process from paper to product?

What inspired the “Seaquin” collection?

Is there a story behind it?

I am a very visual person.

As an artist, I love color and use my gemstones as one would use their paints. Sometimes I will sketch a design, but most often I begin with my gemstones and gold elements laid out. My designs can come together very quickly or be a year or more in the making. It just depends on what works together— what enhances the design for the greatest effect and also, and very, very importantly, originality and wearability.

Most jewelry, no matter what it is, has a story. So often a client will tell me about the pieces they have inherited but are not wearing. I say let’s recycle them and give them new life so they can be worn and enjoyed again … by them and their children.

The sentiment will carry

Inspired by our precious oceans and the sea life and urchins that inhabit them, the “Seaquin” Collection has truly morphed from a custom ring, created several years ago for the designer that made my daughter’s wedding gown, into an expansive selection that includes bracelets, necklaces, rings and earrings.

Oftentimes the pieces are set with diamonds and high-quality semi-precious gems.

What is your favorite piece from the “Seaquin” Collection?

It’s akin to asking me which is my favorite child. I think the simplicity of a single “Seaquin” drop on a chain by itself is just dear. They also work wonderfully with gemstones and my “Sea Stars” in bracelets and earrings as well as in the elaborate Stella Marina Bib necklace.

What does this collection add to the Susan Lister Locke collective that the others don’t have?

I think there is something very unexpected about it; it’s not traditional or sculptural like my Signet rings, yet it’s not “artsy” either. My clients respond well to this collection. It is comfortable to wear and most of it can be layered with other necklaces, chains or bracelets. They can easily go from day to night, casual chic for daytime and subtle sparkle for evenings!

It is whimsical, organic and very versatile.

The gold alloy that I use is very rich and enhances

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What’s next for Susan Lister Locke?

I have a home and a studio in West Palm Beach, Florida, where I stay for the winter season. It is my “down time” when I can enjoy my friends and family, but it is also my creative time. I will be doing some trunk shows including my annual show at the marvelous Gasparilla Inn over Valentine’s weekend and also continue my WWOW (Wonderful Women on Wednesdays) events that I started this summer. I would like to continue to grow and expand

Anything to add?

Susan Lister Locke in her Nantucket boutique.

on but in an updated fashion!

I want my designs to stay unique, beautiful and to be worn. They are not trophies to be put on a shelf or in a vault—I want them to be enjoyed by the wearer and all who encounter them. It is an honor for me to create pieces that become part of my clients’ lives. I am very grateful for all of it.

Learn more about the collection at susanlisterlocke.com.

REPRESENTED THE BUYER IN SEPTEMBER’S RECORD SETTING $44M SALE BROKERED 2 OF THE LAST 3 HIGHEST TRANSACTIONS IN THE STATE

Providing a Higher Level of Service

BRUCE BENI | PETER ENGEN bruce@leerealestate.com peter@leerealestate.com 508.325.5800 N - M A G A Z I N E . C O M

nbuzz

REPORTED BY THE NANTUCKET CURRENT

ENDANGERED RIGHT WHALE POPULATION MAY BE STABILIZING AFTER YEARS OF DECLINE After years of continued decline, the North Atlantic right whale population may be beginning to stabilize, according to a new population estimate from the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium.

Updated numbers indicate a leveling off, with an equal number of animals being born into the population as are being killed. That’s the good news, but scientists emphasize that the critically endangered species— estimated at just 356 animals remaining in the world—still faces significant

ongoing threats from human activities.

Each year, the consortium releases the annual population estimate for the species using the most up-to-date data, including calves added to the population

since the previous year.

In a report released at the consortium’s annual meeting October 24-25 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, scientists used the updated data to recalculate annual estimates of the right whale population since 1990. The 2021 estimate was recalculated as 364 (+5/-4 for range of error)—primarily due to the 18 calves born in 2021, many of which were recently cataloged—and the 2022 estimate is 356 animals (+7/-10), suggesting the downward trajectory for the species could be slowing.

“THAR SHE BLOWS!” The Main Street fountain, a landmark of downtown Nantucket, was destroyed late October 29th by a pickup truck that smashed into it at high speed and fled the scene. The incident occurred just after 10:30 p.m. when a white Chevy Silverado struck the fountain head-on, leaving the heavy steel structure in pieces on the cobblestones. Some parts of the fountain

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were strewn nearly to The Hub and the intersection with Federal Street, nearly 30 yards away. The driver of the truck fled the area, and Nantucket police and firefighters soon converged on the scene and began an investigation. Just after midnight, the truck was located by police in the parking area behind Holdgate’s Island Laundry on Vesper Lane, and a suspect was taken into custody.

SEVERE EROSION PROMPTS DEMOLITION OF

CONDEMNED NANTUCKET

BEACH HOUSE

Severe erosion on Nantucket’s south shore led to the demolition in October of a beach house that had been condemned by the town over the summer. The house at 21 Sheep Pond Road was the latest victim of erosion on the island after 35 feet of the dune was lost to the

waves over the past year. A storm in June undercut the southeast corner of the home, causing the deck to collapse into the sand. On October 19, a Toscana Corp. excavator needed less than an hour to bring the beach house down and reduce it to rubble. In July, the Board of Health voted to ratify an emergency condemnation order on the property.

The owners of the home, George and Marie Frazza of New York City, were ordered to remove the deck and all septic components, and to begin the process of abandoning the property. The Frazzas have owned the property since 1995 when they purchased it for $557,500. They did not return a message seeking comment. The 2,300-squarefoot home was built in 1976, according to property records. The house behind it at 22 Sheep Pond Road—which now has direct ocean views—sold in December 2022 for $2.3 million.

GOVERNOR INCLUDES HOUSING BANK

IN $4 BILLION BOND BILL

In October, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey proposed an ambitious $4.12 billion housing plan that includes a so-called local option transfer fee that would tax high-end real estate sales to provide funding for affordable housing initiatives. The concept was first floated by Nantucket more than a decade ago but stalled at the State House in Boston in the face of intense opposition from the powerful Massachusetts Association of Realtors. But just as Nantucket’s housing crisis has grown worse, so too have the housing woes of other communities in the state, prompting a growing number of municipalities

to seek similar legislation.

Gov. Healey’s administration acknowledged those appeals to allow cities and towns to impose such a transfer fee in its Affordable Homes Act. Nantucket’s housing advocates and state representatives joined a chorus of praise for the ambitious legislation. The governor’s bill would allow municipalities and regional affordable housing commissions to adopt a transfer fee

of 0.5 percent up to 2 percent, paid by the seller of real estate, on the portion of sale proceeds over $1

million or the county median home sales price, whichever is greater. The fee would be required to be used for affordable housing development.

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NANTUCKET REPS

TAKE AIM AT ‘DARK MONEY’ INFLUENCING TOWN MEETINGS Nantucket’s state representatives are taking aim at so-called dark money that they say is influencing voters at town meetings on Cape Cod and the islands. The legislation filed by state Sen. Julian Cyr (above, left) and state Rep. Dylan Fernandes would close a long-standing loophole in state campaign and political finance law that allows “unfettered political influence on warrant articles before voters at Town Meetings,” the lawmakers stated in announcing

the bill in October. The Massachusetts campaign finance law includes strict requirements and rules mandating disclosure for candidates running for office and groups receiving contributions to lobby for or against proposed ballot questions. But those requirements do not apply to individuals, groups or businesses seeking to influence warrant articles taken up by voters at town meetings.

VINEYARD WIND COMPLETES CONSTRUCTION OF

‘LARGEST TURBINE IN THE

WESTERN WORLD’OFF NANTUCKET The first of Vineyard Wind’s offshore turbines was completed in October 15 miles southwest of Nantucket.

The company hailed it as “the largest turbine in the Western world.” The completed GE Haliade-X turbine is the first of 62 that will be spaced one nautical mile apart in Vineyard Wind’s lease area. Each turbine will reach

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837 feet in the air at the tip of its blade, nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower. The turbine consists of a tower, three blades and one “nacelle.” It has a nameplate capacity of 13 megawatts, capable of providing power to more than 6,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts, according to Vineyard Wind. The project is on pace to become the country’s first large-scale offshore wind farm.

The first turbine components left the port of New Bedford in early September, squeezing through the city’s hurricane barrier behind a tugboat and heading out to sea. The assembly was delayed due to weather conditions. Throughout 2023, the company has been conducting geotechnical surveys and laying cable for the project, and recently completed a substation. The company, which is backed by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid Renewables, believes the entire project will generate 806 megawatts, enough to power more than 400,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts.

ANGLERS’CLUB TO

BUY WASHINGTON STREET

PROPERTY FOR

$5 MILLION The Nantucket Anglers’ Club has reached a deal to buy the waterfront property at 32 Washington Street for $5 million from island resident Rick Kotalac. The property on Nantucket Harbor, which Kotalac ran for decades as Brant Point Marine and later leased to island resident Mike Allen who operated the Tidal Creeks Ship Store, will eventually become the new home of the Nantucket Anglers’ Club. But first, the deal provides for a five-year period in which Kotalac will be allowed to occupy and lease the property. Kotalac intends to lease the property to a tenant who will run it as a marine supply store during that time. Kevin Martin, president of the Anglers’ Club’s board of trustees, confirmed the club’s acquisition of the Washington Street property and its plans to eventually vacate its current headquarters on New Whale Street where it has been for more than 50 years. That spot is owned by Steve Karp’s Nantucket Island Resorts. Martin confirmed that the plan is to reconfigure the former Brant Point Marine building into a new headquarters for the Anglers’ Club once the five-year lease back to Kotalac ends, rather than tear it down and build new.

NRTA CONSIDERING

GOING FARE-FREE

TO RIDE WAVE BUSES

The Nantucket Regional Transit Authority (NRTA) is considering a fare-free model that would allow all riders to travel aboard its “Wave” buses at no charge.

The proposal was aired publicly at an October meeting of the Nantucket Planning & Economic Development Commission. Citing research from the Transit Cooperative Research Program, the NRTA believes that free fares could increase ridership, improve on-time performance and decrease conflicts between riders and operators. Moving to a farefree model also aligns with the commission’s goals for accessibility and affordability. The NRTA’s presentation proposed that moving to a farefree model could be paid for by the town finally implementing a paid parking system, a concept that has been discussed for years but has never materialized. The NRTA’s current fares range from $2 to $3 per ride, depending on the route, with seniors able to ride for half-price and children under 6 allowed to ride for free. The NRTA Wave buses currently generate $550,000 annually in fare revenues. The town’s 2018 estimate for paid parking on Nantucket is roughly $900,000.

Scan the Flowcode to read more news on the Nantucket Current

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need to read

Tim Ehrenberg from “Tim Talks Books” dishes on the hottest reads for winter.

TIM’S TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2023 TOM LAKE

BY ANN PATCHETT

E H R E N B E R G

SPEECH TEAM

BY TIM MURPHY WELLNESS

BY NATHAN HILL

T I M

THE RACHEL INCIDENT

BY CAROLINE O’DONOGHUE

B Y

THE WAGER

BY DAVID GRANN

W R I T T E N

MAAME

BY JESSICA GEORGE ON THE SAVAGE SIDE

BY TIFFANY MCDANIEL

N O B L E

THE COVENANT OF WATER

BY ABRAHAM VERGHESE

K I T

THE SHARDS

BY BRET EASTON ELLIS

P O R T R A I T

B Y

YELLOWFACE

BY R.F. KUANG

MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2024 SCAN HERE to connect with @TimTalksBooks

JAMES

BY PERCIVAL EVERETT THE HUNTER

BY TANA FRENCH THE WOMEN

BY KRISTIN HANNAH

For even more book recommendations, follow @timtalksbooks on Instagram. All books available at Mitchell’s Book Corner and Nantucket Bookworks or online at nantucketbookpartners.com.

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WANDERING STARS

BY TOMMY ORANGE

THE INVISIBLE HOUR

BY ALICE HOFFMAN

Alice Hoffman is a true magician of language and storytelling, and The Invisible Hour is a book that celebrates the power of that magic. It’s the tale of Mia Jacob, whose life is saved by The Scarlet Letter and its author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, even though they live hundreds of years apart. I have always said that when you sit down to read an Alice Hoffman novel, you fall into a trance-like state, mesmerized by the beautiful sentences and the world she’s crafting on the page. This one seems particularly resonant and important as we see an increase in book banning across the country.

As Alice proves in this novel, books can save lives, they can build bridges to other worlds, and they should never be made invisible.

HOW TO SAY BABYLON: A MEMOIR

BY SAFIYA SINCLAIR

Introducing the first author on our roster for the 2024 Nantucket Book Festival! Safiya Sinclair has written a moving and engaging memoir that reads like an epic poem. Comparisons can be made to popular coming-of-age memoirs like Educated and Born a Crime, but this is a lyrical story all its own, tracing Safiya’s struggle to break free of her strict Rastafarian upbringing.

Reading one paragraph of this autobiography leaves you breathless from the beauty of the language and the author’s ultimate reckoning over her repressive upbringing in Jamaica. I dare anyone to close the book and not be changed and moved by the story and the voice in its pages.

Save the date! Meet Safiya Sinclair at the Nantucket Book Festival, June 13–16, 2024.

