Winner Top Brokerage, The #1 Real Estate Company in the U.S., Inman Innovators2
Winner Best Luxury Real Estate Brokerage in CT, FL, MA, NY & SC3
Awarded Top 100 Luxury Real Estate Brokers of the World4
Overall Winner HGTV’s Ultimate House Hunt5
The Best of Nantucket, Best Real Estate O ce6
#1 Luxury Broker by Leading Real Estate Companies of the World®7
#1 Independent Brokerage in nine-state footprint
#1 Independent Brokerage in nearly every local market
#1 Market Share in Mirasol, Palm Beach Gardens, FL8
#1 Market Share on Jupiter Island, FL9
#1 Market Share in Grey Oaks, Naples, FL10
#1 Market Share in Port Royal, Aqualane Shores, and Olde Naples, Naples, FL11
The #1 Independent Family-Owned Real Estate Company in the
photo by Jane Beiles
Gail and Ed are masters of their craft, always focused on their subject—you. That’s why they’re ranked Coldwell Banker Realty’s number two team for their size, worldwide. Give them a call whether you’re buying or selling. They’ll make sure everything is picture perfect! 617-844-2712 • gailroberts.com
The Nantucket Hotel’s newest sister resort, Lovango Resort & Beach Club, St. John, USVI, is a private island escape where our signature warmth and charm meet turquoise waters, coral reefs, and Caribbean beauty. Only 10 minutes by resort ferry from St. John and St. Thomas—no passport, no stress, just paradise! LOVANGOVI.COM |
Winnetu Oceanside Resort Martha's Vineyard, MA
Lovango Resort + Beach Club St. John, USVI
The Nantucket Hotel Nantucket, MA
The Landing is the neighborhood retreat designed for residents, offering a resort style atmosphere creating community and connection. Located in the heart of the neighborhood, The Landing raises the mast with island influenced serenity and thoughtfully planned curated spaces for time with family, friends, and community enjoyment. The clubhouse is both a retreat and an extended backyard for gatherings, among residents. Designed and furnished bringing resort style amenities to a cozy neighborhood setting.
Nantucket’s Primary Care Team
When you live on an island, you look out for each other.
No one feels the weight of this responsibility more than Nantucket Cottage Hospital’s primary care team. They are the orchestra leaders of your health and well-being. They’ll take care of all your routine needs such as annual physicals, vaccines and the care of common or chronic health issues. They will also guide you to a specialist if needed, on- or off-island.
Joining the team this year are Dr. Sarah Russell and Dr. David Lieberman, who are both accepting new patients. If you need a primary care provider, we’re here for you. Call 508-825-1000.
Margaret Koehm, MD, Nancy Lucchini, NP, Katie Miller, NP, Molly Harding, NP, Diane Pearl, MD, Annette Adams, NP, David Lieberman, MD, Derek Andelloux, MD, Claire Conklin, NP, Sarah Russell, MD
CONTRIBUTORS
Meet the talented group of writers and photographers who helped make this issue possible.
BY THE NUMBERS
A numerical snapshot of Nantucket this season.
N TOP TEN
All the places you need to be and see.
NECESSITIES
Put these items on your winter wish list.
Strolling in Style
KID’N AROUND
How to keep your kiddos entertained this winter.
NBUZZ
All the news, tidbits and scuttlebutt that’s fit to print, courtesy of the Nantucket Current.
NEED TO READ
Tim Ehrenberg gives his winter reading list.
DRESS: MARISSA COLLECTIONS
EARRINGS: SUSAN LISTER LOCKE
BRACELETS: KATHERINE GROVER
BAG: NAGUA
NQUIRY
NSPIRE
Father Max Wolf
Photo by Kit Noble
FOGGY SHEET
Noble’s latest photo excursion brought him to Greenland.
the Arctic
PUBLISHER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Bruce A. Percelay
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Brian Bushard
ART DIRECTOR
Paulette Chevalier
DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING & PARTNERSHIPS
Emme Duncan
CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
Kit Noble
FASHION PHOTOGRAPHER
Brian Sager
ADVERTISING COORDINATOR
Lola Piuggi
NANTUCKET CURRENT
Jason Graziadei, Editor in Chief
David Creed, Deputy Editor
JohnCarl McGrady, News Reporter
CONTRIBUTORS
Darya Afshari Gault
Jurgita Budaite
Tim Ehrenberg
Petra Hoffmann
Jen Laskey
Larry Lindner
Madeline Bilis
Sally Laurenette
Wendy Rouillard
John Stanielon
PHOTOGRAPHERS
Holly Estrow
Charity Grace Mofsen
Reece Nelson
Chris Tran
PUBLISHER N. LLC
CHAIRMAN: Bruce A. Percelay
COMMUNITY Faith in Our
There’s no such thing as utopia and Nantucket is no exception, but we regularly see on this island acts of kindness that elevate this community to a level not often seen.
