Nantucket Today Spring 2024

Dylan Wallace and Caroline Borrelli, with their daughter Rosemary. A new generation of small farmers finds a home on Nantucket.

BY KEVIN STANTON

We all stopped what we were doing at 3 p.m. the first week of April and found ways to watch the solar eclipse. The afternoon got a little chillier, the shadows lengthened and we took turns looking up through those glasses that resembled 3-D movie glasses as the moon ate away at the sun until it was a thin crescent. It was an event.

Except the very next day, late in the afternoon, there was a sunset over Madaket that made me pull my car over to watch the sky offer up its colors. I was struck with the sense that this sunset was not something to look forward to every 20 years, but something to look forward to on any random Tuesday.

Nature, especially on this island, is like that. It sneaks up on you. And when it does, even somebody like myself who is more at home watching the Red Sox at The Chicken Box is brought up short for a moment.

The return of the peepers, those tiny frogs that seem to exist only in their communal voice, and the opening of Hummock and Sesachacha ponds to the sea, are the island version of opening day of the baseball season. Spring might come late, but when it does arrive it reminds you how much we need it.

Cam Gammill writes this month about the return of spring, the peepers, the pond openings and the anticipation of pulling a striper or bluefish out of the surf.

Ginger Andrews reminds us of the return of another symbol of island spring, the osprey. Her late mother Edith, known to generations of islanders as the bird lady, loved the big birds.

Take a walk down Easton Street, past the U.S. Coast Guard station to Brant Point Light, and you are walking on borrowed time. Islanders have been trying to shape nature in that area since just after the Civil War. If climate-driven

sea-level rise turns out to be as bad as some scientists predict, decisions will have to be made in that area in a few decades.

Mary Bergman walks us across the history of the reclaimed swamp land that is Brant Point.

The creative life is not always defined by the artist, or by the band members. Musicians at a certain level of success need somebody to help things run smoothly. That person you see standing in the green room on their cell phone, confirming the details of tomorrow’s gig, are important to a band on the rise.

Islander Kerry Fee is that woman. Kevin Stanton tells her story about life on the road with the band.

One afternoon at The Chicken Box the Red Sox are losing to the Baltimore Orioles. It doesn’t really matter. It is only April. Outside in the sunlight Mother Nature is ramping up. Two guys at the bar are talking about fishing. Waiting for the spring somehow defines this place more than those crazy days of summer. Enjoy.

John Stanton Editor

PHOTO

PHOTO BY SCOTT THOMAS Meteora, Greece. Amazing Orthodox monasteries set atop pillars of rock just north of Athens. The monasteries, which are still occupied, were placed here for solitude and defense and built to be closer to heaven.

Steven Rowley

Nancy Thayer Casey Sherman Safiya Sinclair Tara Karr Roberts

Jim Patrick Ben Mezrick Lara Love Hardin

Katherine Howe Bill Janovitz Erik Larson Paul Harding

Rob Benchley Gabriella Burnham Kwame Alexander Sara DiVello Adrienne Brodeur Bianca Bosker Christy Cashman

CONTRIBUTORS

Understanding Nantucket requires being part of year-round life here. We are happy to introduce some of the people who showed you our island.

Mary Bergman

is a writer and historian, originally from Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod. Currently, she serves as the executive director of the Nantucket Preservation Trust. Mary’s preservation and writing work is dedicated to documenting the unique ways of life of people living by the sea.

Cam Gammill

has been chasing bluefish since he was a little boy. He is the co-owner of Bill Fisher Tackle and co-owner of Fisher Real Estate. He also fishes with Bill Fisher Outfitters, owned by his twin brother Corey.

Kevin Stanton

was born and raised on-island. He writes our Eat/Drink column, as well as profiles on everybody from a well known fish cutter to a collector of Chinese art. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art.

Great Sea Monster Hoax

BY JOHN STANTON | PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Tony Sarg standing in front of his sea monster balloon, 1937. (Facing page) Sarg is known as the father of modern puppetry.

The first story went out to unsuspecting readers Aug. 7, 1937. It was known to most of his friends and neighbors that Bill Manville spent a great deal of his time fishing. So, when a story ran in The Inquirer and Mirror that he had seen what appeared to be a sea monster about two miles offshore, his name lent the story some gravitas.

“When Manville came into this office with his tale Wednesday afternoon his eyes were fairly bulging out of their sockets,” wrote the newspaper on the front page.

He described it as “a great big creature, with a terrible looking head, which it seemed to raise 15 or 20 feet out of the water for a moment and then disappear.”

Talk went around town that whatever it was, this sea monster was frightening off the bluefish.

The next week another article on the front page added to the story. Ed Crocker, a local businessman and avid angler, claimed that he had seen the sea monster, but had waited until Manville told his story to come forward because he thought people might think he had gone off his rocker.

“It was some sort of sea monster and make no mistake, about a hundred feet long, sort of greenish on top, with a head as big as a scallop shanty, and it had horns, and humpy fins along the back, and a long tail,” he said.

He insisted that while on a walk with Manville they had come across “several huge indentations in the sand, of a web-footed creature.”

He said the tracks resembled those of a giant duck and were approximately 66 inches long by 45 inches wide. A photographer from the newspaper went out to take photos of the sea monster tracks.

The newspaper said it was contacting game wardens across all of New England to ask if any of them had ever seen anything like those tracks.

A week later the jig was up. Tony Sarg put out word that he had captured the sea monster.

There it was on the sand, a rubber sea monster balloon trucked all the way from Akron, Ohio, filled with air at Coatue and floated across to the beach.

People came down to see it. Amused. Thrilled. Nodding to each other that it was just like Tony Sarg to do something like this.

He is known as the father of modern puppetry – a German immigrant, the son of German diplomats, who legend had it arrived in America carrying his grandmother’s puppet collection. He was very well known in New York.

He was a self-taught illustrator, who also designed books. He created silent animations. He was known as a man of endless creativity.

He created puppet-themed window displays for Macy’s department store.

When the company had an idea about putting on a big parade on Thanksgiving Day and asked him to create something special, he built the prototypes of the huge balloons we know today. He saw them as upside-down marionettes.

And he loved to vacation on Nantucket.

According to the Nantucket Historical Association, he began vacationing here in the 1920s and bought a home on North Liberty Street. He owned and operated a curiosity shop, called The Green Umbrella, first on Centre Street and then on the corner of Easy Street and Steamboat Wharf.

He would bring his puppet troupe to the island and put on shows to raise money for the hospital. He was part of this publicity stunt from the beginning.

That was what the sea monster was, a publicity stunt aimed at getting the name Nantucket out to people who had never heard of this place before.

And the involvement of the newspaper?

Why did the legendary Harry Turner, editor and publisher from 1907-1948, allow his newspaper to be used to spread fake news? Today, perpetuating a hoax on the front page of his newspaper would mean the end of his career.

Back then? Several mainland newspapers, as well as the famous Pathé newsreel company, went along with the scheme. Those involved saw it as a publicity stunt.

“To this date nobody has reported suffering from the results of this publicity stunt. Prominent and conservative residents of the island have endorsed the scheme,” said the newspaper.

It estimated that through newspapers, radio and newsreels, almost one million people read, heard or saw the name Nantucket.

A few months later, the sea monster took its rightful place on Fifth Avenue, New York City, as one of the balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. ///

John Stanton is a writer, documentary filmmaker, associate editor of The Inquirer and Mirror and editor of Nantucket Today.