UNNATURAL DEATH

BY PATRICIA CORNWELL

I have been a fan of Patricia Cornwell—and her main character, Dr. Kay Scarpetta—ever since she first came on the crime scene in 1990 with the novel Postmortem.

Here we are 33 years later with Cornwell’s 27th Scarpetta story, Unnatural Death, and it’s back to form with a baffling case. We find our favorite chief medical examiner in a northern Virginia wilderness examining the remains of two campers wanted by federal law enforcement. The victims have been savaged beyond recognition and next to the bodies is a larger-than-life footprint. I have always enjoyed books that put me directly into the investigation along with the characters, and this one had me guessing until the end.

On shelves November 28.

HIDDEN POTENTIAL: THE SCIENCE OF ACHIEVING GREATER THINGS

BY ADAM GRANT

Adam Grant just gets it—how we think, how we feel and, now with his latest book, how we succeed.

In Hidden Potential, Grant illuminates how we can elevate ourselves and others to unexpected heights. Do you want to write the great American novel? Do you dream about moving to Nantucket to start a business? Grant flips everything you think you know about developing potential on its head and gives you the tools to inspire and educate yourself and others and to unlock your greatest resources. This isn’t your average self-help book. Grant delivers an entertaining read that also serves as a guidebook to achieve your absolute best. Start the new year off right with finding your own hidden potential!

A VERY INCONVENIENT SCANDAL

BY JACQUELYN MITCHARD

You might recognize the name Jacquelyn Mitchard. She is the author of The Deep End of the Ocean, the inaugural selection for Oprah’s Book Club in 1996. I still remember that reading experience and was overjoyed to see a new book out this year by such a gifted storyteller. Set on Cape Cod, this is a family drama you’ll want to wrap up under the tree this holiday for your own family members or fellow bookworms. Along with being a page-turner of the highest order, it explores deeper themes and the intricate layers of human nature, our relationships and our hearts.

You can meet Jacquelyn Mitchard at our Nantucket Christmas Stroll Book Signing Extravaganza on Saturday, December 2, at Mitchell’s Book Corner along with other authors like Elin Hilderbrand, Nancy Thayer and Nathaniel Philbrick. Check the full signing schedule at nantucketbookpartners.com.

AFTER YOU’D GONE

BY MAGGIE O’FARRELL

I consider Maggie O’Farrell to be one of the greatest writers of our time. Huge praise indeed, but anyone who has experienced reading one of her books knows exactly what I mean. Hamnet is one of my favorite novels from the last few years, and I was so in awe of what she was able to do with the art of storytelling in that book. After You’d Gone is Maggie’s debut, which was recently re-released this year. All the trademarks that I have come to love about this author are present: a story that skips through time, multiple points of view and such psychological depth and poignancy. It’s overdone to say that I would read an author’s grocery list, but I guarantee Maggie’s would be an intricate and engaging collection of words on a piece of paper. Listen to my and Elin Hilderbrand’s conversation with Maggie O’Farrell on the Books, Beach & Beyond Podcast this past fall. Visit booksbeachandbeyond.com or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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n osh news

SweetSuccess WRITTEN BY ANTONIA DEPACE PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEXANDRIA EIGO AND KENDAL LOVEJOY OF LOVEJOY STUDIOS

Two summer residents team up to bring some sugar-coated nostalgia back to Nantucket.

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acao, cocoa butter, sugar and milk are the standard ingredients to make a chocolate bar—but add in Caroline Witmer and Sarah Michler’s love for Nantucket, and you’ll understand Tuck Shop’s sweet result. Launched in late May, the bespoke chocolate bar brand was spotted throughout the island this summer at Sconset Market, Pâtisserie by PPX Events, The Green Market, Epernay, Bookworks, Nantucket Looms, Faraway Hotels and Greydon House.

“When Sweet Inspirations closed, we were inspired to bring more chocolate back to the island,” explains Witmer. Both she and Michler have been summering on the island with their families since childhood. In turn, Tuck Shop—whose name is an ode to the island and a play on the name of British boarding

Caroline Witmer and Sarah Michler

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school confectionary shops—still brought a bit of Sweet Inspirations with the brand through the cranberry chocolate bar, inspired by the previous shop’s chocolatecovered cranberries.

Starting with the packaging, Witmer and Michler teamed up with illustrator Tess Ramirez of My Father’s Daughter Designs to create a Nantucketcentric toile pocket casing. On the outside, there are iconic Nantucket symbols (Brant Point Lighthouse, baskets, sailboats, bicycles and flowers), and there’s space to customize the label with names, messages, logos and art accordingly. “You want to capture the sense and the essence of this place,” Michler says. “We want people who really love the island to appreciate what we picked to put into the toile.”

When it comes to the actual chocolate inside, the women partnered with a Brooklyn-based chocolatier who sources her cacao from a family-owned farm in Colombia. “We maintain simple ingredients. It’s celebrating the simplicity of the product, but actually ensuring that each element of the

“We’ve started small intentionally so that we have the flexibility to adapt and see where this brings us and lean in when it makes sense.”

– Caroline Witmer

product and packaging is of a high quality. We’re not cutting corners,” Witmer says.

Currently, there are five Tuck Shop flavors, including 40% milk chocolate, 70% dark chocolate with sea salt, 55% blend with cranberries and the

newly launched 55% blend with pretzel and 55% blend with a hint of coffee. A holiday-themed peppermint bar debuts just in time for Stroll.

While the brand is currently more focused on a strong presence in the event space—the bars were seen at this year’s Nantucket by Design week and the Nantucket Film Festival, as well as some of the island’s weddings— there’s also a hope of launching them in more locations with packaging inspired by those destinations.

A first step was made toward this in September, when a New York City adaptation was created.

“We’re not cutting corners.”

– Caroline Witmer

“There are so many different ways we can go with this product. And we’ve started small intentionally so that we have the flexibility to adapt and to see where this brings us and lean in when it makes sense,” Witmer explains. But, it all circles back to Nantucket, the original inspiration, and according to Michler, an onisland storefront in the future isn’t out of the question. She says, “That’s the dream.”

n design

LAYERING ON WRITTEN BY ANTONIA DEPACE PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATTHEW KISIDAY

Interior design trends for 2024, according to Audrey Sterk.

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hether you scroll through Instagram or peruse the latest interior design tomes, it would seem that the biggest trend for 2024 isn’t a trend at all—instead, it is a reflection of personal style.

“Interiors are just becoming more honest and authentic to the character of people.

And that I love,” says Audrey Sterk of Audrey Sterk Design (ASD).

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Neutral tones and organic textures are at the center of this Nantucket home.

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he points to a recent Nantucket project with the design and build firm Shelter 7 that features a neutral, timeless color palette that lends itself to personal pieces woven throughout—like surfboards that the ASD team sourced to hang in the family room, representing the nautical sport that the family enjoys together, and Slim Aarons photography hanging in the dining room that was found during a family vacation.

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e are crafting specialized interiors based on what our clients love most,” Sterk adds. The interior designer would describe this as adding “soul” to the homes, all while giving the possibility to layer endlessly with pattern, texture and color. The interior designer also notes that she’s seeing a lot more unique characteristics being used in furniture, referencing nature, wood detailing and organic shapes. Note the layering of woven materials throughout the project, which carry a casual feel. “It’s a simple philosophy,” she says of the textured pieces. “Beauty comes in all forms; it adds character and balance to the layer in juxtaposing elements.”

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hen asked about the future of color in interior design, Sterk notes the trend in popularity toward jewel-toned hues over the past year.

“Adding saturated, brighter colors into interiors adds a fun-loving layer,” she says. But this doesn’t necessarily mean throwing a neutral palette away. Looking forward to 2024, contained spaces like powder rooms are still perfect for “treating like a gift box of color,” while pillows and other home accessories are a great way to thread the tone throughout without losing a timeless aesthetic. “Add in trends sparingly and in smaller details that will be easier to shift out in time,” she suggests—noting that this goes beyond color and into other recent trends like moody wallpapers and the ever-popular bouclé fabrics.

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his is where Sterk’s emphasis on the importance of a timeless interior comes in—it can be hard to dismiss trends, but as long as there’s a clean palette, there are ways to filter them in. “One can shop furnishings and accessories that are on trend today as well as the timeless pieces that are design staples,” she says. This was her thought process in this project with Shelter 7. Located off of Cliff Road, the home presents an interior rooted in beautiful architectural details that support the timeless interior design intent. It allowed other more important items, like the aforementioned artwork and surfboards, to shine. For other homeowners, it might be a family heirloom.

Sterk adds, “It is a classic, timeless base to layer onto over time with collected finds.” And that’s something that will keep on giving.

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nspire

LUCKY TO BEE ALIVE WRITTEN BY ROBERT COCUZZO

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE

ONE LOCAL GARDENER IS SAVED AT THE HANDS OF THE NANTUCKET COTTAGE HOSPITAL.

Laura Davison at the private residence in Quidnet where she was stung.

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he last time Laura Davison saw Brandon Giberson, they were both studying at the University of Maine. Back then, Davison was impressed that Giberson was working as an EMT his freshman year, beginning his journey to becoming a doctor. But after Davison graduated and moved to Nantucket where she became a professional gardener, she did not see him again until this September—some two decades later— when she literally stumbled into Nantucket Cottage Hospital on the brink of death.

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Five minutes later, her body felt as if it were n hour earlier, Davison had been tending to one being bitten by a swarm of mosquitos. Hives of her many clients’ properties on Nantucket. began breaking out on her skin and her head felt She was gathering bouquets of anemones from scalding hot. Growing alarmed, she called up a meadow in Quidnet that she had planted as a one of her co-workers. “You should go to the pollinator garden, designed specifically to attract emergency room,” the co-worker said. Davison and support bees and other pollinators. Hundreds glanced in her rearview mirror and saw of bumblebees buzzed around the meadow. As she that one of her eyes had turned bloodshot. reached down to cut another anemone to add to her Still, she figured the symptoms could be treated bouquet, one of the bees stung her on the pinkie. with medicine, so she texted her next client Like an electrician getting and asked if she could zapped, bee stings come with borrow some Benadryl. the territory when you’re a “I never thought that By the time Davison arrived gardener, especially one as something I love so much in Sconset, the left side of her could turn out to be the thing passionate about supporting that almost killed me.” body had gone completely numb, pollinators as Davison. Just – Laura Davison and her tongue had become so that week, she had already been swollen that she couldn’t keep stung five times. “People who it in her mouth. She felt her throat closing. Her know me know that I love bees,” she says. “A few alarm now turned to fear. Davison hastily took years ago, a client bought me a diamond necklace the Benadryl with some water, but struggled to of a bee as a gift. My camera roll is filled with swallow the tablets because of how constricted photos and videos of bees pollinating. I never her throat was. With her symptoms intensifying thought that something I love so much could turn rapidly, she couldn’t wait for an ambulance. out to be the thing that almost killed me.”

She tumbled back to her truck to drive to the Although her hand began to swell and her emergency room. On the way, she called her arm felt numb after the sting, Davison closed the co-worker and her husband, who alerted the gate to her clients’ property, jumped into her truck Nantucket Cottage Hospital that she was en route. and headed to her next client’s place in Sconset.

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Dr. Brandon Giberson

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iberson was sitting by the nurses’ station when Davison’s husband called. When he heard her name, Giberson was instantly taken aback.

Was this the same Laura Davison from college? He was new to Nantucket Cottage Hospital. About a year earlier, he had begun splitting his time as a traveling doctor, specifically an emergency physician, between the island and another hospital in Maine.

Giberson put the possible coincidence out of his mind as he began preparing for Davison’s arrival.

Meanwhile behind the wheel of her truck on Milestone Road, Davison was praying—intensely.

“I could actually feel my body shutting down and I thought to myself, this is how I am going to die,” she recalls. “I considered pulling over because driving at this point was not safe as the left side of my body was completely numb.” By the time she arrived at the emergency room, she could barely breathe. She collapsed into the arms

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of the nurses who were waiting for her and was whisked back to the resuscitation room that had already been prepared for her. On the way, she locked eyes with a surprisingly familiar face. “Laura,” Giberson said calmly.

“It’s Brandon. You’re going to be OK. We’ll take good care of you.”

“I do believe God heard my prayers,” Davison says. “The crazy thing was that the week prior I was

seconds actually really do matter.”

Within thirty seconds of her hitting the resuscitation bed, one of the nurses had already administered an IV to her arm. Before Giberson had a chance to call out the meds that were needed, one of the other nurses had already drawn them up. Giberson and his team ultimately administered three EpiPens along with steroids and Benadryl by way of her IV. The

“Laura was really in quite a predicament; the anaphylaxis that she had was amongst the most severe I’ve ever seen.”

– Dr. Brandon Giberson

actually talking to a client about [Brandon]. I was saying how he worked at the college as a paramedic and he and his twin brother were going to school to become doctors. I hadn’t really even thought about him since college, but for some reason that day he crossed my mind and I remember saying out loud: ‘He must be the best doctor.’”

Giberson and his team of nurses launched right into action. The situation was dire. “Laura was really in quite a predicament; the anaphylaxis [which is a multisystem allergic reaction] that she had was amongst the most severe I’ve ever seen,” says Giberson, whose past experience includes training at a large level-one trauma center in Atlanta, Georgia. “Laura was as sick of an anaphylactic patient as you could get in that she was having such a profound systemic response that she was very close to losing the ability to breathe.” The doctor adds, “Anaphylaxis is one of a number of things in emergency medicine that

team worked with perfect precision.