Recently, when longtime island resident and Land Bank Commissioner Mark Donato broke his neck in a fall at his home, local restaurants teamed up and delivered meals while he was recovering. When roofer Somwong Kyomitmaitee, the “King of Shing,” tragically passed away this fall, islanders stepped up with a GoFundMe for his family, and after Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica as a Category 5 major hurricane, Nantucket rallied again to support the families of the island’s Jamaican community.
When the Food Pantry announced its lease was about to end, the Nantucket Land Bank teamed up with Nourish Nantucket in an unprecedented act of teamwork to purchase a building for the Pantry and to create a permanent food hub for other food security agencies. When the island home of Assistant Harbormaster Christy Baker and her husband Jonas Baker caught fire, the community once again came through, as coworkers, neighbors, teachers and extended family members chipped in to help them start the rebuilding process. In many communities, acts like these would be rare, but on Nantucket they’re commonplace.
While many people embody the community spirit that is part of the fabric of Nantucket, one individual stands out this year for his quiet acts of kindness that seldom generate media attention. Father Max Wolf of Saint Paul’s
Church was the driver behind donating bicycles to summer J1 employees without transportation so that they could get around the island, and has spearheaded the church’s Laundry Love program, providing free laundry services for island families in need. Father Max has also helped deliver more than 1,000 bags of groceries to the Food Pantry, and has made the church into its own pantry through a supper program that offers 100 nutritious meals each week. When the government shutdown occurred this fall, Father Max’s first thought was to reach out to Nourish Nantucket to find ways to help feed members of Coast Guard Station Brant Point and their families.
BRUCE A. PERCELAY Publisher
Not only does Father Max preach generosity and empathy for those in need, but he also backs up his words with deeds. For these reasons, N Magazine names Father Max Wolf as our Person of The Year. He is a role model who helps define the word community on this island and we applaud his wide-ranging community efforts.
Sincerely,
Publisher
owner, master hairstylist, colorist and bridal hair specialist of Darya Salon and Spa, and is a co-owner of the Lemon Press cafe, restaurant and catering business on Main Street with her cousin Rachel Afshari. Afshari Gault joined the N Magazine team in early 2025 as the hair stylist for NVogue, styling over a dozen models, along with assistant John Stanielon, for N Magazine’s fashion spread.
Madeline BILIS
Madeline Bilis is a freelance writer and editor based in Boston, who has been writing for N Magazine since 2024. An award-winning lifestyle journalist, Bilis covers real estate, travel, design, architecture, hotels, cities, dining, the outdoors and more. She’s also the author of a hiking guidebook called 50 Hikes in Eastern Massachusetts. Most recently, she spent four years editing real estate, money and lifestyle features as Apartment Therapy’s deputy lifestyle director, and has served as an editor at Travel + Leisure and Boston Magazine, where she has highlighted the best of New England and beyond. For this issue of N Magazine, she features three local island musicians who have made a name for themselves in the island’s ever-growing live music scene.
Larry LINDNER
Larry Lindner is a New York Times bestselling author who also penned a nationally syndicated column for The Washington Post for several years. His writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler and Reader's Digest. In this issue of N Magazine, Lindner looks into homelessness on Nantucket, and details the work of The Warming Place to provide shelter. Learn more about Lindner at larrylindner.com.
CELEBRATING THE HOLIDAYS IN SCANDINAVIAN STYLE
nantucket by the numbers
1.5
Total 2025 dollar volume of real estate transactions on Nantucket through mid-November.
16.95
Inches
Nantucket’s 2025 rainfall through October, a record low that sent the island into a level-three drought.
633.2
4 Million Gallons
The island’s water usage through September,
1,000
Bags of groceries
St. Paul’s Church delivers to the Food Pantry each year.
54 Million $
1,670
Enrollment at Nantucket Public Schools this year, a drop from the record high of 1,731 students last school year.
500
The number of blow-up Christmas decorations in Scott Bamber’s collection.
In
10
Households on Nantucket struggle with high housing costs, according to a Housing Nantucket needs assessment.
The winning time set by 23-year-old Owen Holland in the Nantucket Half Marathon, with Emily Mullins taking first in the women’s division.
1:19.45 Megawatts
Peak energy demand on Nantucket this summer, as officials consider installing a third undersea electric cable.
4,500
The number of year-round residents who face food insecurity, according to Nourish Nantucket.