Gilbert Manter (left) and Ed Crocker (right) measuring a sea monster footprint. They were part of the hoax.

Tony Sarg was involved designing and making floats for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from the very beginning of that annual tradition. His sea monster balloon follows a horse-drawn float Carrying Santa in the 1937 parade.

While You Were Gone

BY KAIE QUIGLEY

This is our first issue of the season. Life on our small island is a never-ending story. Here are some of those stories you might have missed since our last issue of Nantucket Today.

Whalers beat the Vineyard at TD Garden

Nantucket High School’s boys basketball team beat their cross-island rivals, Martha’s Vineyard, on the legendary hardwood floor, under 17 championship banners, at the home of the Boston Celtics, in mid-January.

The Whalers pulled out a 67-58 win over the Grapes in a charity tournament game at TD Garden. Players and coaches were thrilled to play in the famed Boston arena. Many of them had only ever seen it on TV.

“It’s nothing like I’ve ever experienced before,” senior Jaquan Francis said.

There were more scallops harvested, but the economy of the fishery was a problem

Fishermen hauled in about 8,700 bushels of adult scallops this season, up 1,500 bushels from last year. Millions of juvenile scallops, called spat, were left behind in the harbor, giving hope that the fishery is recovering after being decimated over the last 20 years.

The other part of the equation for fishermen is the ups and downs of the demand for bay scallops. Part of that demand hinges on the idea that mainland chefs and wholesalers do not like to work with the uncertainty of low harvests over the years.

Less demand leads to lower payouts to fishermen for their catch, forcing many of them to pull their boats from the harbor before season’s end to avoid damage to their bottom line.

It is still nearly impossible to find a place to live

Nantucket’s housing crisis continues to reach new heights, much like the average price of a home on the island. The average home price hovers around $4.2 million, which puts it out of reach for almost every year-round resident hoping to build a life here.

The town has allocated nearly $100 million to date to fund affordable housing projects. Over the next few years, it will continue to work to meet state affordability requirements, but housing advocates think more needs to be done.

Nonprofits have their eyes set on creating a tiered housing market that would open up more affordable and attainable homes for yearround islanders. The idea would largely rely on the passing of Gov. Maura Healey’s $4 billion housing bond bill that includes a real-estate transfer fee, which would generate millions of dollars annually that could be bonded against and earmarked for housing initiatives.

Main Street to Lose Another Small Town Icon

Two generations of long-time drug store employees tipped their hats to each other at Nantucket Pharmacy early this spring. Joanne Skokan retired after almost 20 years of helping customers from behind the counter of the iconic downtown pharmacy. On Skokan’s last day of work, Eleanor Ferreira, her predecessor and a resident of Our Island Home, stopped by, dressed in Nantucket Pharmacy garb, to say job well done to Skokan.

It signified the end of an era. After this summer, the pharmacy is likely to be sold by owner and pharmacist Allan Bell, as he and the staff enter retirement. It is unclear what will come of the location in the future.

The contentious debate over short-term rentals continued

The debate over how and if the town should regulate shortterm vacation rentals is a political show that never seems to end. The latest news is that a state land court judge, in March, ruled that short-term rentals cannot be the primary use for a home in a residentially-zoned area. No word so far on how exactly to parse primary and secondary uses.

By the time you read this, it might all be a moot point. Once again the collective wisdom of Town Meeting will consider proposals aimed at regulating short-term rentals, including one that calls for simply changing the zoning regulations to allow them islandwide.

STORY

PHOTOS BY JOHN STANTON

Mike Pierce met Stephen “Spanky” Kania at the bar of the Ships Inn. This was decades ago, when he was working as a carpenter and the bar was a place to go at the end of the week, to meet up with the boss and get paid.

“I

’d stay at the bar after we got paid, with Spanky and Peter Eldridge and Tris Coffin. We got to talking about quahogs. I had done some commercial quahoging on the Cape once. So we all went out and tried it and we liked it, and we liked each other, and dug a lot of quahogs, Pierce”

“Most of the people I worked with, I have been friends with. If I don’t like people I work with, I just won’t work with them. That’s just what it is. Spanky was a great guy.”

Kania was also the impresario of raw bars on Nantucket and in an atlas-worth of other places, where wealthy clients would fly him in to run the raw bar at weddings and birthdays and just plain parties. He died in the fall of 2020. He was 69 years old.

Pierce worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Kania for more than 30 years.

“If you want to work with the king you gotta bring your game up,” he said.

“One Easter Sunday somebody flew us down to Vero Beach, Fla., this was 20 some-odd years ago. One of the guys that hired us, I just did his daughter’s wedding last month back in Vero Beach,” he said.

One day the raw bar boat they used finally wore out. Pierce thought he could build one himself.

He was right. The woodworking skills he had honed working on renovations, the hours he had hung around boat yards, paid off.

“I laid it out on this bench, drew it up, built it, and here I am,” he said. “The key is to make them so they look really good and so they last.”

You have seen them before, at parties that have a raw bar, which are the best kind of parties, holding crushed ice covered with oysters and cherrystones on the half shell. They are called raw bar boats.

The big ones are 76 inches long and the small ones are 56 inches long, the stern and the transom made of mahogany, the body cedar

You have seen them before, at parties that have a raw bar, which are the best kind of parties, holding crushed ice covered with oysters and cherrystones on the half shell.

planking. The plank-on-frame construction is the same as a boat you might sail. They will, in fact, float.

“Spanky and I had a raw bar in Pennsylvania for somebody,” Pierce said. “In the morning we couldn’t find the boat and there it was in the pool. Seems like they had a very late night at that wedding.”

Pierce thought about making flower boxes, but the raw bar boats began to take up all his time. Last year he built 18 of them. He used to simply load them into the back of a pickup truck and drive them from Maine to Florida. But these days he ships them, although he winces at the cost of shipping.

And like the design of a good sailboat, they are form and function melded into one beautiful object. The shape of classic boats is the result of centuries of engineering decisions based on what makes them go through the water best and fastest. These raw bar boats are designed to make the best use of the least amount of ice, to be light enough to carry, and to drain well once the party’s over.

There is an insert that slides over most of the hull, creating a space where you need only use one small cooler of ice to cover it. You don’t fill the whole boat up. It all drains around the edges into the bottom and there is a drain plug in the back.

It weighs 50 pounds with the insert. You can pick it up and walk with it. Store it. There are stands that go with it.

“In the beginning I built two for Spanky and one for me and we used them for years. The first one I built was bought by the Wauwinet,” Pierce said.

He is not the only one building the little raw bar boats. Warren Pease calls his decorative skiffs.

And here is the thing with these beautiful but utilitarian creations: If you do not like oysters you can use the little raw bar boats for coffee tables, or pull out the insert and fill the whole thing up with ice and beer.

Asked whether this is what you might call a retirement job, Peirce, who is 78, laughs.

“I can’t retire,” he said. “I have too much fun.” ///

John Stanton is a writer, documentary filmmaker, associate editor of The Inquirer and Mirror and editor of Nantucket Today.

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Growing Farmers

BY JOHN STANTON | PHOTOS BY ROB BENCHLEY

Dan Southey (left) at his Washashore Farm off Hummock Pond Road. Farm manager Nick Allam (right) and Dan Lemaitre spread a protective tarp over young carrot plants under one of five greenhouses at the farm.