The ER staff at Nantucket Cottage Hospital is particularly capable of treating anaphylaxis as they see a disproportionate number of cases due to the fact that vacationing populations are spending more time outside where bee stings can occur or are eating shellfish for the first time.

It’s one of the many extreme medical situations that the Cottage Hospital is uniquely equipped to treat.

“Nantucket Cottage Hospital is a really special place,” Giberson attests. “There’s almost a perceived status quo within both the general public and within emergency medicine that when you are in a resource-limited environment [such as Nantucket] you may have to sacrifice the level of care you can provide, but Nantucket Cottage Hospital defies that perceived status quo. They demand equivalent or better care that you would expect to receive at a large facility on the mainland when it comes to emergency medicine.”

“After receiving treatment at the hospital and having my life saved by Dr. Giberson, I realized how important funding for the hospital here is.”

– Laura Davison

On that day, Davison was the beneficiary of this worldclass facility. “After receiving treatment at the hospital and having my life saved by Dr. Giberson, I realized how important funding for the hospital here is,” she says.

“Not only to be equipped with the right tools but to find housing for the people like the ones who saved my life.

People like Bruce Percelay and Craig Muhlhauser—who I am fortunate to have as clients—have dedicated time and money to make the hospital what it is today.” In particular, Davison indicated that her story illustrated the importance of securing more housing for doctors like Brandon Giberson. “If only there was a way to get him to work here full time,” she says. “He will forever be my hero.”

Seven hours after arriving in the emergency room, clinging desperately to life, Davison was back home.

She took the time to call Bruce Percelay and explain

her ordeal and personally thank him for Nantucket’s remarkable hospital. It was an emotional conversation for them both, but the tears were of gratitude that the story ended the way it did.

A short time later, she was back to work, now equipped with an emergency protocol that Giberson provided her for the next time she gets stung. Unfortunately, she is at increased risk now. With each bee sting she received prior to this fateful sting, her immune system was getting increasingly triggered. Now that Davison has gone into anaphylaxis, her immune system is more likely to react in the same extreme way if she is stung again.

But the gardener feels that it’s a price she’s willing to pay for her passion. And if nothing else, she has peace of mind that she will always be in good hands at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital.

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Sail on

SAILOR WRITTEN BY JASON GRAZIADEI AND DAVID CREED

Nantucket remembers a favorite visitor, Jimmy Buffett.

The Palm Beach Post/Zuma Press

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immy Buffett’s music embodied escapism and the joys of laid-back island living. And when Buffett himself wanted to escape and enjoy some of the very things he sang about, he often came to Nantucket. As the news of the legendary singer-songwriter’s death began to spread early Labor Day weekend, Nantucket residents fondly remembered Buffett’s time on the island, the friendships he forged here and the memorable moments he created.

As Nantucket charter boat captain Jay Starr put it on the Saturday after Buffett’s passing: “The island needed 100 more of these guys. Low key and a happy dude.”

And, it seemed, there were so many stories of Buffett’s adventures on Nantucket.

Some island residents joined him on his many fishing trips in Nantucket waters, hunting for stripers or tuna. Others recalled their memories of getting to see Buffett drop in at The Chicken Box for an impromptu performance or singing karaoke with him at Cap’n Tobey’s. For some, it was a chance encounter at the Club Car, where Buffett could often be found with the late Joe Pantorno, his close friend and the longtime owner of the downtown restaurant.

Buffett loved Nantucket, his friends here said, not only for the island living and getting to pursue some of his favorite pastimes, but also because he could fly relatively under the radar and not feel the stardom that came with the billion-dollar empire he had created. “I think he had a certain amount of anonymity here,” said another close friend, Capt. Tom

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Mleczko. “Sure, people would recognize him here, but in places like Key West, he stepped out on the street and he’d be mobbed. He had a lot of friends out here who loved seeing him and being with him but didn’t advertise that fact. They let him be Jimmy and it wasn’t about the fame. The people on Nantucket sort of understood that was why he was here—the anonymity—they respected that, and they let him have it.”

Mleczko—one of the many local anglers who knew Buffett—first met him in the early 1990s, just as Mleczko was starting to expand his charter fishing business on the island. It started with a phone call out of the blue. “My wife handed it to me and said, ‘It’s for you.’ The guy on the other end says, ‘Captain, this is Jimmy. Jimmy Buffett,’” Mleczko recalled. “I looked at the phone and said which one of my good buddies is pulling my leg? He said, ‘I want you to take me up to Tuckernuck and fish in the sand—I heard

tilted. One of its pontoons had filled with water but Buffett said there’s some good fish up there.’ I said, ‘OK, when do you want it was an easy fix. They drained the pontoon, got the plane level to do it?’ And he said, ‘How about tomorrow?’” and said their goodbyes.

They made a plan to meet at Old North Wharf, and Mleczko Pantorno and Mleczko watched in shock and horror as the showed up the next morning still not quite believing Buffett would plane nosedived out of the sky after reaching an altitude of 50 be there to meet him. But sure enough, there he was. to 60 feet in the air, and came to a stop “Lo and behold, Jimmy Buffett jumps upside down in the water. on my boat,” Mleczko said. “He said, ‘Hi “They let him be Jimmy “Joe and I looked at each other; Captain, I’m Jimmy Buffett’ and shook my and it wasn’t about the it was surreal,” Mleczko recalled. “We hand. I thought, ‘Holy shit!’” fame. The people on whipped over there and we could see The first trip was a rough one as the two Nantucket sort of that he was in the cockpit, conscious. men headed out to Tuckernuck in a whaler understood that was We broke open the door and pulled Mleczko had borrowed from a friend. A why he was here—the him onto the boat. My recollection 25-knot wind out of the northwest left them anonymity—they was he just passed right out in shock. soaked, but they made it. Buffett caught a fish respected that, and they on the first cast and decided to call it a day. let him have it.”

“He turned to me and said, ‘Thank you, – Capt. Tom Mleczko Captain, that’s all I wanted to do, let’s go home.’ One fish. We were soaking wet, like drowned rats. He got out of the boat, shook I called the Coast my hand and off he went. I got home and said to [Mleczko’s wife] Guard, ordered Bambi, ‘Yeah, it was Jimmy. He was everything everyone said: an ambulance wonderful, full of energy, positive, excited, loving the adventure. and told them But he’ll never fish with me again.’” what happened.”

But of course, Buffett did. It was the start of a decades-long By the time friendship—not just between Tom Mleczko and Buffett, but the they got Buffett entire family. And it centered around their love of fishing. There to the Walter was just one problem, one that Buffett quickly remedied. “Two or Capt. Tom Mleczko and Buffett fishing the Tuckernuck Barrett Pier flats in the early 1990s three days later, he called and said, ‘Captain, I absolutely loved at F Street in fishing with you. I love Tuckernuck and Nantucket, but your boat Madaket, word of the crash had already spread around the sucks.’ I laughed and said, ‘Jimmy, send me a good boat, then.’ island, and Mleczko said about 200 people were already And he said, ‘Maybe I will. I’ll be back a lot and we’re going to waiting at the pier to catch a glimpse of the legendary fish a lot together.’” singer. “Some reporter stuck a camera in his face, and A few weeks went by and Mleczko got an unexpected knock I remember I kicked it and said, ‘Get out of here!’” on the door. It was a man delivering a brand-new 21-foot flats boat Mleczko recalled. Former Massachusetts state trooper that was perfect for fishing the shoals off Tuckernuck, compliments Jim Ellis shared his memory of what happened next. of Jimmy Buffett. Over the next few years during the season, Mleczko would fish on a regular basis with Buffett and Pantorno. “The three of us learned this together, to fish the flats,” he said. “We enjoyed being together. At that stage of our friendship, it was one we both learned so much being out there together. It was a great experience.”

That routine—and Buffett’s cherished anonymity on the island—was briefly interrupted in late August 1994 when he crashed his Grumman G-44 Widgeon seaplane Buffett’s sea plane crash on into Madaket Harbor shortly after taking off. the front page Buffett had been fishing with Pantorno and of The Inquirer and Mirror, Mleczko for six hours that day, but when they September 1994 returned to Madaket Harbor, they noticed the aircraft was slightly

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“We brought him to the [North Liberty Street] barracks right after he was brought in to avoid all the media,” Ellis said. “He sat in the office and my oldest daughter, Kaitlyn, 6, snuck in and he picked her up and put her on his lap. He was on the phone talking with his family and friends rubbing her back. Next thing she is passed out on his lap and he is still rubbing her back.

I scooped her up later and apologized.

He looked at me and said, ‘She made me relax and think of my family as she was on my lap. All good, thanks.’”

Perhaps less shocking but likely just as memorable were Buffett’s impromptu appearances at The Chicken Box. The first time was back in 1996 when Buffett, after a day of fishing and a meal at the Club Car, told the crew at the Box that he might stop by. Shortly after he arrived, Buffett took the stage with local band Mary Jane and the Smoking Section for its second set. “People were crawling in the windows trying to get in,” Chicken Box co-owner Packy Norton recalled.

“We closed the doors and it was mayhem. But he was so gracious, and

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“And every time he’d do that my phone would start blowing up with texts,” Norton said.

The appearances at the venue on Dave Street became something of a legend, and so in subsequent years, every time Buffett was seen on the island or his boat was spotted in the harbor, people would flock to The Chicken Box in anticipation that he might decide to “He was a very warm person. sit in with the band He was a very funny person playing that night. and a really hard-working “People ask person even if people don’t me 15 to 20 times think that of him.” per summer, ‘Is – Patty Kennedy Buffett coming this summer?’” Norton said with a laugh. he took pics with everyone.”

“But he could not have been any In later years, Buffett took the nicer. Every time I ran into him stage at the Box a few more times, anywhere, he’d remember me: including one sit-in with local band ‘Packy, what’s up? How’s the E-Cliff and the Swingdogs—a Box?’ He was always so gracious. group of musicians that Buffett He loved that he knew people here, would play with on numerous and Nantucket is the kind of place occasions, both on-island and off. that won’t hound people. They Norton said they played “Brownknow how to be around him.”

Eyed Girl” and a few Bob Marley For many others on tunes that night at the Box. Nantucket—including Ron Those sit-ins at the Box left Oldham and Patty Kennedy— an impression, not only on those the relationship with Buffett was who were lucky enough to be in similarly close and personal. attendance but on Buffett himself.

Oldham and Kennedy got Norton recalled how when Buffett married 22 years ago, and if you would play large venues like had asked Buffett about them Fenway Park or the Xfinity Center tying the knot, he would have in Mansfield, Massachusetts, taken all of the credit. he would weave The Chicken Oldham and Kennedy have Box into the lyrics of “It’s Five run The Downyflake restaurant O’Clock Somewhere.” since 2014. Before that, Oldham

position, but with opening day being just 10 days away, was the chef at the Rope Walk (now Cru) for 13 seasons.

Kennedy begrudgingly gave in and hired Oldham at the He also notably opened the first-ever Margaritaville for risk of losing him. The rest was history.

Buffett in the 1980s down in Key West.

“Buffett always said if it wasn’t for him, none of this In the mid-1990s, Oldham was working at the ever would have happened and we never would have met,” Westender (now Millie’s) seasonally. During one of his Kennedy said, laughing. lunch shifts, Buffett “Ron gets hired and we were and Pantorno stopped “He was an amazing human being, always married one year later.” in for a bite. It was his had a smile and would take the time to say Kennedy also recalled Buffett first introduction to hello and take a picture with people.” telling her the story of how Pantorno—a connection – Jonas Baker his hit single “Margaritaville” that would later lead came to be. to him and Kennedy “According to what I’ve been told, by Buffett meeting one another. actually, was that he had been up in Miami working one A few years later, Oldham stopped into a small bar in Florida, which just so happened to be right next to Buffett’s day and was driving back to Key West when suddenly he found himself in a big traffic jam,” Kennedy explained. studio. There were just three or so people at the bar, but “If there’s a major traffic jam going up and down in the one of them happened to be Pantorno.

Keys, you might as well just pull over because you’re “All of a sudden I looked over and Joe just not going anywhere. So there was a huge accident, he happened to sit next to me,” Oldham said. “We both pulled over, and he had been up working and partying on look at each other and we’re like ‘We know each other, his way back to Key West and so he sat on the side of the right?’ It eventually clicked that it was from Nantucket. road and wrote that song.”

So he goes, ‘How come I haven’t seen you up [on Kennedy and Oldham continued to have a Nantucket]’ and I told him after I left the Westender, I relationship with Buffett over the years. They said the last decided to stay down in Key West. Then he asked me what I was doing at that bar because Buffett’s studio is right next to the bar. Joe was waiting for him to get done with his recording. And so we start talking and he goes, ‘If you are ever interested in coming back up to Nantucket, here’s my card. Send a resume.’ One thing led to another.”

Pantorno owned the Rope Walk, and Oldham eventually took him up on his offer. He applied to be the new chef, and the restaurant’s manager Buffett and Chicken Box just so happened co-owner Packy Norton to be Kennedy (a position she held for 21 years).