Events for Winter 10
11/24-29
FESTIVAL OF WREATHS
Whaling Museum
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the Whaling Museum. Watch as one of Nantucket’s most recognizable properties transforms into a winter wonderland for the Nantucket Historical Association’s annual Festival of Wreaths. For six days only, the museum will be adorned with dozens of decorative wreaths designed by local shops, restaurants, schools and nonprofits. Free for NHA members and island residents. nha.org
11/27
COLD TURKEY PLUNGE
Children’s Beach
For the 24th year, the Nantucket Atheneum’s Cold Turkey Plunge is back, daring children and adults alike to brave the cold waters at Children’s Beach for a quick dip on Thanksgiving morning. Dress up in your best Thanksgiving outfit, wetsuit or bathing suit, while supporting a good cause. Proceeds benefit the Atheneum’s Weezie Library for Children and its free, year-round programming. nantucketatheneum.org
11/28
CHRISTMAS TREE LIGHTING CEREMONY
As downtown Nantucket embraces the holiday spirit with decorated trees lining the streets, there’s no Christmas tree as big or as bright as the one at the top of Main Street. That tree will be lit at 4 p.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving to the tune of Christmas carols, officially kicking off the holiday season. nantucketchamber.org
11/25 - 12/14
A CHRISTMAS STORY, THE PLAY
Theatre Workshop of Nantucket
You probably already know Ralphie Parker and his quest for a genuine Red Ryder BB gun, though you probably haven’t seen the holiday classic told on stage. This year, Theatre Workshop of Nantucket’s winter play is none other than Jean Shepherd’s AChristmasStory, the heartwarming and addictively funny Christmas staple that’s sure to be a holiday hit. theatrenantucket.org
11/21 - 12/24
HOLIDAY WORKS
EXHIBITION
Artists Association of Nantucket
The Artists Association of Nantucket’s Holiday Works exhibition offers everything from the perfect stocking stuffer to a Yuletide masterpiece. Check out works from local artists at the AAN’s Cecelia Joyce and Seward Johnson Gallery at 8 Federal Street, with a Holiday Open House reception on December 5 from 4-7 p.m. nantucketarts.org
12/5-7
51ST ANNUAL CHRISTMAS STROLL
‘Tis the season. Whether you’re on the island yearround or just visiting for the weekend, Christmas Stroll is the best opportunity to experience Nantucket in the winter while supporting local businesses. Originally an effort to promote shopping locally after the development of the Cape Cod Mall, Stroll has become the thing to do each winter, with craft shows, holiday deals, live entertainment and even a visit from Santa Claus. nantucketchamber.org
12/5
DECK THE WHARF BASH
StraightWharfFish
An evening of luscious bites and bubbly— including Champagne and caviar—the Maria Mitchell Association’s Deck the Wharf Bash is a time to mingle and jingle along the harbor during the Friday of Stroll. Celebrate a holiday photobooth, reindeer raffle, cosmic caroling and plenty of holiday cheer. mariamitchell.org
12/5-31
FESTIVAL OF TREES
WhalingMuseum
The Nantucket Historical Association’s annual Festival of Trees cannot be missed. Check out the Whaling Museum’s galleries as they’re loaded with beautiful and truly unique Christmas trees, including traditional greens, ornate whites and everything in between. Free admission for island residents and NHA members. nha.org
12/6
LIGHTHOUSE SCHOOL YULETIDE FAIR
WhiteElephantBallroom
Now in its 20th year, the Nantucket Lighthouse School’s Yuletide Fair offers decorative crafts, local artwork, baked goods and much, much more on the Saturday morning of Stroll weekend. Warm up in the White Elephant Ballroom for a wide assortment of holiday gifts and stocking stuffers, as well as craft activities for children. nantucketlighthouseschool.org
12/31
NEW YEAR’S EVE GALA
Nantucket Hotel
Ring in the new year at the Nantucket Hotel. This year, the hotel features a three-course New Year’s Eve dinner, a mind-reading performance and an after party in the hotel’s Breeze restaurant, where you can dance the night away and into the early hours of 2026 with DJ Billy Voss. thenantuckethotel.com
TRAVEL SOMMELIER WILD LUXURY
For those who have everything— except a story no one else can tell.
Founder Darren Humphreys left Wall Street to build a peer-level, elite travel design company for ungoogleable experiences and unparalleled access.
This season, skip the ordinary. Travel Sommelier redefines what luxury travel means for discerning travelers who value time as their greatest luxury and seek inspiration and experiences that transcend the expected.
Not just a travel agency.
A global concierge with boots on the ground in every country, we design trips that cannot be found online—or purchased without the right access. Imagine a private breakfast atop the Arc de Triomphe or a behind-the-scenes tour of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery. Every trip is a legacy in the making —bespoke, unforgettable, and profoundly personal from start to finish.
Our clients are...
C urious, adventurous, and pressed for time. They aren’t looking for a cookie-cutter itinerary. They want a different kind of access—and the confidence that every detail has been anticipated. We curate based on who they are, not just where they want to go.
“Darren is a go-to referral for me when it comes to the best of travel.” —Tom Bresette, COO, Nantucket Golf Club
We design your life’s highlight reels.
Many clients ask us to curate Legacy Trips— journeys designed for multi-generational connection with rare and remarka ble moments. One began with a private tour of the Vatican and cu lminated in an unforgettable villa takeover. Another took a family deep into a private reserve in Botswana, where they tracked lions along side conservationists by day and shared stories around a campfire under the stars. Years later, their children and grandchi ldren still talk about it—that’s the magic.
