Nantucket Today

Sea Level Rising & The Fate of Coatue

Hundreds of residential lots had just been cleared for sale as summer houses in Surfside, when a group of 20 New York developers looked across the harbor and saw another business opportunity.

It was the...

Neville Richen

It was the late 1990s, when Richen was working at the Department of Public Works and helping to implement the town’s recycling program at the landfill. His boss had told him to rig up some plywood over the...

History Insider: Sacred Ground

From the sacred ground beneath the gravestones, in the little burial plot off Vesper Lane, flow dozens of stories of courage and hope, that describe the struggle to be free. Some of the men and women...

Randy & Wendy’s Big Adventure

It began with an invitation for Randy Hudson to go to Montana and mix some whiskey with a group of craft distillers who call themselves Good Guy Distillers.

Hudson’s Triple Eight Distillery is part of...

The President and the Faregrounds

The woman on the other end of the phone wanted to know if she could order a takeout Thanksgiving dinner. She said her husband would pick it up when it was ready. Sure enough, the woman’s husband showed up,...

Looking Back at the Land Bank

Phil Bartlett was stunned. He was looking at plans for a subdivision on the Miacomet property once owned by his neighbor Ralph Marble that would carve it up into a subdivision for 500 houses.

Those...

Finding the Soul of a Historic House

You had to look at the house at 55 Union St. with the right eyes to see the value of restoring it. Trees were growing through the floorboards. Its history sat inside like a threadbare ghost. It was facing...

Nantucket Blues

When I close my eyes and picture fishing on Nantucket, it involves multiple people, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the surf, casting into a big school of bluefish, as the sun sets on the horizon.

There...

Standing Together

It’s been two and a half years since Charity Grace Mofsen woke up to see the words “N----r Leave” spray-painted on the front doors of the African Meeting House, where she had been the manager. The culprit...

The Old New Tap Room

The Tap Room was the kind of place you could feel comfortable disappearing for an afternoon, back when one of the purposes of a local watering hole was to hide patrons from the stresses of the world...