Kennedy and Pantorno had been holding out hope for a different chef they knew of to fill the

Buffett on stage at The Chicken Box in 2001 Photo courtesy of Sarah LeBlanc Blosat

time they saw him was about two years ago down in Key West at Louie’s Backyard.

“It was the middle of the wintertime.

If it gets the least bit cold down in the Keys, people from the North take the excuse to bring out all of their northern clothes,”

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Kennedy said. “We had just got to Florida from up here, so it didn’t seem like anything bad to us. We thought it was a beautiful evening.

So we are sitting at a bar, and I have a nickname on Nantucket from years and years ago. It’s Paté, and some people only know me as that. There’s only like three people at the bar when we sat down.”

She continues, “We’re talking, and I recognize the guy on the other side of the bar from when I was down there, and he’s kind of waving so I wave back at

Buffett with a 500-pound tuna caught off Nantucket in September 2018

him and all of a sudden this guy yells across the bar ‘Paté! Ron!’ We were looking at each other because he had a big flannel shirt on, a huge jacket, stocking cap all the way down. Then Ron looked and was like ‘Wait a minute, that’s Buffett. So, it should look like Buffett.’

“That was the last time we saw him,” Kennedy said. “Ever since Joe passed away, I’m not sure if he had ever come back again to Nantucket.”

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Buffett singing karaoke at Cap’n Tobey’s in 2005. Photo courtesy of Barret Burlage

Kennedy spoke very highly of Buffett and the person he was. “He was a very warm person. He was a very funny person and a really hard-working person even if people don’t think that of him. He was very driven and passionate. He was such a great environmentalist. He was a great husband and father from what I could tell. I loved his children. He was a real smart businessman and he always surrounded himself with great people, a great team.”

Kennedy worked for Buffett for about six weeks managing concessions in Coconut Grove where he was producing a musical called “Don’t Stop the Carnival” based on Herman Wouk’s 1965 novel. She managed the concessions with Pantorno.

“I remember being just so impressed with him,” she said. “I had known him from coming into Rope Walk, coming into Club Car. He was always very funny and very warm—but what a businessman.

The team was amazing. You needed to be there on time, work hard, everyone was always very nice, and let me tell you, there was always a lot of partying after work. It is a massive loss.”

Island fisherman and restaurateur Jonas Baker, who got to know Buffett through Capt. Bob DeCosta and running the Slip 14 restaurant, said the singer won’t soon be forgotten by many on Nantucket. “He was an amazing human being, always had a smile and would take the time to say hello and take a picture with people,” Baker said. “He embraced the true meaning of ‘see the good side.’ Meaning, life is a gift, empower people and help them grow to become better people.

Mr. B always had the vibe of ‘today is a great day to be alive.’ Take advantage of it, suck it up and ride the wave. Our friendship helped me grow as a person and for that I thank him.”

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BIRD’S-EYE

VIEW WRITTEN BY JOHNCARL MCGRADY PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE AND SKYLER KARDELL

SKYLER KARDELL HAS TRAVELED THE WORLD IN SEARCH OF RARE BIRDS.

S

tanding in an empty church in the abandoned whaling port of Grytviken on the island of South Georgia, lashed by Antarctic winds and the salt of a freezing ocean, Skyler Kardell felt a supernatural presence. He could only compare it to the mysterious fourth man who haunts the pages of the diary Ernest Shackleton wrote while fleeing across the Antarctic ice from the wreck of the Endurance. Coincidentally, Shackleton was also buried at Grytviken.

Kardell, a 21-year-old college student who grew up on Nantucket, came to Grytviken, one of the ports closest to Antarctica, for the same reason he goes almost everywhere: birds. The research vessel he was working on was tasked by the National Science Foundation with studying the effects of global warming on seabird populations in the Antarctic and the krill they eat, and it was the birds that drew Kardell in. From a deer refuge in the

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Florida Keys to the Scottish Highlands, Kardell has traveled the world in search of birds, driven by an obsession not unlike Shackleton’s insatiable desire to cross the Antarctic ice.

“I think it’s very noble to say you’re going out [birding] to see birds in their natural habitat, but I can’t say that’s why I do it,” Kardell says. “I do it because I’m a competitive individual, and I’m someone who obsesses a lot about perfecting my craft.”

Skyler Kardell

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A sampling of Kardell’s photographs, which capture birds in their natural habitats

Snowy sheathbill

Boat-tailed grackle (westoni)

Snowy owl

European pied flycatcher

Greater flamingo

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Squacco heron

Green-throated mountain gem

White-throated magpie jay

Eurasian spoonbill

Collared trogon

Eurasian curlew

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During his residence on Tuckernuck, Kardell drew national attention when he photographed the first gray heron ever documented in the contiguous United States. The photograph of the bird, wings spread in flight as it swooped low over the distant island of Muskeget, was featured in “I think it’s very noble National Geographic. But Kardell to say you’re going remembers the day spent chasing out [birding] to see birds the heron across the water for in their natural habitat, another reason. but I can’t say “It was my dad’s birthday,” that’s why I do it.” he says. Kardell credits his – Skyler Kardell family in part for his success.

They have supported him throughout connection to nature that his expeditions, can only be formed which have by endless hours taken him from searching through island to island its darkest corners across the and highest branches planet, pursuing for an elusive species birds most people or the origin of a distant Pileated woodpecker will never see in their song. Birding also gives entire lives. He is aware of how Kardell access to a vast network often he finds himself on islands of experts who have spent their and describes himself as an island lives studying the natural world, hopper. Perhaps it is the influence and he values their wisdom as of Nantucket that was still pushing highly as any rare bird. But it is him even as he stood on a barren the obsession that has allowed isle halfway across the globe in Kardell to become so good at June. Like his home, Grytviken what he does. was a whaling port and in the That obsession led Kardell graveyard are the headstones of to spend the bulk of the pandemic whalers from New London, where isolated on Tuckernuck, Kardell studies environmental monitoring shorebirds for the science and architecture at Trustees of Reservations and Connecticut College. trudging through the mists that This trip to Antarctica, roll in from the Atlantic, at times filmed for an educational speaking to no one for days. documentary, is hardly the first “It was totally transformative,” audacious journey Kardell has he says. hat’s not the only reason Kardell enjoys birding.

He started because of a desire to understand the natural beauty of Nantucket and see the world from a new perspective, and those motivations still drive him today. There is a special kind of

Barred owl

“It was totally transformative.”

Mottled duck (Florida)

– Skyler Kardell

taken in search of birds. He once traveled directly through the heart of a region of Mexico controlled by anarcho-socialist rebels known as the Zapatistas, who at times refused to sell him goods because he was an outsider. He knew little about the Zapatistas before taking the journey; his goal was simply to maximize the number of bird species he would see.

Still, this voyage was unique, in part because of Kardell’s crewmates. Between documenting the birds drawn to the ship’s light

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“I go in the direction God wants me to go in, and I don’t think I have much say over that.”

– Skyler Kardell

Kardell’s resume may be longer than many birders twice his age, but he isn’t slowing down. He is returning to Antarctica next year and is currently involved with two research projects, one studying the critically endangered Muskeget vole and the other documenting bird populations on Fishers Island, a remote isle off the coast of Connecticut with historical birding data going back to the late 1800s. Despite all of this, Kardell remains humble. “I’m not some exceptional individual,” he Bald eagle says. “I go in the direction God wants me to go in, and I don’t think I have much say over that.”

Skylar Kardell

and the krill they eat, Kardell spent much of his time on the ship getting to know the crew. “That’s all you do on a ship is get to know each other. And Buff-breasted sandpiper then when that gets boring, you play Scrabble,” he says.

Kardell’s crewmates include a former bush pilot who grew up on an emu farm in Wyoming, a college student from Kenya and a top-ranked paraglider who circumnavigated the world at 20. One crew member, who tried to show Kardell the shape of the known universe using a piece of paper, spent 13 months working a telescope at the South Pole. “Usually, everyone works at the same lab. This was not the case. We were really a pack of strays,” Kardell says.

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Kardell’s camera, featuring a cliff swallow

photo: Georgie Morley

Game Changing Care on Nantucket

Keeping Pace For Nantucket resident Jasmine Cruz, Nantucket Cottage Hospital was the catalyst to her life-saving medical care.

Cruz, a 41-year-old professional fitness trainer, experienced a heart attack that quite easily could have ended her life. For Jasmine, the care she received at Nantucket Cottage Hospital was a game-changer in her road to recovery.

On February 10, 2023, after a routine, but intense, workout, Jasmine’s heart rate spiked to 220 on her Apple Watch. Although she was pain-free, Jasmine’s health background and intuition led her to seek medical care at Nantucket Cottage Hospital’s Emergency Department. The doctors and nurses performed CT scans and diagnostic tests to determine that Jasmine possibly had a tear in her left ventricular artery.

Due to the potential severity of her condition, she was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. While at Mass General, doctors confirmed that Jasmine did, in fact, have a heart attack. Known as SCAD – Sudden Coronary Artery Dissection – the condition most often affects healthy women between the ages of 40 – 60, who often have no risk factors for heart disease.

Thanks to the quick actions of the Nantucket Cottage Hospital emergency team, the specialists at Mass General Hospital, and the collaboration between the two hospitals, Jasmine is back on Nantucket continuing her road to recovery and resuming her active lifestyle.

Please consider a donation to Nantucket Cottage Hospital to help NCH deliver world-class medical care, 30 miles at sea. Visit nantuckethospital.org/give to donate and read more life-changing stories from community members.

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ENGAGING WITH

HISTORY WRITTEN BY STACEY MARCUS

PHOTOGRAPHED BY KIT NOBLE

The Museum of African American History’s new president plans to amplify stories and spark conversations and collaborations.

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he stars of serendipity were twinkling when Dr. Noelle Trent learned about the leadership position at the Museum of African American History (MAAH) in Boston and Nantucket.

“The history of Nantucket’s Black community is an important part of our national story,” Trent says. She notes that this centuries-old narrative demonstrates that even in our country’s earliest days, the Black community was multifaceted.

Amplifying this history, as well as the other stories of the Black communities in Boston and Nantucket, was one of Trent’s goals in assuming her new roles as president and CEO of the museum in June 2023. “For me to be on an island that preserved the history and architecture of where Frederick Douglass’ career was launched in 1841 is powerful,” says Trent, who comes to MAAH from the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, where she served as the director of interpretation, collections and education for seven and a half years.

Dr. Noelle Trent at the Carriage House on the Seneca Boston-Florence Higginbottom House property

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FACTS ABOUT MAAH’S HISTORIC SITES ON NANTUCKET THE AFRICAN MEETING HOUSE SITS AT A PROMINENT INTERSECTION IN NANTUCKET. The spot at which the African Meeting House resides marks an important part of the island where there was a large Black community.

It would be unusual to have had a Black church in that spot if there weren’t a Black community with Black homeowners living in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Traditionally, the post-and-beam building was a place where people were baptized, married and memorialized.

It was a place of engagement, activism and expression. Today, the MAAH hopes to continue its original purpose.

African Meeting House

THE SENECA BOSTON-FLORENCE HIGGINBOTHAM HOUSE WAS BUILT

BY A BLACK MAN BEFORE THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. The Seneca Boston-Florence Higginbotham House was originally built in 1774 by Seneca Boston, a Black man who constructed the two-story home for his family.

Seneca Boston-Florence Higginbotham House

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Douglass is my specialty,” she notes. “ FHerrederick dissertation at Howard University was titled

“Frederick Douglass and the Making of American Exceptionalism,” and a chunk of her career has focused on his life and work. Trent imagines Douglass would be pleased to know that MAAH is continuing the dialogue and engagement that he thought would never have evolved. “He would be surprised to see the number of people on Nantucket and the August rush,” she says.

“I want to amplify the stories of the thriving Black community that people don’t necessarily associate with Nantucket. We have a Black history that runs as deep as our country’s founding.”

The 42-year-old accomplished public historian arrived on the island with a zest for 19th-century American history and sees a great opportunity to unearth stories to trumpet on regional and national levels. She plans to tell the stories, not just of famous people, but of everyday people and how they lived. She also plans to peel back the pages of history for museum visitors to learn things like what toys children played with and what music people listened to, as well as how they discussed things like the American Revolution, the Fugitive Slave Act and self-emancipation. “I will show up authentically and hope to be a meaningful member of the community,” Trent says.

According to Sylvia Stevens-Edouard, chair of the MAAH board, establishing closer ties and greater collaboration with the local community and creating new initiatives specific to Nantucket are among MAAH’s top priorities. “Dr. Trent will oversee the development of new programming that highlights the rich history of African

“I want to amplify the stories of the thriving Black community that people don’t necessarily associate with Nantucket. We have a Black history that runs as deep as our country’s founding.”

– Dr. Noelle Trent

MAAH’s Nantucket campus features the African Meeting House and the Seneca Boston-Florence Higginbotham House, two historic jewels found along the island’s Black Heritage Trail. Together, the 10 sites that comprise this self-guided walking tour recount the heritage and contributions of African Americans living on Nantucket, primarily during the 19th century.

Americans on Nantucket,” she says.

“Equally important, she will help us engage with Nantucket residents in a deeper way, which includes expanding their involvement with the museum’s board. Dr. Trent’s arrival allows us to redouble our commitment to the Nantucket campus.”