Travel is a gift. This season and all year long.
Things fade. Experiences last. Travel is priceless— it transforms how people see the world and themselves.
THE CASHMERE CREWNECK
ANKARSRUM ASSISTENT ORIGINAL STAND MIXER
Renowned for its outstanding performance, the Ankarsrum Assistent Original® stand mixer is crafted in Sweden to the highest standards of quality and durability. Unlike traditional mixers with a stationary bowl and rotating blades, Ankarsrum’s innovative design features a 7.3-liter rotating bowl that mimics hand-kneading, delivering superior results.
ANKARSRUM @ankarsrumusa ankarsrum.com
GNARLY VINES
EAU DE PARFUM
A classic scent with an unexpected twist, Gnarly Vines draws inspiration from the fertile terrain of the mother-daughter duo owners’ Sonoma vineyard. Bright green citrus and delicate white flowers intertwine with an earthy depth, capturing the warmth and creaminess of sunshine layered with subtle complexity.
Curious No. 1 is a beautifully bitter booze-free cocktail inspired by the Negroni Sbagliato and infused with rhodiola to lift you up. Best served over a large cube and garnished with an orange slice or a twist, it’s the ideal cold-weather sipper. CURIOUS ELIXIRS @curiouselixirs curiouselixirs.com
It’s Christmas Stroll on Nantucket, and Nelly will do anything to see Santa! With her loyal pup, Beau, by her side, her holiday adventure soon turns into a whirlwind of mischief, chaos, and sparkling Christmas cheer.
NANTUCKET NELLY & THE CHRISTMAS STROLL THE ACK TILES Inspired by Nantucket, the ACK Tile collection is every Mahjong lover’s dream. This small-batch, bespoke set will bring the island to life wherever you are, whatever the season. CENTER & SPRING • @centerandspring • centerandspring.com
INTERIORS
HOLIDAY FAVORITES AT PEACHTREE KIDS
Step into the wonder of the season at Peachtree Kids, Nantucket’s favorite children’s shop, nestled at the foot of historic, cobblestoned Main Street. Peachtree Kids carries timeless classics and the latest fashions for infants and children through size 14, including clothing, swimwear, shoes, accessories, toys and their iconic “Nantucket” rollneck sweater. As always, Peachtree Kids is proud to support small, women-owned and sustainable brands including Joy Street, Nantucket Kids, Maddie & Connor Co., Oso & Me, Timo & Violet, Smockingbird, The Beaufort Bonnet Company, Bits & Bows, and Piping Prints, and you’ll find a selection of local children's book series, including Nantucket Nelly, Barnaby Bear, and Ack! The Nantucket Duckling. Peachtree also has an expanded selection of shoes, dress shoes, sneakers and rain boots up to youth size 6, and this year, their new in-house monogramming lets you add a child’s name, initials or sweet little touch to sweaters, pajamas, stockings and more. This holiday season, don’t miss their exclusive Nantucket Stroll print, created by local illustrator Tori Samuel—available in cozy pajamas and sweatshirts for sizes infant through 14. Peachtree also carries beautifully stitched Christmas stockings (with free monogramming included) and are ready to be filled with Christmas magic. Open daily from 9 a.m.-6 p.m. at 19 Main Street, with shipping and delivering available. peachtreekidsnantucket.com @peachtreekidsnantucket
BARNABY’S TOY & ART
Inspiring young artists on Nantucket since 2021, Barnaby’s Toy & Art is offering a variety of holiday art classes for children ages 2 and up from Thanksgiving through Stroll, with an assortment of crafts including holiday ornaments and gingerbread houses, to holiday winter wonderlands. Located at 12 Oak Street in downtown Nantucket, Barnaby’s doors are always open to drop-in and create works of art any time of day. Barnaby’s toys have been carefully selected to provide functionality, hands-on interactive play and entertainment for the holiday season. And don’t miss Barnaby’s Art Kits to Go. This season, Barnaby’s is proud to introduce Barnaby’s Cares, a charitable foundation delivering free art kits to children in hospitals, shelters and medically supported summer camps. Each art kit is designed to bring joy, comfort and creativity to children facing life-altering diagnoses. To register for classes or to give the gift of art, visit barnabysworld.com @barnabystoyandart. To support Barnaby’s Cares, visit barnabys.giving
free for year-round residents and NHA members. nha.org @ackhistory
EXPLORE & LEARN THIS WINTER WITH THE MARIA MITCHELL ASSOCIATION
One of the island’s must-do family activities this holiday season is a visit to the Maria Mitchell Association’s Hinchman House Natural Science Museum, at 7 Milk Street, where children of all ages will enjoy learning about the animals, plants and birds indigenous to Nantucket. With dozens of family-friendly activities, children will also observe live animals, explore with hands-on programs, learn about the history of how Nantucket came to be an island, and discover more about Nantucket’s biodiversity. The Hinchman House offers a variety of programs Fridays through Sundays, including Ravenous Reptiles, Nature Story Hour and other science-based programs. Be on the lookout for special events, like the always entertaining Nantucket Science Festival, coming in March 2026. All programming is open to the public. mariamitchell.org @mariamitchellassociation
REPORTED BY THE NANTUCKET CURRENT
OUTPOURING OF SUPPORT KIM AND DENNIS
KOZLOWSKI BUY
SHIPWRECK FOR THE PHARMACY
“KING OF SHING” NANTUCKET
Seasonal residents Dennis and Kim Kozlowski completed a purchase of the Nantucket Pharmacy in November, keeping the Main Street business and lunch counter in operation after years of uncertainty. Under the agreement, the Kozlowskis will own the business while longtime pharmacy owner Allan Bell will keep the real estate. “I just wanted the store to continue and wanted the tradition to continue,” Bell told the Nantucket Current. “The Main Street pharmacy will stay as usual. I don't think they’re going to change anything there.”