Today the level of quality in the produce you can buy from these new farmers goes well beyond any ideas you might have of buying something at the farm stand as a show of support for the idea.

The locally-grown vegetables are just that good.

Posie Constable, managing director of Sustainable Nantucket, said that people have complained that the prices are a bit higher than in the grocery store. But the true value of eating, say, a carrot grown locally goes beyond the taste, which is a completely different taste from the one you might have bought at the Stop & Shop.

The idea behind Sustainable Nantucket’s Community Farm Institute was to provide small plots of land and teach people who wanted to try their hand at being farmers how to grow not only produce, but a business.

She said the idea behind growing new farmers is to create a circular economy where people who have a passion for growing are enabled to do more of it and do it better on this island for the betterment of everybody.

Nantucket has a long history of small farms. The Nantucket Agricultural Society was first formed in 1856 and by the time the Oak, the last Nantucket whaling ship sailed away from this port, there were approximately 100 small farms.

Today there are two large, commercial farms: Bartlett’s Ocean View Farm, owned and operated by generations of the descendants of William Bartlett; and Moors End Farm, owned and operated by the Slosek family since 1975.

But this is a story about growing new farmers. In 2015, Michelle Whelan, then executive director of Sustainable Nantucket, spearheaded the idea of the Walter F. Ballinger Mentor Farm Program. Along with a tiny slice of the land on Hummock Pond Road, Sustainable provided workshops, classes and mentorship. Young farmers were required to put together a business plan.

“All of this got underway and it was miraculous that it all came together in the scope of about six months,” Constable said. “The idea was to use the ideas of Elliot

Natasha

and Aidan Feeney with their son Arlo at Fog Town Farm.

Coleman (author, researcher and advocate of organic and small-bed farming) to use three-foot beds and do dense propagation in a very small space.”

Dylan Wallace, who now farms as Eat Fire Farm, got his start there, as did Dan Southey, who now farms under Washashore Farm. Aidan Feeney, who farms under the name Fog Town Farm, grew up on Nantucket and got involved in the program, farming on his eighth of an acre of land, after having worked as a professional farmer in upstate New York and Long Island.

Along with Tom and Nick Larrabee, a father and son carrying on family tradition as My Grandfather’s Farm, they represent a new generation of island farmers. Tom and Nick did not come up through the Mentor Farm Program. They had a more personal mentor, the late Tom Larrabee Sr., who ran Milestone Cranberry Bog, where both his son and grandson first learned to cultivate the soil.

“They farm on land sold to the Land Bank and leased back with an agricultural easement,” Constable said. “I am very excited about their plans, which include pickyour-own blueberries, vegetables, flowers and chickens for eggs. I think they will be making their own farmstand.”

Sustainable Nantucket’s role to provide resources for farmers reaches beyond the ones who were part of its farm program, she said. She also said the Nantucket Land Bank has been an important partner in growing new farmers.

“We help farmers with websites. We make podcasts on farming. We are trying to increase the profile of farmers on this island, so that both locals and visitors understand how important locally-grown food is to our community,” she said.

Sustainable Nantucket’s efforts go beyond people who have made a living out of farming. Three years ago, with a grant from the Community Foundation for Nantucket, it

Tom  Larrabee Jr. and his son Nick at the family farm on Hummock Pond Road. The Quonset hut behind them, originally built by the U.S. Navy, was moved from the airport in the 1960s.

began a project that delivers grow boxes: plastic tubs fitted with a water basin and planted with things like tomatoes or basil, or green beans.

The terms of the grant say that 80 percent of the people who are given the grow boxes must be earning only 50 percent or less of the island’s median income. The grow boxes are picked up at the end of the season, refilled and returned.

They also have recently obtained 13 chicken coops, which are compact, plastic, easy to clean and easily moved around a back yard, and provide fresh eggs.

“Our idea is to help people become homesteaders and grow a little of their own food to save money and for the joy of doing it,” Constable said.

The growing of farmers, like the cultivating of a seed you want to grow into something to sell and build your life around, is a constant challenge.

Constable said that Sustainable Nantucket is following

the lead of the Martha’s Vineyard Island Grown Initiative and the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society, and working to set up a mobile chicken processing plant. The idea is to give farmers the ability to grow chickens for meat, by providing a place for them to be slaughtered.

“We are ready to go. We had the Worcester Polytechnic Institute survey farmers who might want to grow chickens for meat. We have all the equipment. We are just seeking a place to do it. We just want to be able to raise and provide some actual protein through chickens and maybe turkeys,” she said. ///

John Stanton is a writer, documentary filmmaker, associate editor of The Inquirer and Mirror and editor of Nantucket Today.

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Brant Point, Sea-Level Rise and the Shifting Sands of History

BY MARY BERGMAN | PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

The Brant Point neighborhood is one of Nantucket’s most desirable real estate locations. But the threat of sea-level rise is part of life there.

Views of Coatue from Brant Point and the harbor have long attracted those looking for an idyllic summer retreat. It has been this way since the late 1880s.

But with the dangers of climate-driven sea-level rise on the horizon, it is wise to remember that the area around Easton Street and Hulbert Avenue is a former wetland, filled in with sand, and historically vulnerable.

Brant Point homeowners who want to protect their investment are finding there is nowhere to go but up. Dozens of homes along Easton Street and Hulbert Avenue have been raised high above base flood elevation in the last five years. But in the end, sea-level rise mitigation might mean retreat, the moving of houses to a safer location or simply the removal of houses.

Projections included in the Town of Nantucket’s coastal resilience plan paint a dire picture, anticipating 7.2 feet of sea-level rise by 2070. To envision how the Brant Point area may change, it helps to understand its past. This is a landscape Nantucketers have been trying to control for more than 270 years.

Dealing with the shifting sands of the Brant Point peninsula was on the mind of Town Meeting voters in 1747 when they voted to fence the beach near Brant Point “to preserve the harbor.”

Two island men, Mathew Jenkins and Nathan Coffin, were appointed to manage the fence. Eleven years later, Town Meeting voted to erect a lighthouse on Brant Point, the second oldest in the United States.

There is a stereograph image taken from the tower of the Unitarian Church on Orange Street in the 1800s that shows Brant Point Lighthouse as a lone structure amid a rolling dune field, a large saltmarsh to the west. The area was, as Herman Melville famously wrote of Nantucket, “all beach without a background.”

“It would be like taking the Creeks and Goose Pond and filling them with sand and building houses on it today,” said Jennifer Karberg, Ph.D., director of research and partnerships at the Nantucket Conservation Foundation.

Karberg can look at Easton Street and figure out where the marsh once flowed into the harbor. She conjures the landscape as it once was, with wild cranberry bog swales and rolling dunes. This is the scene artist

The Town of Nantucket’s coastal resilience plan paints a dire picture, anticipating 7.2 feet of sea-level rise by 2070.

“When Nantucket’s downtown was built, we thought we could control nature,” Karberg said.

Nantucketers were not alone in this thinking. Most major cities like New York, Boston and Chicago are built on filled wetlands. Like Nantucket, these cities were centers of commerce and relied on waterways for shipping.

“We designed the landscape for what we needed it to be,” Karberg said.

After the collapse of the whaling industry in the 1840s, the island fell into an economic depression. But by the 1870s, Nantucket was re-discovered as a summer retreat for those looking to escape the industrial age.