Trent believes that every school student on Nantucket should have a meaningful encounter with one of MAAH’s key historic sites, the African Meeting House, at least once in their K–12 education. “What makes the meeting house different than other museums is that you can occupy the

place where history happened, and I think that this will positively impact students’ understanding of American history. It will also facilitate a comprehensive understanding of Nantucket as a multifaceted community even in its earliest days,” she says. She hopes a visit

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our wonderful community partners,” she says. to the African Meeting House will help people “You never know She hopes to pair with local partners to engage reconsider who we are as a country. “You never how you can everyone from children to elders, as a way to know how you can inspire people,” she adds. inspire people.” remove barriers to make the museum accessible Trent does see challenges before MAAH – Dr. Noelle Trent to all audiences. can enter a new era. The museum, like many Throughout her storied career, Trent across the country, was greatly impacted by the has planned a lot of celebrations that have galvanized pandemic. Not all museums were able to survive. communities. At the National Civil Rights Museum, she “As a small and Black museum, we have realistic challenges oversaw major national and international events including to overcome. Our ability to do our work and share stories MLK50: A Legacy Remembered for the 50th anniversary is dependent on financial support,” she explains. Trent of Dr. King’s assassination and the Ruby Bridges Reading hopes to do several things, including expanding outreach, Festival. Now, with MAAH in the process of planning for the earning accreditation and becoming a meaningful part of the African Meeting House’s bicentennial in 2025, she hopes to communities in Nantucket and Boston. “Our success is tied do something similar in Nantucket. to not only our work but also our ability to collaborate with The interior of the African Meeting House

“People can walk around a building for years and have no idea about the people behind the stories.

It’s not just about the building; it’s about people and the community.”

– Dr. Noelle Trent

Xxxxxxxxx The Museum of African American History

Trent inside the Museum of African American History

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“I am excited to be leading the institution and being part of the Nantucket community. I appreciate the hospitality and genuine spirit. It is an honor to continue our work and collaborate,” she says.

Trent lives in Boston’s North End close to MAAH’s sister property in Beacon Hill. “I feel lucky to be able to say ‘I can’t meet with you. I have to be in Nantucket for work.’ Nantucket is a unique community and has its own important story to share.

I’m honored to share that story and work within the community with our partners to continue to enhance it.”

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NANTUCKET’S PERSON OF THE YEAR

BRESETTE WRITTEN BY ROBERT COCUZZO

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE

Helping shape the future of a generation of islanders through the Nantucket Golf Club Foundation.

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here is a select group on Nantucket who are widely known on a first-name basis. Rocky, Packy, Holly, Nat, Wendy—the list goes on—have all become long-running characters of this sitcom we call island life. A shining star on this list has always been Tommy B. A bartender-turned-chief-operatingofficer of the Nantucket Golf Club, Tom Bresette bridges the divide between one of the most exclusive clubs on the island and the everyday, hardworking folks that make Nantucket tick. A jolly, Santa Claus kind of guy—minus the beard and the belly—Bresette has helped the Nantucket Golf Club become one of the island’s most powerful fundraising engines over the last 20 years.

Children’s Charity Classic in 2001, Bresette “He is Kennedyesque,” said Ed Hajim, the founder of the Nantucket Golf Club who now serves orchestrated and executed every detail, from setting up the two-day golf tournament and as a director of the foundation. “He remembers names. He remembers backgrounds. He never misses organizing the 250-person gala to procuring exclusive auction items and serving as the anybody. Deaths, births or marriages, he’s always auctioneer himself. “Tommy turns it on,” said there. Once we decided to create the foundation, Hajim. With so many different potential causes Tommy became the driver.”

With Bresette serving as the Nantucket Golf Club for the club to direct its fundraising efforts, it was Bresette—then in the process of having Foundation’s executive director since its inception, children—who pushed the foundation has raised more for local children to be than $44 million—including “The fact that the beneficiaries. a record-setting $4.8 million Tommy B has helmed this But Bresette’s work this past August. To put that program since the beginning did not stop there. He leads in perspective, the Boston is a testament to how the selection committee Pops on Nantucket Concert much he cares about his raised $2.6 million this year community and its children.” through the rigorous process of interviewing high school with the contributions of – River Bennett candidates applying for the 5,500 attendees. The NGC scholarships. Recipients Foundation nearly doubled are then tracked throughout their four years to that sum with just 250 contributions. “It’s a ensure they are maintaining their grades, but real testament to the incredible generosity of through this process, they develop a bond with our members,” Bresette insists.

Bresette and his team.

Since 2006, the NGC Foundation has “The fact that Tommy B has helmed this leveraged its fundraising firepower to provide program since the beginning is a testament to full college scholarships to Nantucket High how much he cares about this community and School students. Five years ago, it expanded the its children,” said River Bennett, a Nantucket scholarship program to include students pursuing High School graduate who received the vocational careers after high school. By 2025, the scholarship in 2009. “I value the connection NGC Foundation will have funded the post-high that he and I built from when I was a candidate, school educations of 100 local students. Money is and even today—10 years out from my college also distributed in the spring and fall as grants to graduation—I know that his door is open to me dozens of local nonprofits and causes that benefit and the rest of the scholars. It’s a privilege to children on the island. have that type of a relationship.”

After the board established the foundation’s

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a tight-knit family of nine, young Tommy was already used fter receiving his scholarship, Bennett attended the to being cramped at his kitchen table in Potomac, 24 miles University of Virginia (UVA), where he studied political south of Washington, D.C., when his parents began welcoming and social thought, and finished his degree with a thesis on strangers to join them for dinner. Migrant workers, the the political rhetoric surrounding energy independence in unhoused, anyone in need—all had a place at their table. the United States. From UVA, Bennett received his master’s One evening, Tommy found himself in nuclear engineering and radiological sitting across from Cesar Chavez, the founder sciences at the University of Michigan.

“The Nantucket of the United Farm Workers, which the Today, he’s working as a nuclear engineer Golf Club Scholarship Bresettes came to support. There had been at a startup called Radiant that’s developing has been a truly threats on Chavez’s life, so the Bresettes a micro nuclear reactor on a mission to foundational piece offered him a safe place to stay while he provide clean energy. of my trajectory.” was in D.C. fighting for better treatment of “The Nantucket Golf Club Scholarship – River Bennett agricultural workers. Chavez became one of has been a truly foundational piece of my many people who lived with the Bresettes for trajectory,” Bennett said. “Entering college periods of Tommy’s youth. knowing that I would leave debt-free created space to act on “Our house was open my curiosities, and I credit the Nantucket Scholar program with to everyone,” Bresette kick-starting a career that I love and that I never could have reflected. “Anyone in imagined as a teenager.” need.” Much of this While Bresette takes fatherly pride in all of his scholars, emphasis on social justice he also has impressive children of his own. A father of four— came from Tommy’s father. each of whom are attending prestigious schools themselves, Dr. John “Jack” Bresette, including his eldest, Luci, who turned down a full scholarship better known as “Dr. B,” to Harvard to attend Stanford—Bresette credits much of his was a beloved surgeon in success and the success of the foundation to his wife of 27 years, Leslie, who ran the foundation with him in the beginning. D.C. On Saturdays, Dr. B would take Tommy and “None of this would have been possible without her,” he says. a couple of his siblings Family has always been at the center of Bresette’s life and to do rounds at the the inspiration behind his generous spirit. The sixth child in

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“Nantucket Golf Club is really, as some people have said, an institution, and it’s played a very, very important role far beyond the concept of just getting a bunch of people together to play golf… and a lot of that comes down to Tom.” – Fred Green

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“I’ve done a lot of interviews in my life, and I could tell from talking to Tom that there was a level here that was more than a bartender.”

– Fred Green

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Columbia Hospital for Women. He also brought them to see patients as a volunteer physician at the Little Sisters of the Poor where he would often have to write death certificates for unhoused patients. In the spring of 1974, Dr. B helped start a free clinic in D.C. called the Zacchaeus Clinic, which subsequently became one of the largest in the city.

Throughout his childhood, Bresette observed his father interacting with patients, nurses, clerks, custodians, the unhoused—all walks of life—with unwavering compassion. He embraced the ideals of his father but pursued his own form of service when he set out on his own. More specifically, Bresette entered the service industry during college. Beginning as a busboy, he worked his way up to bartender and opened up a number of restaurants in D.C., the last of which happened to be called Nantucket Landing.

Bresette eventually discovered the real Nantucket after college friends Tom Scott and Tom First invited him to help them deliver a sailboat from Florida to the island. During the sail, the two Toms pitched Bresette on joining them in starting a juice company. “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” Bresette told them.

With that, the soon-to-be-launched Nantucket Nectars only included two Toms—not three.

While Bresette might have missed the boat on Nantucket Nectars, he fell in with the island’s hospitality industry. Seth and Angela Raynor convinced him to move to the island to be the bar manager at the Boarding House. He quickly became a fixture on the island, one of the original “Nantucket star-tenders” who knew everybody’s name and

what they drank. In 1996, he met Leslie, and they married later that year. As the young couple began considering starting a family, Bresette felt the itch to get out from behind the bar.

Some twists of fate delivered him to the office of Fred Green, the president of the newly founded Nantucket Golf Club off Milestone Road in 1997. A legend in the golf industry who was responsible for building 11 other courses around the country, Green took a shining to Bresette. “The first time I ever saw Tommy he was tending bar at the Boarding House,” Green recalled fondly. “Here was this guy three-deep at the bar running a sideshow, knowing everybody’s name and what everybody was drinking. And I thought who is this guy?”

When a club employee mentioned that Bresette was interested in a job, Green told him to come for a visit. “I’ve done a lot of interviews in my life, and I could tell from talking to Tom that there was a level here that was more than a bartender,” Green said. After a number of meetings, Green offered Bresette the job as club manager. “It’s been one of the best hires I ever made,” said Green, who remains a mentor to Tom. “Nantucket Golf Club is really, as some people have said, an institution, and it’s played a very, very important role far beyond the concept of just getting a bunch of people together to play golf… and a lot of that comes down to Tom.” For his dedication to Nantucket’s youth and service to the community, N Magazine selects Tommy Bresette as Person of the Year.

A collection of the students that the Nantucket Golf Club Foundation Scholarship has helped

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ARE WE IN HOT WATER? WRITTEN BY GRETA FEENEY

Warming ocean temperatures are impacting Nantucket waters.

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his year, the late summer heat on Nantucket extended well into autumn. With ocean temperatures expected to hover around 60 degrees Fahrenheit through mid-November, the waters will be chilly but not mind-numbing, allowing some swimmers to expand their season to nearly eight months out of the year.

But the allure of a seemingly endless Nantucket summer is quickly offset by the stark realities of climate change, and concerns over accelerated warming of the North Atlantic Ocean—which on any given day is around 6 degrees warmer than the historic average—are rippling through the community.

New England’s waters are warming and not just by a little.

In 2021, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute announced that the temperature of inlet waters adjacent to Maine and northern Massachusetts was the highest on record, with faster rates of warming than 96 percent of the world’s oceans and annual rate increases of 0.1 degree Celsius (0.18 degree Fahrenheit) over the past four decades.

“We suspect the extraordinary tropical fish abundance is most likely due to higher survival rates of tropical fish larvae facilitated by record-breaking Atlantic Ocean temperatures this year.”

– Jack Dubinsky

This is seemingly a pattern for the rest of the world, as well.

From June through September, an estimated 40 percent of the world’s oceans experienced marine heatwaves, resulting in the mass death of Amazonian pink dolphins in Brazil, widespread coral bleaching in the Florida Keys and anomalous tropical fish sightings throughout New England due to an increase in what scientists call “warm core rings”—swirling blobs of the swollen Gulf Stream that break off from the main current and carry unwitting warm-water sea creatures north into cooler climes.

The Maria Mitchell Association has been monitoring marine biodiversity and tropical fish abundance in Nantucket’s eelgrass ecosystems for over 15 years. According to the association’s aquarium director, Jack Dubinsky, sightings of warm-water species are becoming more frequent. “Over the last decade, the MMA has found an average of three to six tropical fishes in Nantucket every season. In 2023, we found and identified 58 tropical fishes, including a single tow of the seine net [in early October] that had 25 juvenile permit (Trachinotus falcatus) and six juvenile mojarra (Eucinostomus sp.). We suspect the extraordinary tropical fish abundance is most likely due to higher survival rates of tropical fish larvae facilitated by record-breaking Atlantic Ocean temperatures this year.”

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cean temperatures are influenced by myriad complex factors including deep sea currents, volcanic eruptions and recurring patterns such as El Niño and La Niña, but scientists correlate recent accelerated warming with exposure to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases— excess carbon dioxide and heat trapped in the atmosphere are transferred upon contact to the cooler ocean water, leading to warmer temperatures and increased acidification. This dynamic climatic relationship between sea and sky is, in part, how the oceans function collectively as the world’s largest “carbon sink.”

This was exemplified in late July, when nine Nantucket beaches were closed to swimmers due to high bacteria counts. One month later, for the second year in a row, downtown beaches were closed after being found sullied by a sulfuric-smelling anoxic sludge.

“Long-term monitoring of stranding events and analysis of stranding trends will help us better understand how climate change affects marine mammal strandings on Nantucket.”