The Kozlowskis also own Specialty Medical Drugstore, a full-service pharmaceutical provider in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as GoGoMeds, an online, mail-order pharmacy that provides prescription medications, and a compounding facility.
In the aftermath of the tragic death of Somwong “Wong” Kyomitmaitee in a paddleboarding accident in October, the island community has rallied to support the family of the beloved tradesman who was known as Nantucket's “King of Shing.” Beyond the outpouring of grief and tributes to Wong on social media, his family and friends launched a GoFundMe page that has already raised over $140,000 for his funeral and memorial expenses, as well as future education expenses for his son, Justice. “At first I don’t know how I can live without Wong, he did everything for us,” his widow, Kob Sathitanon, told the Current. “But Nantucket makes me feel like I’m not alone. Thank you so much to everyone who has donated so far to help us during this difficult time. We are so grateful to all of you.”
AT LOW BEACH
In the days after an October noreaster, islander Karen Russell discovered a roughly 500-pound rotting hunk of wood and metal poking out of the sand near Low Beach, believed to be the sternpost and part of a rudder of a 19th century sailing vessel. The Egan Maritime Institute has launched an investigation into the potential shipwreck material. If confirmed, it would be the latest shipwreck remains spotted on south shore beaches, including wooden pieces believed to belong to the 19th century schooner Warren Sawyer that were found in 2022.
COTTAGE HOSPITAL
NAMED
Nantucket Cottage Hospital was honored as the 34th top womenled organization in Massachusetts by Boston Globe Magazine this fall, ranking it nearly 30 places higher than it had been in 2024. The hospital, which is led by president and chief operating officer Amy Lee, was among a group of hospitals and medical facilities that topped the list, including Mass General Brigham, DanaFarber Cancer Institute and Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. “We are deeply honored to be recognized alongside so many outstanding womenled organizations in Massachusetts,” Lee said. “At Nantucket Cottage Hospital, this recognition truly belongs to our incredible team. Every day, they bring compassion, dedication and excellence to the care of our patients, their families and our island community and visitors.”
RENTAL PROPOSAL WOMEN-LED BUSINESS
DIVIDES TOWN, AGAIN LATEST SHORT-TERM
MARK DONATO EXPECTS FULL RECOVERY
34TH TOP AFTER BROKEN NECK
Two-term Land Bank Commission member Mark Donato, the former owner of the Siasconset Market, is recovering from a close call that left him sidelined for months. Earlier this fall, while carrying a set of dining room chairs into his basement, Donato missed the top step, falling down a flight of stairs and breaking his neck. Thankfully, Donato is expected to make a 100% recovery, following an operation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “Right now, I’m counting my blessings,” he said. The prognosis could have been much worse. Donato, who has been actively involved in the community for years, broke his top two cervical vertebrae on his fall, and had he broken his spine, would have been at risk of paralysis. “I have so many people to thank,” he said. “When I returned from the hospital, unbeknownst to us, someone delivered an electric reclining chair and a hospital bed, so when we returned my living room was set up as if it’s a hospital room. The restaurant community also heard of my fall and different restaurants lined up, so we received dinner every single night. There is simply no place on Earth like Nantucket.”
The latest foray into the ongoing saga over regulating short-term rentals on Nantucket had town officials divided heading into November’s Special Town Meeting, where voters were asked to decide on two proposals to address short-term rental units—following a string of unsuccessful proposals. Two articles were presented to voters, including a citizen warrant article from Brian Borgeson to allow short-term rentals by right across the island, except in the commercial-industrial district by the airport. Another article from Planning Board member Dave Iverson would cap the time a dwelling could be rented at 49 days from June 15 to August 31 and 70 days in any calendar year. With mixed recommendations from town boards, months of debate and dozens of letters to the editor, voters ultimately passed Borgeson’s article overwhelmingly, while taking no action on Iverson’s proposal.