Brant Point, within walking distance of downtown amenities and north shore swimming beaches, was an enticing place to build new houses. But first, water and sewer pipes had to be laid from Cliff Road, con-

necting the new building lots to Wannacomet Water. A few years later, in 1889, construction began on the twin jetties that keep the Nantucket Harbor channel open.

Edwin Hulbert’s Queen Anne-style mansion “Sandanwede” at what’s now 73 Hulbert Ave. was among the first on Brant Point, constructed in 1881, as soon as the sewer went in. This set off a building boom along Brant Point, as one letter-writer to The Inquirer and Mirror wrote, “It needs no prophet . . . to foretell all that is in store for our sea-girt island. Already the cultured stranger is looking this way from his home far inland; even now laying his plans for a visit to Nantucket in the coming summer.”

There was just one problem. There was no way to get to these new house lots except walking the long way over the sand, along boardwalks from the area near what’s now Jetties Beach.

There was no Easton Street, only a series of marshes. An 1883 Special Town Meeting was held to con-

Eastman Johnson captured in his 1880 painting “The Cranberry Harvest.”

sider the application of property owners for building a carriage road to Brant Point, but the meeting voted down the article, declaring the road inexpedient to build.

Still, building continued along Brant Point, none more impressive than the construction of the Nantucket Hotel, not to be confused with the modern-day hotel at 77 Easton St. With such a large tourist hotel underway, a road was needed to get travelers from town across the marsh. Construction on a bulkhead for the road to Brant Point began in May 1884. This road would become Easton Street.

Easton Street cut off the water flow from the marsh to the harbor, but as Karberg explained, all the wetland soils were still there. Wetland soil compresses under pressure, and areas that have been filled in will still compact and always be at a lower elevation than surrounding upland. Wetland soil doesn’t drain as quickly as sand and holds water longer.

Now that the marsh was cut off, it wasn’t long before reports of flooding on Brant Point started showing up in The Inquirer and Mirror

“Brant Point was flooded and was passable to pedestrians only as far down as the corner of Easton and Beach streets, the street below being completely submerged,” an October 1896 edition of the paper

reports.

Where did the sand that filled the Brant Point wetlands come from? Other areas on the island where excavation work was going on to build roads, houses, and even cemeteries. Hundreds of loads of sand were removed from the North Cemetery to create roadways, and much of that sand ended up on Brant Point.

When the foundation for the Orange Street School – now demolished, and located where 42 Orange St. is today – was excavated, the sand removed was “of excellent quality” and carted to the property of H.G. Worth on Brant Point. Other sand was dredged from the harbor and filled in behind the Brant Point bulkhead in the mid-1910s.

Flooding along Brant Point continued throughout the next hundred years. During the blizzard of March 16, 1956, the Nantucket Police Department and Coast Guard were criticized roundly by a few year-rounders on Brant Point who were not given enough time to evacuate their homes during a storm.

The biggest storm in recent memory, the Perfect Storm of October 1991, ravaged bulkheads along Hulbert Avenue.

“Try as you may, you can’t beat Mother Nature,”

Conservation Commission member Peter Dunwiddie said at the time. Three-hundred-forty wiring permits and 21 building permits were issued in the months that followed, to repair damage caused by the storm to downtown and Brant Point properties.

During a winter storm in 2018, the road to Coast Guard Station Brant Point was so deep with water that one of the boats had to go back and forth to the town pier to pick up personnel.

“We cannot stop the water,” Karberg said. “The things we can change are policies.”

In November 2021, the town hired a coastal engineering group called Arcadis to complete a coastal resilience plan (CRP). The almost 300-page report identifies threats to at-risk areas of the island and provides recommendations to mitigate those risks.

The Brant Point peninsula is identified in Nantucket’s coastal resilience plan as a “highly physically vulnerable” residential neighborhood of single-family homes and the United States Coast Guard facility.

Strategies for the Brant Point area proposed by the CRP include elevating Easton Street and Hulbert Avenue above mean high water through 2070, assuming 7.2 feet of sea-level rise.

“Strategic acquisition of priority properties is recommended to reduce density over time. Reducing density is a long-term process that will take time and require additional community outreach and engagement,” the plan reads.

The CRP does not explain how reducing density –which is to say, moving or removing homes – will work.

With more than half the island as protected conserva-

“We cannot stop the water. The things we can change are policies.”

- Jennifer Karberg, Ph.D.

tion land, where is there to retreat to?

Karberg characterized Brant Point as more than just a collection of individual homes, but also a shelter for the harbor from ocean waves and a key to the structure of the harbor.

“Finding a way to protect the Brant Point peninsula is important and should be a focus” she said. The CRP recommends “erosion management, including continued nourishment, dune building and planting,” to maintain the peninsula.

Just as homeowners once filled their corners of Brant Point to create buildable cottage lots, property owners today are tackling climate change adaptation solutions piecemeal. They are also facing hard decisions about the future of their properties.

“The state’s rules have not caught up with the reality

of sea-level rise,” Select Board member Matt Fee said. “There are requirements that we have to provide services and roads. How do you provide a road when the sea has taken a road?”

Brant Point has already lost one road. When the area (then called Beachside) was plotted out by developers in the 1880s, houses facing the water fronted onto Bay Avenue. Hulbert Avenue was the “back yard” with garages facing out onto it. By 1914, the twin jetties were completed, but Bay Avenue had washed away. ///

Mary Bergman is executive director of the Nantucket Preservation Trust. She writes regularly for Nantucket Today.

SCONSET · 17 BURNELL STREET · $6,595,000 Private setting with an expansive yard, pool, and one-car garage. SCONSET

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Two adjacent lots comprising half an acre with expansion opportunity.

CLIFF · 12 DERRYMORE ROAD · $3,299,000

Oversized lot in a great location with HDC-approved plans.

WEST OF TOWN · 5 MAXEY POND ROAD · $6,895,000

A private retreat located moments from Nantucket’s best attractions. This stunning estate offers the best of both worlds, with proximity to Town and seclusion and access to some of the island’s most beloved conservation lands. This spacious home features four bedrooms, a beautiful custom kitchen, a two-car garage, and a 12’ by 50’ swimming pool with a large pool cabana.

On the Road

BY KEVIN STANTON PHOTOS COURTESY OF KERRY FEE

Kerry

Fee

knows where to get a good cup of coffee just about anywhere.

Coffee served under a tent at open-air music festivals, at diners down the street from any number of venues in any number of towns and cities. Coffee served in European cafés, around the corner from where the band is playing.

It’s one of those crucial things you need to know when you are on the road with a band.

“You want to know a coffee shop in the middle of Iowa, I’ve got you. Because, sadly, sometimes I’ve gone there,” Fee said with a laugh.

For the last three years she has been the tour manager for bluegrass virtuoso Sierra Hull. She is also assistant tour manager for the funk musician Cory Wong. Last year alone the two bands combined toured 35 states and 11 countries.

When I asked her if she remembers her first concert experience she laughed, recalling a Rafi concert she went to as a child at Tanglewood. But the one she was most proud of, her real first concert experience, was seeing The Spice Girls.

Fee has always gravitated toward the arts and performance. But more importantly she has always been excited

with the Band

Daily operations could mean anything from hiring house cleaners to a private detective, arranging transportation to the Grammys, proofing recordings or setting up photo shoots.

to be in the know. She played music as a girl and studied at Berklee School of Music, but she never really saw herself being a performer.