– Jack Dubinsky

Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution described an uptick in hypoxic conditions at the southern end of Cape Cod Bay near Barnstable and in the waters between Provincetown and Wellfleet. These low-oxygen “dead zones,” according to the institution, are the result of imbalances in algal growth spurred by excess nutrient loads and increased upper ocean stratification, in which the warmer layer of seawater expands quickly relative to the cooler one, resulting in changes in water density—a complex mixing process also affected by shifting northeasterly wind patterns.

Days after the decomposing algae shuttered beaches, a trio of distressed and disoriented dolphins stranded themselves in the Creeks and on Coatue, only to circle back

Eelgrass

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again after volunteers from the Marine Mammal Alliance tried to release them into deeper, cooler waters. The mid-August stranding event foreshadowed the September release of the 2023 State of the Ecosystem report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The report presented a sobering look at climate resiliency in the Northeast shelf ecosystem and its fisheries that underscores the increasing vulnerability of marine mammals to climate change.

NOAA researchers found that more than 70 percent of the 100 species of marine mammals studied are vulnerable to threats such as loss of habitat and food due to increased water temperatures, low levels of dissolved oxygen in sea water and other changes in ocean chemistry that can affect sound transmission underwater—an impact that disrupts the sonar-like echolocation whales and dolphins use to communicate and hunt.

On factors specific to Nantucket, that could theoretically result in marine mammal strandings like those seen in August. The Maria Mitchell Association’s Dubinsky explains. “I think the shallow environment, along with the effects cited in the NOAA study could possibly explain some of the stranding, but I imagine it would be difficult to ascertain whether the cause of the specific recent stranding event was due to anthropogenic changes to the marine environment or if it was a ‘natural’ occurrence. Long-term monitoring of strandings events and analysis of stranding trends will help us better understand how climate change affects marine mammal strandings on Nantucket.”

Because the confluence of issues that contribute to a rapidly warming North Atlantic Ocean are largely out of their control, most local scientists are opting to hunker down on the more immediate problems affecting the health of Nantucket Harbor, while protecting the island’s coastal wetlands and ponds. RJ Turcotte, waterkeeper at the Nantucket Land & Water Council, has been using remote sensors to track increased ocean temperatures at eelgrass restoration sites at Monomoy and Fifth Bend since 2018.

caused by increased acidification. Dr. Jennifer Karberg, NCF director of research and partnerships, explains how Nantucket’s 1,600 acres of salt marsh—1,200 of which are managed by NCF—“act as filters, reducing nutrient loading and filtering water as it reaches the harbor.”

Regarding ocean acidification, Nantucket’s coastal wetlands “store significant amounts of carbon in their soils.” Part of NCF’s mission is studying and managing local salt marshes to increase carbon storage, which helps improve harbor health.

Juvenile mojarra (Eucinostomus sp.)

“The temperatures in the harbors have been regularly stressing our eelgrass meadows,” Turcotte says. “Once the water temperature gets over about 75 degrees Fahrenheit, these plants stop growing—they are simply trying to survive. By July, our shallow harbors are regularly reaching this threshold temperature and staying there until fall. This shortens the growing season, especially in the northern reaches of Nantucket Harbor, which aren’t as well-flushed with cooler ocean water by the tides each day. We are concerned that these rising temperatures will cause us to lose these critical eelgrass meadows, which are the foundation of the Nantucket Harbor habitats.”

The Nantucket Conservation Foundation monitors the ocean temperature as a variable in many of its research projects around the island, including a long-term project tracking mating populations of horseshoe crabs at Warren’s Landing in Madaket Harbor and a Polpis Harbor oyster reef restoration project. Since 2010, the foundation’s researchers have observed correlations between an accelerated increase in water temperatures and horseshoe crab mating season happening earlier in the spring.

As the harbor continues to warm, Nantucket’s coastal wetlands will play an increasingly important role in countering the impacts of nutrient loading and the threats Juvenile permit (Trachinotus falcatus)

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that’s where the bait was. You just have to adapt.”

We all have to adapt, but how? Nantucket’s experts emphasize the need to reduce nutrient pollution such as fertilizer runoff in light of increased ocean temperatures and acidification.

Stormwater runoff infrastructure must also be “One of the things improved to keep pollutants out of the harbor, and that gives me hope initiatives like the Nantucket Land & Water Council’s is human ingenuity.” new eelgrass-friendly moorings must be supported – Dr. Kathy Mills and implemented so that boaters can help preserve the harbor while still enjoying it each summer.

The Maria Mitchell Association has recently launched an ocean acidification monitoring project that will deploy oceanographic buoys in Nantucket Harbor to monitor seawater conditions. It is seeking support for this important, partially funded initiative, which will allow for independent assessments of several oceanographic parameters, including acidity, temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and nitrate, the primary nutrient responsible for algal blooms in marine systems.

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cologist Dr. Sarah Bois, director of research and education at the Linda Loring Nature Foundation, points out that, when it comes to warming oceans, “fisheries data is a focal point for the scientific community because it is of economic interest to The Marine Mammal Alliance Nantucket team with one of the dolphins everyone. The climate change aspect is more when that was stranded on Nantucket in August.

Photos by Kit Noble the populations change. With fish, they can move north, or they can move deeper. Habitat fluctuations The ocean connects us all. It has also been a buffer against occur according to what the tolerances are. The black sea bass the full consequences of human-caused climate change, but is one that gets talked about a lot. It was seen sporadically here the excess heat and carbon absorbed by the ocean are changing and there, but as waters warmed, the populations have moved our marine ecosystems more quickly than predicted. Ocean north. Now, they are a pretty constant fishery.” innovation solutions are also accelerating, but systemic change Although he acknowledges the seriousness of concerns will require strong leadership, technological innovation and about climate change, second-generation charter boat captain public-private collaborations. Now, more than ever, the Nantucket Bob DaCosta doesn’t feel alarmed by increased sea water community needs to lead the way as pioneers in the new blue temperatures. “This year, temperature-wise it was maybe a economy. “One of the things that gives me hope is human degree or two warmer,” he says. “The water gets warmer earlier ingenuity,” says Dr. Kathy Mills, who heads the U.N. Ocean and stays warmer longer. We haven’t had any fall weather. The Decade’s fisheries strategies unit and is a senior research scientist bait pattern has changed, though. We are seeing a difference in at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. “I think that spirit is an bait patterns year after year, and the bait pattern this year was innate part of human culture.” completely off. We had to go south more to catch tuna because

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COMMUNICATION INTERVIEW BY JONATHAN SOROFF

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE

Event photos courtesy of Sally Susman.

Susman during a keynote luncheon at the Retail Influencer CEO Forum

SALLY SUSMAN AND THE POWER OF ENGAGEMENT

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here are five things I always wanted to be,” Sally Susman says. “A wife, a mother, a business boss lady, a New Yorker and an author. Author was elusive until now.” With the publication in March of her Wall Street Journal bestseller Breaking Through: Communicating to Open Minds, Move Hearts, and Change the World, Susman has now realized all five of her goals. “Having your first book published is thrilling for someone who always wanted to write,” she says. “As a child, I wanted to be an investigative reporter.”

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Susman and Richard Socarides, founder and CEO of Kozani Capital, LLC at the LGBTQ+ Board Diversity Summit of the Association of LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors on October 19.

Susman was interviewed by Socarides in a session titled, “Being out as a lifetime communication challenge and opportunity, and other lessons from Breaking Through.”

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nstead, she went to work on Capitol Hill before moving to New York City, where she worked for American Express and Estée Lauder. Today, she is the chief corporate affairs officer at Pfizer as well as vice chair of the Pfizer Foundation. A summer resident of Nantucket for 50 years, she’s been vacationing on the island since childhood with her parents—her father was a lawyer, banker and the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s while her mother was involved in civic causes.

Today, Susman continues to summer on the island at her family’s Nantucket home, with the addition of her wife and their young daughter. “The first time I brought my wife here, she loved it even more than I do,” she says. “Now Robin and I have been together 35 years, and we joke that she’s the mayor of the island. She knows everything that’s going on.”

The couple spends time on Nantucket in the off-season as well.

“It’s just so beautiful and peaceful,” Susman says. “My favorite time to be on Nantucket is the fall. Wearing sweaters, in pursuit of cranberry bogs…the light and air are just extraordinary.” But what

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drew her family to the island initially was the allure of the East Coast. “Being from the Midwest, it was an eye-opener,” she says, regarding her childhood visits. “I learned about salty air and baskets on bicycles. The gentle rhythm of being on an island. Nantucket opened my mind to another way of living in the world.”

Growing up, Susman was ingrained with the typical Midwest values of rising early, working hard and treating people with respect, but she explains that her parents also ingrained her with a sense of curiosity and a need to engage with the world. “Spending time on Nantucket was a big part of those lessons,” she says.

“Nantucket opened my mind to another way of living in the world.”

– Sally Susman

This, among other reasons, was why a book signing in August at Mitchell’s Book Corner was particularly special. She adds, “I’ve been buying books there for decades, and it’s a very important place for me.”

As for Breaking Through, its premise is that “communication is an essential quality or discipline for leaders of any kind—CEOs, politicians, whatever. I’ve worked

with nine CEOs, in addition to cabinet secretaries, senators and other influential leaders. The game changers all prioritized and excelled at communicating effectively,” Susman explains. In summary, the central argument is that communication is often mistaken as a soft skill rather than a rock-hard competency. Before joining Pfizer in 2007, Susman functioned in several senior communications and government relations roles at Estée Lauder and American Express, and earlier in her career, she spent almost a decade in government service.

While she had been conceptualizing the book for nearly four decades, it took the COVID-19 pandemic to bring it together on the page.

“The book is the culmination of my ideas about communications and leadership,” she explains. “It was forged in the cauldron of the pandemic, which gave me a clarity and quietness from working at home.” While Pfizer scrambled to develop what would prove to be an effective vaccine, Susman, along with her CEO and several others, were the front-facing people, and she says, “It was especially interesting, because I connected with a whole new set of stakeholders. It wasn’t just medical people who were interested.

It was the whole world.”

Her book opens with the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine and the difficult decision Pfizer faced in whether to pull business out of Russia, as many consumer companies were doing.

In the end, the company resolved

“The book is the culmination of my ideas about communications and leadership.”

– Sally Susman

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Susman during a book signing at Mitchell’s Book Corner

“My passion—and my goal—is to give people the tools they need to disagree agreeably.

To open them up to the idea that maybe the other side is at least partially right.”

– Sally Susman

the dilemma by continuing a humanitarian supply of medicines to Russia, but directing profits from business in the country to supporting the Ukrainian people. “My passion—and my goal—is to give people the tools they need to disagree agreeably. To open them up to the idea that maybe the other side is at least partially right,” she says, adding, “I admire diplomacy a great deal. It’s in short supply these days, and it’s one of the most important things we’re missing.”

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When not executing her considerable responsibilities at Pfizer or promoting her book, she serves as co-chair of the board of the International Rescue Committee, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is also on the board of UL Solutions.

However, she always carves out time to spend on Nantucket, where you can probably find her at her home on Capaum Pond, with its stunning water views of both the pond and the ocean. “It’s a really special spot,” she says. “When I’m on Nantucket, walking the Tupancy Links or Sanford Farm, it’s just stunning.”

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TOP of the

CLASS INTERVIEW BY BRUCE A. PERCELAY PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHARITY GRACE MOFSEN

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BABSON COLLEGE PRESIDENT STEPHEN SPINELLI ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SUCCESS FACTORS.

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s the 14th president of Babson College, Stephen Spinelli began his

career as a founder of Jiffy Lube, which established him as an entrepreneurial success story. Spinelli parlayed his Jiffy Lube experience into additional investment opportunities; however, his passion for teaching became his primary focus and ultimately led him to the presidency of Babson College—recently ranked among the top 10 colleges in America by the Wall Street Journal. N Magazine sat down with Spinelli to talk about his life lessons and Babson’s role in creating business leaders.

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What is your Nantucket connection?

We came with our neighbor in the early ’90s from Longmeadow, Massachusetts.

He said, “You should see this place, Nantucket,” so we went. My wife and I have never agreed on any vacation, ever. We came to Nantucket, and both fell in love with it.

An obvious qualification for teaching entrepreneurship is being an entrepreneur. Explain the most important entrepreneurial experience you’ve had.

The launch pad was Jiffy Lube. A Division III college coach of mine was an entrepreneur, and he liked a lot of the players. He said we should do something together, and we found a little mom-and-pop operation in Utah called Jiffy Lube. They were doing really well in the town of Ogden, and we thought that going to Boston, where there are actually a lot of cars, would work. Fourteen years later, we made it the largest in the country and I sold it. In the middle of all that, I asked the question, “Am I smart enough or educated enough to be successful?”

Getting a startup is always hard work and there are ups and downs, so I decided I needed more knowledge.

That’s when I found Babson College.

Spinelli’s launch pad into entrepreneurship

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What was your takeaway from the Jiffy Lube experience?

Did you have the urge to start up another company?

With all these guys, it was a team, and the coach was the real leader. If he said run through a wall, you ran through a wall. That led to the integration of practice and action, now what we call at Babson, “thought and action.” Think deeply, act decisively. Sometimes people think that you have to go out and do it and that is the best way to learn, but if you combine all the tools of learning together, it is superior. So think deeply and act decisively.