BOOK
WRITTEN BY BRIAN BUSHARD PHOTOS COURTESY OF TIM EHRENBERG
Tim Ehrenberg’s Banner Year
Tim Ehrenberg has been waiting all summer for a rainy November day—the kind of weather that makes you want to spend the day inside on a comfortable chair, sipping a coffee and flipping through one of the books that have been collecting dust on your shelf for months. For Ehrenberg, the voracious reader behind N Magazine’s Need to Read column for the past 10 years, there’s a whole stack of books on that shelf he’s been meaning to read. There’s a quote for this type of reading: “It’s not hoarding if it’s books.”
Ehrenberg has not only been reading thousands of books over the years—he’s also amassed a loyal following of bookworms who have come to know him as the go-to guy when it comes to book recommendations. In addition to writing the Need to Read column, Ehrenberg co-hosts the Books, Beach, & Beyond podcast with Elin Hilderbrand, serves as the president of the Nantucket Book Foundation, and has interviewed dozens of bestselling authors at literary festivals, book talks and publishing events around the world.
This year alone, he’s participated in an event with Oprah Winfrey for her Oprah’s Book Club segment; interviewed The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown in Prague on the release of his first thriller in eight years; moderated the inaugural Read with Jenna Book Festival with The Today Show’s Jenna Bush Hager in Nashville; interviewed nine authors at the inaugural Aspen Literary Festival in Colorado; hosted authors John Grisham, Gayle King and Lily King on the Books, Beach, & Beyond podcast; and to top it all off, interviewed a host of authors at the Nantucket Book Festival, including Carl Hiaasen, Wally Lamb and Ocean Vuong. After all of that, Ehrenberg is still taking it all in. The saying that if you love what you do, you don’t work a day in your life—at least for Ehrenberg—is true.
“Everyone knows I love books—it’s no surprise,” he said. “But books have become so much more about the people surrounding them than just objects on a bookshelf. It’s the characters I fall in love with and the authors. I read so differently now. I read like I’m having a conversation with the writer, and that’s because I might interview them at some point. When I’m reading, I’m immersing myself in their world in a really personal way as opposed to just reading their book.”
Ehrenberg has lost track of how many books he’s read. As for what he’s going to read next, he has a list of books he’s anticipating for 2026, a list he’s just starting to tackle after what turned out to be a wild ride of a summer. “The limit does not exist for how many books I read in a year,” he said. The limit also does not exist for his career. “If you asked me just months ago, I didn’t know about the Aspen Literary Festival and I didn’t know about the Dan Brown visit. This year, it’s like I’m not even making plans but just enjoying the ride, and I really appreciate it.”
“No matter what, I know I’m going into a year that will have a lot of great books,” he added about 2026. “Even if no experiences further than that happen, I still have the experience of the book, and I think that is always going to be enough for me.”
TIM’S TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2025
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
The Names by Florence Knapp
Buckeye by Patrick Ryan
King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby
The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown
Heart the Lover by Lily King
The Artist and the Feast by Lucy Steeds
The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb
The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand and Shelby Cunningham
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
TIM'S SIX MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2026
Skylark by Paula McLain (January 2026)
Last Seen by Christopher Castellani (February 2026)
Kin by Tayari Jones (March 2026)
London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe (April 2026)
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout (May 2026)
Whistler by Ann Patchett (June 2026)
HEART THE LOVER
BY LILY KING
I teased this book in the last issue, but I feel like it deserves its own separate review and recommendation. When I say fiction makes me a more empathetic and emotionally intelligent human, it’s because of novels like this one. Heart the Lover is like a warm hug and the perfect book to wrap up for a loved one this holiday. I felt so deeply for these characters as they levitated off the page and into my heart where they will now stay forever. Lily King is what I call a “writer’s writer.” She’s beloved by readers, but other writers famously appreciate her prose, stories and talents. This novel is ultimately about love in all its forms: first love, friendship and familial love. It’s best served on a cold day with a blanket and a cup of your favorite warm beverage.
A SLOWLY DYING CAUSE BY ELIZABETH GEORGE
I have been an Elizabeth George fan for even longer than I have been a Dan Brown enthusiast, reading my first Lynley novel sometime in the ’90s. George returns with A Slowly Dying Cause, her 22nd book in the series. I love a long mystery with multiple red herrings, interesting backstory and settings, and intriguing suspects and motives—and George always delivers. After this many books, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers feel like old friends, or at least staples in my reading life. This addition to the series is truly one for the books. What these novels do best is immerse you into a community and criminal case where you work alongside the detectives to solve the crime.
THE SECRET OF SECRETS BY
DAN BROWN
It’s no secret that I am a huge Dan Brown fan. I can vividly remember reading The Da Vinci Code in 2003, skipping plans and staying up all night in my college apartment to finish it. Brown is back with his first novel in eight years, and it is a mind-blowing tour de force set in the mystical city of Prague. If you read one thriller this year, make it this one. It’s all about consciousness, and I for one was riveted by the extensive research, real-life experiments, places and mystery—plus the fast moving, can’tput-it-down plot we have to come to expect and crave from Dan Brown.