The real question she has been chasing is how to find a way to incorporate that feeling of being at her first concert into her professional life. Although she admits that going to Berklee probably wasn’t the best decision for her, the lesson she took away from the school was that there can be a connectivity between people with varying interests in the music industry. Whether it’s with producers, players or people on the business side of music.

“To be in that space while everyone is trying to figure it out, I think was productive. In hindsight I would have gone two years at Berklee and then gone to business school,” she said.

After graduating in 2011, she moved to Los Angeles and landed a job with a music management company under the Live Nation umbrella, called Career Artist Management.

Like most things along the way, she ended up there haphazardly, working on its day-to-day team. The job gave her the chance to work with singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, Bare Naked Ladies and Robin Thicke, to name a few.

What day-to-day management means, she explained, is managing the daily operations for your client book. That could mean anything from hiring house cleaners to a private detective, arranging transportation to the Grammys, proofing recordings or setting up photo shoots.

Put simply, the artist needs to make the art, management is for everything else. After three years she realized one very important thing. She hated working at a desk.

Fee left L.A., came back to Nantucket and tended bar for a summer. She sees parallels between bartending and

being a tour manager. The idea of controlling a scenario which for the most part is uncontrollable appealed to her.

Finding ways to communicate within a team setting, all while balancing personalities and the inner workings of a band, has moments in common with serving guests at a bar. She calls bartending one of those transferable skills.

After a season on-island, flush with restaurant money, she went looking for that next place to connect with like-minded creatives in the music industry. Her next stop was Nashville.

“In thinking about a market to center myself in, I knew some people there from college, so I ended up moving there. It was still very up and coming at the time,” she said.

As luck would have it, that’s where she would connect with bluegrass musician Sierra Hull. The two had gone to Berklee at the same time but didn’t actually know each other. Hull was about to start a tour for a new album and was looking for someone to join her team.

“That was the first road gig that came my way. I went out on a tour with her for a record that was produced by Béla Fleck and nominated for a Grammy. We went everywhere except the West Coast,” she said.

Fee didn’t get to go to the Grammys.

“I did help select her outfit, though,” she said with a laugh.

When she wasn’t on tour, she was working with a restaurant hospitality group. When you are in the gig economy it’s important to have multiple irons in the fire. Fee decided to start her own travel consulting business on the side, Fee & Co.

“People always ask me how travel and entertainment and food and beverage tie into one umbrella. It’s essentially the same process. You are just working with different experts. Everything I do in those three fields comes from the same place. This is how I operate in those spaces: having the network to reach out and build a team around a certain project,” Fee said.

She was on a hiatus from touring, focusing on her new venture, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The three fields she was working in all but shut down completely.

“So many places folded. From music venues to management companies to agencies. What happened during COVID turned everything on its head,” she said. “I think a lot of people were wondering where they were at financially. I think a lot of people who are 1099, which is a vast majority of the industry, went elsewhere.”

The pandemic itself shed light on a bigger metaphor for the way people work in this country. Everyone has a side hustle. It’s just the nature of the beast. Because if you don’t and that safety net is pulled away from underneath you, it’s a free-fall.

In a strange way, the pandemic worked in Fee’s favor. Everyone had been waiting in limbo for things to open up and when they did it created a hole for her to fill.

But it didn’t come without its challenges.

“When everything came back it was like, alright cool, no one has worked in two years. Here’s 200 dates, go do it. And you don’t even know who your sound engineer is. There are no bus drivers still. It’s like I had to find a whole new contact list in a lot of ways,” she said.

Hull reached out to her. She was doing a tour as a special solo guest with funk musician Cory Wong. Wong is well known as the guitarist in the band Vulfpeck.

It was a chance to get back to work with the potential for sidebar projects with Wong. There wasn’t enough space on the tour bus, so Fee and Hull rented a car and trailed behind the bus going city to city. The next tour they had two buses.

“Tour bus life is not glamourous. It’s not easy. The amount of times I’ve thought, ‘what am I doing with my life?’ One of my things to keep my sanity is my skincare routine. Trying to do your skincare routine in a bathroom the size of an airplane bathroom is not easy. I guarantee you I’m the only person to ever do this on this bus,” Fee said.

After a little time on the road together, Fee stepped into the role as assistant tour manager for Wong’s band. Her two clients couldn’t be more different stylistically. One is a five-person acoustic bluegrass band, the other a 10-person funk band. It isn’t that she has a close connection to either genre, but she is driven by an urge to collaborate with creatives.

To a certain extent being a tour manager is like herding cats. The name of the game for Fee is controlled chaos. She laughs at the idea, saying she doesn’t want that to be her tag line, it’s just the way it’s ended up.

It’s all about balancing personalities and keeping to routine in small, digestible ways. That’s what helps to create sanity and space to move forward with your day. She does a lot of research and intel ahead of tour dates.

Whether it’s talking with other tour managers about the pros and cons of certain green rooms or where to get a good meal, shared intel is what makes things easier on the road. Something she learned very quickly is to never give the band more than one option. That will make your life hell very quickly. Because no one is ever satisfied.

This past year has checked off a lot of boxes for Fee. She toured in Europe for six weeks making stops in Paris, Amsterdam, London and Stockholm. She even got to meet some of her music heroes.

“Right before I went to Europe with Cory and his band we did Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Festival in Los Angeles with Sierra. I got to meet him and it was amazing,” she said. “Crossroads was the highlight for me. Just because of seeing people in real life. I have never been a celebrity person, but when you are walking down the tunnel of Staples Center behind Santana. I was like, this is Santana, oh my God!”

Whether it’s meeting Eric Clapton or Stephen Stills popping into the dressing room after the show to

congratulate Hull or getting to hang out with Bill Murray backstage, Fee has found a way to live in that moment she experienced at her first concert.

The concept of freelance work is still foreign to most people. While there are a lot of extremely cool moments, she laughs saying, “it’s a whole bunch of bullshit, just like most jobs. My office is wherever it needs to be. What I love about all of these things is that you get to connect with people from all over the world. My network isn’t just set in one place.”

She rolls her eyes when she admits she has friends who still ask her what exactly she does. Some people don’t understand that you don’t have to go to an office and sit at a desk for your day to be considered a work day. Her desk just happens to be underneath the stage in a tiny green room, or in an airport answering e-mails waiting for a flight. ///

Kevin Stanton is a Nantucket native and a graduate of MassArt, where he studied painting. He lives on-island year-round with his wife Danielle and their dog Lou.

CHARACTER, HISTORY AND ROMANCE

Built during the heyday of Nantucket’s prosperous whaling era, this iconic home is situated on over an acre of land in the heart of Town. The three story brick home has remarkable historic features including a panoramic mural and hand painted French wallpaper, as well as the conveniences of a tastefully modernized kitchen and baths. An 1850 carriage house and stable and a 1921 home are also part of the property. The stunning heirloom rose garden and a brick wall surround it all to create a secret estate on Pleasant Street.

$28,000,000 | Linda Bellevue & Mary Malavase

HISTORY IN THE HEART OF TOWN

Located in downtown Nantucket, this historic gem - circa 1812, features 10 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms and three floors with over 4,500 sf with all the expected charm of yesteryear. Among the many original details are raised panel wainscotting, four panel doors with vintage hardware, wide pine and fir flooring, multiple fireplaces, raised panel interior window shutters and multiple cast iron claw foot bathtubs. HDC approved plans are in hand for a roof walk which would lend expansive views of Nantucket Harbor and the Sound. This treasure of a property welcomed many guests and visitors to the island as The Easton House Inn. 17 North Water Street offers an opportunity to enjoy living in the heart of Nantucket Town.