I did and still do. The greatest success for me has been in entering companies as they’re thinking about scaling. Jiffy Lube had two stores when we bought it, and [we] sold it with 2,000. I joined the Planet Fitness board when they had 200 stores, and now they have 2,400. I’m invested in and am on the board of a company called FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers, which had very few stores and they now have 500. My sweet spot is finding opportunities and scaling them, which is

After you sold Jiffy Lube, what was your next act?

what my Ph.D. was around. I’ve poured myself into that part of entrepreneurship.

Well, it was interesting. I had money now.

At least enough to pay all the bills, which was a unique experience. And it was fun.

I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor. Rich is better, just be honest about it. But the support of learning was so much fun for me. And one of the reasons it took me so long to get my MBA is I didn’t want to stop. Most people want to get their degree, but I just wanted to learn. My wife decided we should go to London, and I decided I should get a Ph.D., so we went to London where I studied economics at Imperial College.

Babson was just ranked in the top 10 of colleges nationally. Could you summarize the key points that helped transform the school to where it is today?

Babson believed entrepreneurship could be taught when the world believed it was embedded in DNA for a chosen few. When the world learned it could be taught, they focused on new venture creation. We built an understanding of the entrepreneurial mind, arming our students with capabilities in startups and in all rapidly changing environments.

“Babson believed entrepreneurship could be taught when the world believed it was embedded in DNA for a chosen few.”

– Stephen Spinelli

But can you really teach someone to become an entrepreneur, or do you just teach entrepreneurs to be more effective?

I think there are varying scales of capabilities. I can teach anyone to play tennis. Can I teach everyone to go to Wimbledon and win? No. I’m almost certain I can teach entrepreneurship to anyone. And one of the great things about entrepreneurship, maybe like tennis, is you can play at whatever level your capabilities can get you to if you know the rules of the game. If you don’t know that that’s a racket and that you have to serve, you’re not going to play, you’re not going to win, you can’t win at any level. But if I can teach you the rules and the style, and I can teach you how to practice entrepreneurship, you can get to the level that your skills and ambition can take you to.…Ask any entrepreneurs if they have learned anything in their experiences that made them better at what they do. I guarantee you they will say “Oh, tons.” If we can study that and we can figure out what that learning is about, I can transfer that knowledge to someone. That’s what great research does.

What is the difference between an average entrepreneur and someone who is a rock star? And can you see that right away?

I can’t see it right away. Because I think it gets tested over time and people evolve and change and grow—and sometimes evolve and change and deteriorate. So I think it goes both ways, and I think it’s a very dynamic process. But I think that there is a keen recognition of a problem and a

Spinelli with Babson students

desire to solve the problem. There is an acute understanding of how to have teams and opportunity and resources and balance—and they see that balance and we can teach that balance. And as they grow, they grow that balance. And the ones that are seeking to solve the bigger problems tend to have a broader span of a career.

If you were to distill five traits of successful entrepreneurs, what would they be?

There are many professors at Babson College who could do a better job answering this than me (great interview candidates!), but I’ll give you my view: self-efficacy, personal locus of control, belief in your capabilities and a relentless pursuit of finding capabilities you don’t possess, [being] perpetually motivated and resilience.

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“We believe that we have a larger role in society.”

– Stephen Spinelli

The work ethic among young people today appears to be different than our generation. Do you think the younger generation has a different sensibility toward work than the generation that preceded it?

Do they have a different sensibility? Yes, absolutely. Is it better or worse?

That I’m not sure. I think it might be better. We were driven a lot around economics. I think the more complete definition of value and value creation is more embedded in this generation. And they’re thinking in broader terms.

Now, there are times when you just work harder because that’s the way I did it. Maybe that’s not the right way to do it. Maybe they’re thinking about their family, or they’re thinking about their community, or thinking about how can I measure the value I create in different ways? Dollars and cents are pretty easy. What’s your net worth? How much do you have in the bank? But the other value creation is evolving, and society will make those decisions, but I think this generation is much more acutely aware of the second half of the value equation. I’m not sure I saw some of the things they see. They see it in a more three-dimensional way than I did. I was too linear. And they see it much more broadly.

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There’s a huge wealth disparity in this country. And in certain young people, there is an assumption that a wealthy person is a bad person. What’s your take on the notion of vilifying success?

It’s a shame. I think the human condition aspires. If you think the world is a perfect place, we can stop aspiring. I think there’s a lot of things we could still do better. So I grow a bit worried about that.

Somebody smarter than me said that anger is the enemy of understanding. I worry about that because without understanding, then we just fight. The role of higher education is to bring respectful debate— heated, passionate, respectful debate—to society and to make that an embedded part of what a real education is about. A place like Babson, people don’t understand that 40 percent of the curriculum is liberal arts. We believe that you have a larger role in society.

BABSON BUSINESSES ON NANTUCKET WALTER “WALT” S. SPOKOWSKI, MBA’82 President, Marine Home Center marinehomecenter.com KLAUDIA B. MALLY ’99 Co-Founder and Owner, Brix Wine Shop brixwineshop.com/nantucket/ WALTER “CHIP” O. LABONTE JR., MBA ’04 Owner, Nantucket Evaluation Group nantucket-evaluation.com EMILY C. (OTT) HOLLISTER ’06 Owner, Milly & Grace millyandgrace.com PATRICK JOHN RIDGE MBA ’14 Chef and Owner, Nantucket Island Kitchen islandkitchen.com WENDY MORTON HUDSON, MBA ’19 Founder and Owner, Nantucket Book Partners nantucketbookpartners.com Founding Partner, Cisco Brewers ciscobrewers.com BRANDON JELLISON, MBA ’19 Licensed Massage Therapist, Lavender Farm Wellness lavenderfarmwellness.com JAMES “JAMIE” WYATT SIMINOFF ’99, H ’21 Owner, Handlebar Café handlebarnantucket.com

NONPROFITS WILLIAM “WILL” A. WILLAUER ’88 President, Board of Trustees, Nantucket Tipping Point nantuckettippingpoint.org MARTIN I. ANGUELOV, MBA ’08 Chief Financial Officer, Nantucket Public Schools npsk.org

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Nantucket’s Hottest Podcast BOOKS, BEACH & BEYOND

#1 Bestselling Author Elin Hilderbrand and Tim Ehrenberg like you've never heard them before

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to local island legends who feature oin Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New prominently in Hilderbrand’s prolific York Times bestselling author of Nantucket stories. Discussing topics ranging 30 titles and the “Queen of the from what it’s like to take Beach Reads,” and Tim Ehrenberg, a book to the screen, Nantucket’s most voracious reader and to the connection creator of the popular Tim Talks Books, BEACH & BEYOND WITH ELIN HILDERBRAND & TIM TALKS BOOKS between a reader and as they hit the airwaves in an exclusive a story’s characters, podcast produced by N Magazine. to the intricacies and intimate details of In what is poised to become one of the most an author’s writing process, Hilderbrand listened to literary podcasts in the country, Books, Beach, SCAN TO and Ehrenberg bring books to life on the & Beyond features special guests from bestselling and SUBSCRIBE & LISTEN airwaves in a brand-new way! recognizable authors, to publishing industry insiders,

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HIGH OCTANE

WHISKEY WRITTEN BY ROBERT COCUZZO

IMAGES COURTESY OF CARFIMEDIA

Summer resident Chris Bishop pops the hood on his auto-inspired whiskey.

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antucket summer resident Chris Bishop is in the business of customization. The founder of American Metal Customs, Bishop and his team have restored and hand-built award-winning hot rods and motorcycles that fit their drivers like wellworn leather jackets. So, when Bishop decided to extend his brand into the realm of top-shelf spirits, he set out to create a whiskey designed for car and motorcycle enthusiasts.

Enter American Metal Whiskey, a handcrafted bourbon fueled with a passion for all things automotive.

Sitting in his garage, Bishop swirls a neat tumbler of his 10-year single-barrel whiskey. Aged in American oak barrels in Vermont, the 96-proof liquor made its island debut this spring. “‘Handcrafted’ is kind of overused these days,” the 51-year-old father of three says, “but we really wanted to take the same approach as we do with our custom builds.” He pokes his nose in the glass and continues, “This whiskey embodies the same values of craftsmanship, creativity and attention to detail that goes into every hot rod, motorcycle and custom build we create.”

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Co. pet food, which sold to General Mills for $8 billion in 2018. After exiting the pet food industry, Bishop made his first foray into custom cars as a collector. He then founded North American Motor Car, through which he bought and sold some of the most sought-after vehicles in the country, including timeless classics, exotic supercars, hot rods, contemporary muscle cars and custom and vintage motorcycles.

When he won a custom motorcycle built “Malibu Honey” custom bike built by Josh Allison The North American Motor Car showroom

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ishop has the hardware to back up that claim. In the 2023 Ultimate Spirits Challenge, American Metal Whiskey was named a Chairman’s Award Finalist, earning 92 points out of a hundred.

And he’s just getting revved up. Bishop wants the rumble of an engine to truly echo through each sip of his whiskey. Off the record, he shared a new distilling technology developed by American Metal Whiskey that is currently patent pending. Though he said it was too early to divulge the specifics publicly, if and when the patent is approved, American Metal Whiskey’s finishing process will have some serious horsepower behind it. “Just stay tuned is all I can say,” Bishop insists.

Before he entered the automotive and now boutique whiskey business, Bishop was part of the father-sons team behind Blue Buffalo Custom 1955 Chevy built

by Ralph Baldwin and Dave Lemet

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“This whiskey embodies the same values of craftsmanship, creativity and attention to detail that goes into every hot rod, motorcycle and custom build we create.”

– Chris Bishop

Taste and purchase the whiskey at The Glamour & Grit Lounge, located above American Metal Customs.

Custom 1934 Ford Coupe built

by Josh Allison

“Zidan” custom bike built

by Josh Allison

by Orange County Choppers at a charity auction, Bishop visited the famous shop to meet the fabricators. There, he found a kindred spirit in lead fabricator and shop manager Josh Allison. The two hit it off and ultimately decided to launch their own shop in Connecticut. Shortly thereafter, the whiskey became an extension of their efforts at American Metal Customs.

In marketing his whiskey, Bishop has

pulled some pages out of his father’s old branding playbook. One of the original “Mad Men,” summer resident Bill Bishop leveraged his advertising expertise when launching the beverage company SoBe in the nineties. Deploying ingenious and often irreverent branding and guerilla marketing, Bishop and his partners propelled SoBe to wild popularity before it was acquired by PepsiCo in 2001.

American Metal Whiskey is imbued with the same renegade spirit as SoBe, with a heavily tattooed motorhead at its core, and with Chris Bishop striving to gain similar traction. “Don’t overthink it,” he says of his strategy. “Just have the best juice, the best process and present it in a way that’s connective and authentic and that’s real.” From there, put the pedal to the metal.

Chris Bishop

American Metal Whiskey is available at the Chicken Box and CRU as well as by the bottle or case at americanmetalwhiskey.com.

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WORN SEA

WRITTEN BY ANTONIA DEPACE PHOTOGRAPHY BY TUCKER FINERTY

bythe

Lunasalt brings the ocean to your wardrobe through denim.

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n September, when everyone else was hunkering down for the much anticipated wrath of Hurricane Lee, Terry Ruggiano had something else top of mind: jeans. More specifically, placing selvage (also spelled selvedge) denim for his brand, Lunasalt, into oyster cages to wash within the waves.

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“It just hit me to tie the jeans to the pier—just let the waves break them in.”

Xxxxxxxxxxxx

Xxxxxxxxxxxx

– Terry Ruggiano

Xxxxxxxxxxxx

Xxxxxxxxxxxx

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t’s this process that inspired the brand eight years ago when the New Jersey native turned Nantucket resident was on what seemed to be an endless search for durable jeans. “I just wanted to find a pair of jeans that could last and still look good. And so I came across the selvage denim,” he says. This raw/unwashed denim has finished edges that prevent it from fraying and unraveling, plus it’s more sustainable for the planet by saving water and reducing the amount of chemicals used in the modern manufacturing process. In all, it’s considered the gold standard. The one downside? It’s extremely stiff and needs to be worn in—but that’s where Ruggiano’s ocean washing comes into play.

Having lived on the water all his life, Ruggiano realized that the combination of the salt, the movement of the ocean and the sun helped to speed up the process. “It just hit me to tie Xxxxxxxxxxxx the jeans to the pier—just let the waves break them in,” he explains, comparing the method to wiping out when surfing, which feels similar to the tumbling in a washing machine.

After moving to Nantucket full time in 2020 to help open a bar, Ruggiano stopped tying the jeans to piers and began washing

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Xxxxxxxxxxxx

them in oyster cages thanks to Matt Herr of Grey Lady Oysters. “The owner and the chef loved his oysters so much, but he didn’t have any help,” the bartender explains.

“They asked me if I wantXxxxxxxxxxxx ed to go out and help him grow oysters during the Xxxxxxxxxxxx day. After that first day of going out and seeing the oyster cages and that whole world, I just knew that this is where the jeans needed to happen.”