WRITING CREATIVITY AND SOUL BY SUE
MONK KIDD
The celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Book of Longings gives us an intimate look at the mysteries, struggles and triumphs of being a writer in Writing Creativity and Soul. I have always been a reader and obsessed with books since before I could even read, but the last few years I have been fascinated by a writer’s mind, their process and how they are able to craft these stories that mean so much to me. This is a memoir, a writing guide and a spiritual awakening for any writer out there, but also for the readers who adore and revere them.
For even more book recommendations follow @timtalksbooks on Instagram. All books are available at Mitchell’s Book Corner and Nantucket Bookworks or online at nantucketbookpartners.com.
Italian cuisine is not just chicken parmesan and spaghetti with meatballs. That sentiment couldn’t be more true at Via Mare, Ventuno’s sister restaurant on Broad Street, where Venetian classics are the focus with some new twists that are helping redefine Italian food in America. For our winter issue, head chef Scott Fiore provides a recipe for the restaurant’s stone fruit salad, a sweet and savory assortment of rich cherries, plums and peaches, with light ricotta, hot honey and crispy pepperoni.
Via Mare head chef Scott Fiore
Via Mare's stone fruit salad with pepperoni
Mangia!
Via Mare’s stone fruit salad with pepperoni, ricotta and hot honey
INGREDIENTS
• 2 ripe peaches, thinly sliced
• 2 ripe plums, thinly sliced
• 1 cup cherries, pitted (fresh or dehydrated 12 hours, then rehydrated in olive oil for a more mellow, olive-like flavor)
• ¼ small red onion, julienned
• 12–15 slices pepperoni
• Fresh basil leaves
• Extra-virgin olive oil, for finishing
FOR THE RICOTTA
• 1 cup whole-milk ricotta
• 1 tablespoon honey (about 5% of ricotta’s weight)
• Sea salt, to taste
FOR THE HOT HONEY
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 teaspoon Calabrian chili purée (or to taste)
INSTRUCTIONS
Prepare the ricotta: In a bowl, mix ricotta with 1 tablespoon of honey and a pinch of salt. Set aside.
2
3
4 1
Crisp the pepperoni: Arrange pepperoni slices on a sheet pan. Bake at 350º until curled and crisp, about 8–10 minutes. Drain on paper towels.
Make the hot honey: In a small bowl, stir 2 tablespoons of honey with Calabrian chili purée and a few drops of water until slightly thinned. (Store-bought hot honey works too.)
Assemble the salad: Spoon ricotta onto a serving platter as the base. Scatter peaches, plums and cherries evenly over the ricotta. Sprinkle with the red onions and basil leaves. Add plenty of crispy pepperoni, and drizzle with hot honey and a light stream of olive oil.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE
TOAST
of the TOWN
WRITTEN BY JEN LASKEY
Four drinks to toast the holiday season.
Stroll weekend lights up Nantucket during its darkest days, kicking off the year’s final season of gathering, feasting, toasting and tippling before giving way to winter’s quieter pleasures. It’s a splendor of festivities where conviviality and glasses of cheer help keep spirits high.
For this festive season, a veteran beverage shop owner recommends a rich California cab fit for a holiday meal—and a gift-worthy Japanese whisky—a wine director for three downtown restaurants shares her pick for a perfect Italian pizzapairing wine, and the general manager of a restaurant and fish market reveals his recipe for a hot, spiced winter warm-up.
HALL, NAPA VALLEY CABERNET SAUVIGNON, 2020
($74/bottle at Murray’s Beverage Store)
SUNTORY WHISKY
THE YAMAZAKI, 12 YEAR SINGLE MALT JAPANESE WHISKY
($199/bottle at Murray’s Beverage Store)
Recommended by BRUCE MURRAY, co-owner, Murray’s Beverage Store
Cabernet Sauvignon is a classic choice for your winter holiday table. Bruce Murray, who co-owns Murray’s Beverage Store on Main Street, is a fan of Hall’s Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons. This sustainable producer crafts expressive dark-fruited cabs, layered with notes of chocolate, espresso and spice, and structured with ripe, plush tannins. This season, Murray is recommending Hall’s 2020 vintage. “It’s smooth, easy-drinking and wellmade,” he said. “It’ll go great with just about anything.” It’s an excellent pairing for main dishes like prime rib, glazed ham or mushroom risotto. “You could even have it with winter seafood dinners or just some cheese and crackers.”
If you’re looking for a special gift for the whisky lover in your life, Murray and his staff will be eager to introduce you to The Yamazaki, a standout Japanese single malt. It’s silky and stone fruit-forward with a honeyed sweetness, just a hint of smoke and 12 years of age on it. If you’re hoping to round out your holiday shopping during Stroll, the team can also help you find other great bottles for every drink enthusiast on your list. “And hopefully, this year we’ll have electricity,” Murray said.