$5,850,000 | Penny Dey

TOWN GEM ON FARMER STREET IN THE PINK

A 2015 renovation of this property included raising the home to add a new foundation for a finished lower level with heated floors, all new systems, kitchen and baths. The quiet, in-town location on Farmer Street is just minutes from shops and restaurants on Main Street, and Brant Point and Cliff beaches. The property has off-street parking, a private stone patio with perennial gardens and many original historical details throughout, making this a must see for antique lovers.

$3,950,000 | Linda Bellevue

Spacious home with five bedrooms and three full baths located on a quiet cul de sac in the sought after Hussey Farms area between Town and Cisco. This corner lot offers plenty of expansion potential and the ability to connect to Town sewer. Attached oversized garage provides lots of storage.

$2,495,000 | Penny Dey

SWEEPING VIEWS

This simple beach house is located on over an acre of land just minutes to private stairs leading to Dionis Beach.  Look out over the 300 acres of abutting conservation land to views of Long Pond and Nantucket Sound this summer while you plan your Nantucket dream home. Listing agent is related to the seller.

$6,995,000 | Linda Bellevue IYKYK!

Ready for Summer 2024 occupancy, 3 Clara Drive is nestled in the heart of the highly desirable area of Miacomet. It is central to Miacomet Golf Club, Ladies Beach, Cisco Brewery, Bartletts Farm, 167 Raw, 45 Surfside, bicycle paths, and a WAVE bus stopIYKYK! The three bedroom two bathroom home sits on an 18,730sf oversized lot in CTEC zoning, use as is or explore expansion possibilities.

$2,800,000 | Meg Ruley

Penny Dey, Principal, Broker, GRI, ABRM

Linda Bellevue, GRI, CBR

Heidi Drew, ABR, RSPS, SRS

Peter DuPont

Alison K. Forsgren, e-Pro, NAR Green, SRES

Angel Conrad Frazier

Mary D. Malavase, GRI, ABR, SRS, RSPS

Jane B. Miller, ABR, RSPS

THIS SUMMER

Delight in spectacular sunsets, summer breezes and star filled night skies this summer surrounded by 2.7 expansive acres. Spread out and relax in the multiple living areas, 5 bedrooms, and a 2+ bedroom cottage. Tuck your car & bikes away in the two-car garage. Only three miles to town, easy access to north & south shore beaches, bike path and acres of abutting Land Bank trails make this property enjoyable any time of year.

$4,695,000 | Heidi Drew

5 ROSE BUD LANE

Centrally located, this Residential Commercial lot allows 50% ground coverage with town water and town sewer available. Great for a small business, shop, duplex or single family home.

$850,000 | Peter DuPont

VACANT LAND

Newly created 10,000 plus square foot lot in a desirable location close to mid island shopping, Town and shuttle bus stop. Don’t miss the opportunity to create your year-round or summer vacation home.

$1,275,000 | Mary D. Malavase

Meg Ruley, ABR, RSPS

Lisa Sherburne, ABR, RSPS

Melinda Vallett

Geri Walker, RSPS, SFR

Mary O’Donnell, Office Manager

Erikka Perkins, Rental Manager

Yesenia Valer, Office Assistant

Rite of Spring: Getting ready for a season of fishing

STORY AND PHOTOS BY CAM GAMMILL

As the days get longer in March and the noise of peepers starts to fill the air, my head starts thinking about fishing season, but my heart is just not into it. I find it hard to get ready for the season ahead while I still have a fire in the wood stove and there are flurries combined with 40 knots of wind outside.

Don’t get me wrong, I love tying flies, or getting lures sorted out. I love the meditative process of sorting through my gear, but my blood isn’t pumping yet.

Then, during the first week in April I got word that Hummock Pond was being opened and everything changed. The hairs on my neck stood up, my adrenaline started pounding. This annual spring activity is the spark that ignites my fishing fire.

The opening of the pond is a signal that everything is about to change. It’s the idea of clearing out the old to bring in the new. It’s not a bad metaphor for spring.

Taking it a step further, quietly walking the receded shorelines of the ponds is a very spiritual practice for me in ways that go beyond fishing. It’s a chance to look for native artifacts. It’s a chance to understand the topography of the pond. It is also a chance to let my mind wander and completely connect with nature.

While I love to catch fish, the real reason is that connection with nature. So, this symbolic

Jeff Allen works on a fishing rod.

start to spring of the pond opening is the moment my soul kicks into gear and my fishing excitement starts to percolate.

Once the ponds start to close back up, my immediate focus turns to pond fishing. Admittedly, I don’t fish the ponds much in the winter. I have tremendous respect for those who fish year-round. I also know how productive the ponds can be in the winter, but I like to have a break and have other hobbies that come first in the colder months. The break also allows me to feel like a little kid again when it all starts back up. I love fishing the Head of Hummock Pond early in the season. It feels hidden, and I can look onto scenery around Sanford Farm that probably hasn’t changed much over the last couple of hundred years.

There are a solid couple of weeks where my confidence is high that I can catch trout, pickerel, perch and even a hold-over striper or two.

My excitement starts to boil over when the Anglers’ Club stocks a few ponds with trout. While I know these fish are not native and maybe focusing on stocked trout is the exact opposite of what I love about fishing, I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for it.

There are a solid couple of weeks where my confidence is high that I can catch trout, pickerel, perch and even a hold-over striper or two. This is the time of year that my rods are permanently on the top of my car and any free moment I get, I find a pond to explore.

Since I have done some of the initial prep work of preparing my lures in the winter, my first and most important task is to look at my reels. I love sitting at my workbench and taking them apart, oiling them and putting them back together, making sure the drag is in perfect order. Adding fresh line gives me the confidence that if fish were to arrive tomorrow, I would be ready for them.

Only once my freshwater fishing antics are in full swing, do I start to think about fishing for striped bass in the salt water. It’s always this time of year that I’m kicking myself that I didn’t get everything ready earlier.

The next step in my preparation to make sure all my rods are in good shape. Often, the handles might twist or I might be missing a guide. If I can fix it, I will. If not, I might call my good friend Jeff at Fish Stix who can fix anything. Once I pair my rods and reels, I load a few of them on the top of the car with my pond rods and I’m ready for the schoolies.

My last major effort ahead before fishing season is to prepare my lure boxes. I often do this with a few cold beers and a Bruins game on in the background.

I organize my plugs by fishery. I have a box that is great for the harbor. I have a box for bluefish. I have a box for the rips, a box of soft plastics, a box of swimmers. It goes on and on.

I have a lot of boxes, but then I always feel prepared. One of the most important things you can do, though, is make sure the hooks are in great shape. I also generally make sure I’m only using single or inline hooks.

In my opinion, treble hooks just cause too much damage to a fish’s jaw and are not worth it. To my mind there is no point in catching a fish unless you plan on releasing it properly.

It always seems that the first of the schoolies start appearing before I am fully prepared. While it’s different every year, usually the fish show up by the first of May. The first schools generally show up in

I love fishing the Head of Hummock Pond early in the season. It feels hidden, and I can look onto scenery around Sanford Farm that probably hasn’t changed much over the last couple of hundred years.