Luckily for Ruggiano, not only was Herr willing to let him use the extra cages, but according to the oyster farmer’s marine biologist wife, washing the jeans also wouldn’t lead to any water pollution. “We actually learned that [salt water] sets the indigo,” Ruggiano says. “If you were to put jeans in regular freshwater, the water would turn blue, but with saltwater, [the color] just stays in there.”

Soaking the jeans in the waves has another benefit—it leaves an unique pattern on each and every pair.

“They’re in the sun and they’re getting worn by waves and rubbing against the cage…it makes these very high contrast patterns,” Ruggiano says. Depending on the wash cycle, which he marks in length by lunar phases—quarter moon (eight days), half moon (two weeks), whole moon (28 days) and double moon (56 days)—the jeans could look more distressed or range from darker to lighter hues.

The result can also depend on the time of year. Ruggiano explains, “There’s a number of factors, water temperature being one of them.

“They’re in the sun and The warmer it is, the more stuff that’s they’re getting worn by floating around in the water like tunicate waves and rubbing and barnacle and jingle shells. They’re all against the cage... spawning and attaching themselves as a it makes these very high substrate.” Other factors include sunlight, contrast patterns.” which leads to darker washes (fall and – Terry Ruggiano winter) versus the lighter fades seen in the

summer. He adds, “Typically per collection, I won’t do any more than 50 at a time.”

Thus far, Ruggiano has ventured past the traditional jean and into jackets, as well as vintage French-striped shirts made from heavy cotton. Soon, two women’s styles and additional men’s styles will debut.

They can all be found on his website, lunasaltdenim.com, along with off-island locations on Martha’s Vineyard, in Hudson, New York, and Brooklyn, New York, but those in the know can set up private fitting appointments at Nantucket’s Veronica Beard location.

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SHIRT, PANTS AND SHOES: INKERMAN

SWEATER: SARA CAMPBELL PANTS: CURRENT VINTAGE EARRINGS: GRESHAM HAIRBAND: MURRAY'S TOGGERY SHOP

DRESS AND EARRINGS: BEAU & RO SWEATER: MURRAY'S TOGGERY SHOP BRACELET: THE VAULT RINGS: SUSAN LISTER LOCKE SHOES: MODEL'S OWN

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DRESS: REMY SWEATER AND HAIRBAND: MURRAY'S TOGGERY SHOP JEWELRY: SUSAN LISTER LOCKE

SWEATER AND PANTS: MURRAY'S TOGGERY SHOP

DRESS: BEAU & RO SHAWL: SARA CAMPBELL EARRINGS: THE VAULT RINGS AND BRACELET: ICARUS & CO HAIRBAND: MURRAY'S TOGGERY SHOP BAG: CURRENT VINTAGE

CASHMERE SET: REMY HAT AND GLOVES: MURRAY'S TOGGERY SHOP ICE BUCKET AS BAG: CURRENT VINTAGE EARRINGS AND BRACELET: GRESHAM

SWEATER: CURRENT VINTAGE PANTS: MURRAY'S TOGGERY SHOP

F O G G Y

S H E E T

Judy Woodruff

Arthur Brooks

Chris Matthews

HEALING THE GREAT DIVIDE Ticket holders for this year’s tnpONE, held October 5-8, gathered at the White Elephant. Kicking off the first day was a conversation with former First Lady Michelle Obama, who was interviewed by Neil Phillips. Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Graham Lynn chatted on stage earlier that day as well.

With a schedule jam-packed with innovative films, fun music and inspirational panels, guests were given a well-rounded experience that tackled topics like race in America, the nation’s narrative, democracy, pluralism and philanthropy, and more to help bring political conversations together through bipartisanship with a hope of starting to mend the great divide that the world is experiencing now.

Joe Kennedy III Amanda Ripley

Guests at the gathering came together for the four-day event.

Andrew Card

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Rainn Wilson

Gordon Gund Pete Stavros

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATT FERREIRA AND MEGHAN BROSNAN

Kelly Corrigan

Andrew Yang

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Juan Williams

David Einhorn

Valerie Jarrett Jaycee Gossett

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S H E E T

ONE MAN’S TRASH, ANOTHER MAN’S TREASURE Late this summer, the 2023 Trashion Show took place at Cisco Virginia Gonzalaz

Brewery and was hosted by Holly Finigan and Rick Gifford. The annual event, which highlights fashion

Rachel Daily

designs made of salvaged and recycled materials, celebrated its sixth year. Local and celebrity models strutted the runway to music by DJ Lay Z Boy in outfits themed around various materials like chip bags, ferry tickets, vape pens, hotel towels, mini alcohol bottles and more.

4 Leah Mojer Emmy Lambalot

Mihaela Stefan

Nikoline Bohr Olivia Brooks 1 2 2

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Charlotte Willauer

Lindsay Feller Lisa Rance

Nicole DuPont

Aria Dasbach

PHOTOS BY BILL HOENK FOR NANTUCKET ABOUT TOWN

Rachel Afshari

Jacqueline Antico

Callie Bundy

Katie Jetter

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F O G G Y

S H E E T

Ron Shepherd, Tom Montgomery and Frank Dutra

Kate McGuire, Posie Constable, Wendy Hudson and Melanie Kotalac

The event took place at the Nantucket Yacht Club Neil Cocker’s scallop boat

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Roy Wheedon, Joe Minella, Pepper Frazier, Colin Sykes

Bruce and Kristine Beebe

Cranberry Alarm Clock

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Bernadette Meyer and Samantha Denette

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF THE NANTUCKET SHELLFISH ASSOCIATION

Bruce Lawler with Candice and Mason Heydt

HEALTHY HARBORS On October 6, the island community gathered at the Nantucket Yacht Club for the Nantucket Shellfish Association’s principal fundraiser, the Scallopers Ball.

Throughout the evening, six raw bar boats served fresh Nantucket oysters and quahogs, which were harvested from the waters the association works to protect and a fishery that it works to preserve. Neil Cocker’s scallop boat was also at the event to honor the memory of the island’s dedicated fisherman who passed away this summer.

Peter Engen with Kelley and Claudia Noonan

David and Rachael Buckley

Charity Grace Mofsen and Shantaw Bloise-Murphy

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S H E E T

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION! Host John Shea, NSF Audience Award Winner Penny Dey

The Nantucket Shorts Festival returned to the big screen on October 8, during which the sold-out event broke a record with 20 submissions. After audiences watched all 20 films, they voted for several awards, including best film (Lost in Nevers Land by Penny Dey), best new filmmaker (Contemplating by Vivian Crosby) and more. This winter, the Dreamland will show all the films for the rest of the island and visitors to enjoy.

Maria Partida, Jose de Jesus Reyes-Partida, Corey Partida and others

John Shea interviews The Lollipop Cowboy creators with Mark Carapezza

Lisa Getter

Charlie and Jo Kymer

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Mark Kiefer and Jack Bulger

Jackie Vagnone and John Copenhaver

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHARITY GRACE MOFSEN AND CHARLES DOUGLAS

Bonnie Roseman, Suellen Ward, Maria Partida and Jose Reyes Partida with Nancy and Jay Nichols

Wendi Murrell, Virna Gonzalez and Anna Popnikolova

Max Daniello and Mark Kiefer

Veilleux family

Charles Douglas

Maria Partida, Jose de Jesus Reyes-Partida, Oscar Waldman, Max Daniello, Mark Kiefer, Lizza Obremski, John Shea, Vivian Crosby

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BOOMTOWN IMAGES COURTESY OF NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION’S ARCHIVES

A look back into the lives of Nantucket’s sailors.

Reed Whitney up the mast of the brig Yankee, under sail, circa 1959 N - M A G A Z I N E . C O M

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Three members of the crew on a spar above the deck of the brig Yankee, September 1959

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Three crew members of the Nantucket I

Sailors singing “In the Gloaming,” one with a guitar, one with pillows tied all around his body, aboard the yacht Yampa in the 1890s

Crew member of the Nantucket I, 1900s

Captain or other officer aboard the yacht Yampa with life preserver framing face, circa 1897. Yampa cruised from New York, by Nantucket, to Nova Scotia.

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Portrait of Billy Bowen, 1890s

Sailor Willard D. Coffin in his U.S. Navy uniform

A group of sailors, captains and seadogs, posing for a photograph at Adams Slip, with catboats in the background, including the Mildred, 1890s

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Billy Bowen with young blonde boy at “Sea Shell” Studio, Wyer’s Art Store, Nantucket

Crew member and officer of the Nantucket I, 1900s

Sailors manning a cataract pumper, most likely for aFourth of July demonstration.

Caption on back reads: Firemen’s muster with cataract pumper. 1958 circa

Tommy Gibbs on porch of Harbor House, 1940s

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featured wedding

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Bride: Brittany S. Mayer • Groom: Peter A. Talieri • Church: The Siasconset Chapel • Officiant: Reverend J. Carr Holland III • Venue: The Wauwinet Wedding Planner & Flowers: Greenwood Events • Photographer: Liz Banfield • Videographer: Siegel Films • Caterer: The Wauwinet Cake: Rebecca Moesinger (45 Surfside) • Invitations & Paper: Li Ward • Tent: Nantucket Tents • Bridal Hair: Jodi Lawrence (Darya Salon) Bridal Makeup: Amy Barrera (Darya Salon) • Bride’s Dress: Carolina Herrera • Bride’s Second Dress: Naeem Khan • Groom’s Custom Suit: 9Tailors Nantucket Baskets: Tim Parsons • Nantucket Bracelets: Caitlin Parsons • Veuve Clicquot “Nantucket” Bottles: Zoe Markham Bride & Groom Parent Gift: G.S. Hill • Pet Conceirge: Dandy Dog • Band: Yacht Rock Revue

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not so fast

Seeing the World Through a Different Lens INTERVIEW BY ANTONIA DEPACE PHOTOGRAPHY BY ZOFIA CROSBY

ISLANDER VIVIAN CROSBY WINS BEST NEW FILMMAKER AT THE 2023 NANTUCKET SHORTS FESTIVAL. Children often have an unvarnished view of the world that yields questions that are often deeper and more profound than those that come from adults. It’s this curiosity that inspired 11-year-old islander Vivian Crosby in her short film Contemplating. “My little sister loves asking thoughtful questions about things around her,” Crosby explains. During the six-minute film, which was filmed on the island, Crosby follows her sister around, reflecting on the questions she might ask, using the written word rather than dialogue. The work recently led her to win Best New Filmmaker at the Nantucket Shorts Festival. Here, N Magazine chats with the young filmmaker about her budding career, what’s next and her goals.

You recently won the Best New Filmmaker award at the Nantucket Shorts Festival.

What does the award mean to you and your future career?

I have always really been in love with filming and editing, so this means a lot to me. [Winning the award shows] me that professional video editing and filmmaking could actually take part in my future [and tells] me I should continue.

How did you get into filmmaking?

Both of my parents are photographers, so I’ve always been around editing and that type of art form. I have seen videos on YouTube that I have found interesting and a challenge to recreate; I started by editing characters’ dances on a video game. I still am doing that for my own entertainment and practice. Also, in first grade, I did a stop motion project during COVID-19 that was based off of Marcel the Shell. I made my own little shell out of Barbie shoes and buttons.

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What do you hope to accomplish?

What impact do you hope to make?

I hope to make filmmaking a career, and hopefully take a class or go to college for it.

I hope to encourage other young filmmakers that are scared they won’t succeed due to their age.

Now that you’ve completed this film, what plans do you have for the future in terms of filmmaking?

What does Nantucket mean to you?

I have a plan to enter the film festival again next year to get my films seen by the community. And make my already existing YouTube channel more popular and known.

Who do you look up to in the industry and why?

There is one small YouTuber that I look up to. She is a young creator, and she does have 300 more subscribers than me and is a bit older than me. She makes the same edit form that I do, we like the same games, and we go back and forth commenting on each other’s posts— hyping each other up and giving each other support.

Nantucket is a cozy place and a wonderful place to visit and a nice escape from highways, flashing lights, etc. I was born on Nantucket. It has always been home to me and my family and is just a big happy island.

The beaches, people, restaurants, history, schools and events really make Nantucket, Nantucket.

See Contemplating, November 30 at 7 p. m. at the Dreamland.

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Charming and frugal or lavish and elegant, the newly reimagined Whitehall is your Coastal Maine setting for modern, BRIDE AND GROUP PHOTOS BY LEAH FISHER PHOTOGRAPHY

outside-of-the-box events. Plan your intimate wedding ceremony, reception or rehearsal dinner—or ask about booking the entire inn, and enjoy the best of Midcoast Maine all weekend long. whitehallmaine.com 207-236-3391 52 Main Street, Camden, Maine

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N A N T U C K E

20th ANNIVERSARY

EDITIO

2017

Over the past 20+ years, N Magazine has established itself as Nantucket’s leading luxury lifestyle publication and the most powerful advertising vehicle on the island.

Renowned for its compelling content, stunning photography and premium production, each issue is hotly anticipated and becomes a permanent collectible in homes around Nantucket and beyond. Accordingly, N Magazine provides businesses with residual exposure unlike any magazine or newspaper of its kind.

To learn more about the many advertising opportunities available with N Magazine, contact Emme Duncan, Director of Advertising and Partnerships Partnerships, at emmeduncan@n-magazine.com.

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