Madaket and the camaraderie of our fishing community is in full swing.

Within an hour of the first fish being caught word has generally spread. While anglers are generally quite secretive once the season is in full swing, early on, everyone just wants to get a taste of it and everyone wants to share the good news.

Fishing awakens our soul and lets us feel alive. For years, our island depended on the fishery to sustain our lifestyle and while it has transformed into a hobby, the necessity of this hobby still lives deep inside of us.

But like anything, it is the days and weeks that lead up to the start of the season which can awaken our senses and get us fired up to explore the beaches and the local waters as we begin another incredible journey connected to nature and to our fishery. ///

Cam Gammill is co-owner of Bill Fisher Tackle and writes the weekly “Fish Finder” column in The Inquirer and Mirror.

Fishing awakens our soul and lets us feel alive. For years, our island depended on the fishery to sustain our lifestyle and while it has transformed into a hobby, the necessity of this hobby still lives deep inside of us.

Dancing with the Balance of Nature

“Its shrill scream seems yet to linger in its throat, and the roar of the sea in its wings.”

Henry David Thoreau, “Natural History of Massachusetts”

STORY AND PHOTOS BY VIRGINIA ANDREWS AND TOM GRISWOLD

Spring here can be a chilly, raw and windy season. But islanders have learned to find their own harbingers of spring. Venture out near a marsh. Suddenly, there’s a loud, rippling, emphatic “KI-KI-KI-KI-KI!” overheard.

Look up and there it is: an osprey, returning to its nest. Brown wings, white head, piercing eyes in a black mask, hooked bill. They were called the fish hawk or fish eagle by old-timers.

We know they are ours. Researchers attached a tiny transmitter to the back of an osprey at Coskata, tracking the bird by satellite on its two-week trip all the way from Nantucket to a lake in Colombia, South America, and back. He returned to the same nest every spring.

Not only are ospreys loyal to certain places, they are also perennial survivors in a changing world, but that is partly due to our choices.

They were not always so celebrated. Early colonists cut down the big trees needed to support their nests, and their population dropped. By the 1920s they were nearly endangered. Some were shot for target practice, or simply because they took fish.

Ospreys are fish-eaters. They hover over salt or fresh waters at a height of anywhere from 30 to 100 feet. When they spot a fish they begin the dive, fold up at the last moment and plunge in feet-first.

About one in four dives is successful. Perhaps an eel, bullfrog or squid might be on the menu, but fish is preferred 99 percent of the time. It’s a skill. Young ospreys must learn to fish for themselves by trial and error. Very experienced birds can have a success rate between 70 and 80 percent.

With long talons, they are supremely adapted for handing slippery prey. The soles of their feet are like a rough grate. Their hind toes are reversible, enabling them to grasp and position fish in the most aerodynamically advantageous position.

They take fish from the top two or three feet of the water’s surface. But overly ambitious ospreys have been known to drown when unable to disengage their talons from too deep or heavy a dinner. It’s not an easy life. But with legal protection they slowly increased.

But then came DDT, touted as the new miracle mosquito control. Towns sprayed it lavishly. Children danced in its dust. Ospreys began to have trouble in Connecticut, near where Roger Tory Peterson, of bird guide fame, lived in Old Lyme.

The use of DDT led to ospreys laying eggs with shells so thin they broke under the

weight of incubating females. Unable to properly metabolize calcium, they sometimes failed to make shells at all. By the 1960s their numbers plummeted.

Ospreys nested successfully in the Chesapeake, however, where spraying was not so intensive. By exchanging their eggs, it was shown that environmental pollution was the cause of reproductive problems in Connecticut.

Organophosphate insecticides had entered the food chains of fish. DDT and DDE bioaccumulated in fatty tissues. As small fish were eaten by progressively bigger fish, ospreys ate concentrated doses. DDT, also a human carcinogen, was finally banned in the United States in 1972.

Ospreys rebounded, but success created new problems. They began to nest on utility poles, frequently with fatal results. Their big wingspan made them vulnerable to electrocution, sometimes incidentally knocking out power to thousands of customers.

The electric companies consulted ornithologists, who suggested placing artificial nest poles nearer to water. The solution worked beautifully. The osprey population began to take off, particularly on Martha’s Vineyard.

After food, the first order of business when an osprey returns is to reunite with its mate of the previous year. Males and females winter apart. But once paired up, they usually stay together, meeting at the old nest site unless one partner has died. Building a nest is part of courtship. A long-standing nest grows bigger by the year. Males bring sticks and other material. Females arrange it.

Not wanting to be out-done by the Vineyard, some Nantucketers thought if they put up a pole, ospreys might come. In the late 1970s a group hand-carried and set up a pole in a Coskata marsh. It took a while before the birds noticed, but a pair fledged two young in 1981. Nantucket Electric Company helped out with a pole in Ram Pasture.

That platform also proved attractive. Edith Andrews, my mother who was known for decades as Nantucket’s “Bird Lady” and was then in her 70s, got an assist from the electric company’s bucket truck to reach the nest. She was thrilled to band five fledglings between 1986 and 1988.

In the late 1970s a group hand-carried and set up a pole in a Coskata marsh.

One interesting feature of that nest was the wing of a short-eared owl, common on Nantucket at the time. Ospreys favor strange decorations. They have been known to weave in rope, children’s beach toys, bait bags

and other colorful trash. The owl’s wing probably helped as a windbreak.

Today’s ospreys seem particularly fond of plastic bags. One at Jackson Point incorporated a white plastic coat-hanger for a couple of years. But they also collect dried eelgrass from the beach, and this proved fatal to one near Hummock Pond. The nest included discarded fishing line, which entangled the osprey. The bird was found dead, hanging from its nest.

As more poles have been added, some of our birds have gone back to the traditional tree nest, some impressively large. With over 30 locations on-island, including trees, not every platform gets used every year. And it takes a while for younger couples to learn successful parenting. But we have an average of about two dozen pairs, many successful.

Thanks to our choices to promote their welfare, ospreys are doing just fine today. With our lack of predators, the growth of Nantucket’s osprey population might be constrained mainly by the limits of available food. Their population has been doubling every five years. But how many is too many? What will keep their numbers in balance?

A pair of bald eagles might slow them down. Ospreys have no problem shoving aside red-tailed hawks, but they might

Today’s ospreys seem particularly fond of plastic bags. One at Jackson Point incorporated a white plastic coat-hanger for a couple of years.

find it hard to repossess a nest from an eagle. But we also assisted in the restoration of bald eagles with equal success. Introduced at Quabbin Reservoir in the 1980s they now nest on Cape Cod. But both species coexisted for millennia. This is one balance where perhaps we can let nature take its course, and just watch the show. ///

Virginia “Ginger” Andrews writes the “Island Bird Sightings” column for The Inquirer and Mirror and is a frequent contributor to Nantucket Today.

Invest in Nantucket

The Community Foundation for Nantucket is a trusted and unique resource for the Nantucket community.

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

Your gift to the Nantucket Fund will help us continue our work to support a healthy and connected community for all who call Nantucket home.

To learn more & donate, visit: cfnan.org

Blagaj, Bosnia and Herzegovina, A Dervish Monastery with links to Sufi Islam, it is built into the rock face at the outlet of the river. The water’s source is unknown. The monastery is currently unoccupied but occasionally used for retreats.

Photo Essay: The Balkans

Our intrepid traveler, Scott Thomas, brings us another look at the world through his camera lens. This time in the Balkans.

Kotor, Montenegro, A very typical street scene in yet another - but equally beautiful - walled medieval city set on beautiful Boka Bay.

Piran, Slovenia, A medieval walled town built on a peninsula stretching into the Adriatic Sea. Red roofs are common throughout Europe and the Mediterranean due to the abundance of clay and the thermal properties of the clay tiles.

Lake Ohrid, Macedonia. A painter working to restore the frescoes of the Church of Saints Clement and Panteleimon, one of more than 200 Orthodox churches in the small lakeside town that originally boasted 365. The craftsman has been laboring for two years and expects to be at work another two.

Lake Bled, Slovenia. Iconic Assumption of Maria church in the middle of the lake with Bled Castle and the Julian Alps in the background. Handrowed pletna boats ply the waters to and from the island.

Gjirokaster, Albania. A peaceful night in a quaint small town complete with requisite souvenir and craft shops. The old town is heavily influenced by Ottoman architecture.

WHO’S WHO IN REAL ESTATE

HEIDI DREW

BROKER/PRINCIPAL, ABR, RSPS, SRS

Heidi@NantucketRealEstate.com

M: 508-325-2121

O: 508-228-7707 x 212

LINDA BELLEVUE

BROKER, GRI, CBR

Linda@NantucketRealEstate.com

M: 508-325-2700

O: 508-228-7707 x 235

MARY D. MALAVASE

BROKER, GRI, ABR, RSPS, SRS, SFR

Mary@NantucketRealEstate.com

M: 508-221-2093

O: 508-228-7707 x 219

M: 917-806-8213

O: 508-365-2833

michael.passaro@elliman.com

www.michaelpassaro.com

WHO’S WHO IN REAL ESTATE

Mark Norris

Sales Associate

mark@maurypeople.com

508.228.1881 ext 185

Cell: 508.566.2013

37 Main Street, Nantucket MA 02554 maurypeople.com

NANTUCKET & BOSTON

Kara MacArthur (Parhiala) SALES AND RENTALS

MOBILE 603.401.8111 OFFICE 508.228.9117

E-MAIL Kara.Parhiala@raveis.com

Susan Renzulli SALES ASSOCIATE

Susan Chambers

Broker

susan@maurypeople.com

508.228.1881 ext. 100

cell: 508.560.0671 @susanchambersnantucket

www.susanchambersnantucket.com

37 Main Street, Nantucket, MA 02554 maurypeople.com

Sheila Carroll

Agent | Sales and Rentals

Sheila@maurypeople.com

508.228.1881 ext. 129

cell: 508.560.0488

37 Main Street, Nantucket, MA 02554 maurypeople.com

Sarah S. Punnett SALES ASSOCIATE

Robert Young

THE QUESTIONS

THE QUESTIONS

BY KEVIN STANTON | PHOTO BY GEORGIE MORLEY, COURTESY OF CHRISTINE BURLESON

When Christine

Burleson

started Sea Holly Studios, she wasn’t sure where she fit in with Nantucket’s floral scene. Growing up on Long Island she took comfort in her cousin’s flower shop where from a young age she helped out, mainly by sweeping up and making deliveries.

Burleson ended up on-island the same way many people do. She took a job at a restaurant, just for the summer.

Twelve years later she has built a life with her husband and two kids. Nantucket Today sat down with her at her kitchen table on the cusp of spring to talk about the fleeting beauty of cut flowers and an unexpected way of connecting with community.

Q. What made you decide to lean into working with flowers full-time?

A. “I was landscaping during COVID. It was kind of a whirlwind of like, my dad passed away, I had my son, and I just couldn’t see myself going back to working in a restaurant. I just wanted to be with flowers. It started like that and sort of just evolved and took on a life of its own.”

Q. Nantucket in the spring is synonymous with the daffodil. Which flower is a signal of spring for you?

A. “For me it comes as a whole. Starting to hear the peepers at the pond and seeing those first green buds. I love the lilac and the crocus. The daffodils are awesome, but I think there are a lot of people who look at Nantucket and think daffodils or hydrangeas. That’s not my Nantucket. There is so much that thrives here, like dahlias or we get foxgloves that pop up in our yard. Our yard is awesome because we just get random things that pop up. To me that’s Nantucket.”

Q. Tell us about the Posy Project.

A. “The Posy Project is something I’ve been dreaming up for a while and finally had the chance to bring to life in the winter of 2022. I had lost both of my parents within a short time of becoming a mother myself, so it was important that I create something meaningful in their honor.

With help from local growers, donations and a little resourcefulness, the Posy Project has been able to bring no-cost floral-design workshops to our local teens, seniors and children. We’ve also been able to provide florals for locals needing a reminder that their community cares, as well as memorial flowers. We just did a great bouquet class with our friends at the Saltmarsh Center.”

Q. Are weddings your main work?

A. “Weddings are a big part of what I do. I love artfully-designed weddings and working with people who like to have fun with it. I’m not really the traditional wedding type. I don’t really do those anymore. I tried it.

I am walking past all these beautiful flowers and getting thousands of white roses or white hydrangeas shipped here. I don’t think that’s me. I like to use what we have here. I’ve worked with a couple of brands where I’ve created a floral installation for their launch party or more studio work for photo shoots. That’s the stuff that makes me really excited.”

Q. You mentioned educational trips and mentorships. How important is it to have a group of like-minded people that you can bounce ideas off and grow creatively?

A. “I think it’s so important. When I first started, I learned a lot from trial and error. I don’t have a college degree. I feel like a lot of my life is learning through experience.

I can only learn so much on my own here, so it’s definitely something I think is very important for myself and my business. I have gone to California a lot because they are year-round. I can go there and have access to flowers in the winter.

I have done a lot of mentorships. Sometimes in group settings, sometimes one-on-one. That has been incredibly helpful in my growth as a floral designer. But I can’t forget people like Patty Meyers, who became my mentor when I started picking weeds for her 11 years ago.”

Q. Flowers are an interesting medium to work with as a designer because there is a time frame. Do you think it rises to the level of an art form?

A. “It’s kind of like food. My husband Kevin is a chef and he would never refer to himself as an artist or a creative, but he is very creative. It’s just a different medium. I’m working with a perishable medium that is not going to last forever. There are people who appreciate that fleeting art. Flowers look the most beautiful right before they die.”

Q. Living on an island, how hard is it to source flowers? Who do you like to work with?

A. “In season and even in the shoulder seasons we have such an awesome flower community here. There are so many flower farmers and growers. Especially with the Flower Collective, that’s made it so much easier. Last year in July and August I sourced 100 percent local. I would not have been able to do that without the Flower Collective.”

Q. When you begin a floral design, whether it is an installation or bouquet, are you starting off with a color palette in mind or more of a theme?

A. “That all really depends on if it’s for a client or if it’s just something that I am creating for myself. Sometimes I just create something because I have it in my head and I want to do it. I don’t know exactly which flowers are going to be best at that time. I can kind of guess based on the season.

Those creative project moments, I think those are the ones I enjoy the most. It’s when I don’t even realize what I am doing. It could start from a walk in the woods and I see a log with mushrooms on it and it evolves from there.”

Kevin Stanton is a Nantucket native and a graduate of MassArt, where he studied painting. He lives on-island year-round with his wife Danielle and their dog Lou.

LAST LOOK

PHOTO BY JENNIFER POWER