Courtesy of Murray's Beverage Store
TREDIBERRI, DOGLIANI DOLCETTO, 2024 ($48/bottle at Pizzeria Gemelle)
Recommended by JULIA KORKOSZ, wine director, Pizzeria Gemelle, Ventuno and Via Mare
Julia Korkosz, who runs the wine program at Pizzeria Gemelle, Ventuno and Via Mare, loves how Stroll transforms the island into something magical with “the twinkling lights, the salty, cool winter air and the feeling of community that warms you even in the cold.” Trediberri’s Dogliani Dolcetto is a wine that captures the Stroll spirit, she said. “It brims with vibrant red fruit and Christmas spice.”
Trediberri represents the fresh energy that a new generation of winemakers is bringing to the historical Italian winemaking region of Piedmont,
explained Korkosz. The wine is made with 100% Dolcetto that’s grown organically in the Dogliani area of Piedmont’s Langhe hills. The grape’s name translates to “little sweet one” in English. “But this wine is anything but sweet,” said Korkosz. It’s dry yet concentrated, and its light tannins and fruitiness make it a particularly good wine to sip with the Calabrese, a pizza topped with marinara, spicy ’nduja (sausage and chile paste), red onions and Calabrian chiles at Pizzeria Gemelle, she noted, adding, “Good wine, good company and a cozy moment out of the cold are what makes this season special.”
NANTUCKET NECKERCHIEF
($18 at Straight Wharf Fish)
Recommended by COLLIN BYRNE, general manager, Straight Wharf Fish
“The best part of Nantucket Stroll is the vibrant, uplifting energy that fills the air when visitors flock from far and wide to experience the enchanting beauty of this little island that we call home,” said Collin Byrne, the general manager of Straight Wharf Fish, the recently opened harborside restaurant and fish market.
To capture the spirit of Stroll in a glass, Byrne created the Nantucket Neckerchief, a hot mulled cider and bourbon cocktail for the restaurant’s guests to enjoy during the island’s
festive holiday weekend. Made with fresh apple cider, wintery baking spices, belly-warming bourbon and a bright pop of orange peel, the Neckerchief offers the cozy comfort of a hot drink on a chilly Nantucket day, while striking a perfect balance between tart, sweet and spice. “This cocktail is designed to warm your interior and boost your morale while you brave the hibernal activities of Christmas Stroll,” said Byrne. “It is best paired with a cold set of hands.”
• Bring the apple cider, allspice berries, nutmeg and cinnamon stick to a simmer over medium heat.
• Reduce heat and let simmer for at least 15 minutes.
• Strain out the solids and set the cider aside.
• Pour 1¾ ounces of bourbon into each heat-resistant glass.
• Top the bourbon with hot cider.
• Garnish with an orange peel.
Courtesy of Straight Wharf Fish
Courtesy of Julia Korkosz
THE MEAT
WRITTEN BY JEN LASKEY
OF THE MATTER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE
Billie’s brings the classic steakhouse back to Nantucket.
Take your pick. A 42-ounce porterhouse steak, 18-ounce bone-in cowboy ribeye or a 10-ounce Wagyu New York strip with a side of sauteed mushrooms, creamed corn or a jumbo baked potato. Launching a new steakhouse on Nantucket is a bold move, and the price for meals may hit a new highwater on Nantucket. But after the success of a summer steakhouse pop-up at the White Elephant in 2023, the owners of Billie’s now believe Nantucket is ready to once again sink its teeth into a premium steakhouse.
“Nantucket is an island of extremes,” said Anna Worgess-Smith, one of three partners on Billie’s, an old-school steakhouse with a Miami flair taking over the former Dune restaurant on Broad Street. “Either you go super fine-dining or really casual. We’re hoping to offer fine-dining cuisine, in terms of steaks and martinis, specifically, but with a comfortable family-style vibe.”
Photo
To launch Billie’s, Worgess-Smith, the restaurant’s general manager, teamed up with longtime friend Lee Lyon, a Miami restaurateur and Nantucket summer resident, and Steve Rhee, the former chef of Lyon’s Miami-based Greek restaurant, Kiki on the River. Lyon said he remembers being a little kid and running around Cioppino’s (the restaurant that preceded Dune) in the hours before it opened for service. They’ve named the new restaurant after Lyon’s oldest daughter.
“Nantucket is an island of extremes. Either you go super fine dining or really casual. We’re hoping to offer fine-dining cuisine...but with a comfortable family-style vibe.”
– Anna Worgess-Smith
Anna Worgess-Smith, Lee Lyons and Steve Rhee opened Billie's in the former Dune Restaurant location on Broad Street this August.
Billie's 42-ounce Porterhouse steak. Photo by Liz Daly Photography
Rhee draws flavor inspiration from Latin American, Mediterranean and Asian cuisine. He works with an array of spices and herbs—Aleppo pepper and smoked paprika being two of his favorites. He’s also a big fan of the Ethiopian spice blend called berbere, which makes an excellent dry rub for meat. “My job is to bring out more of what nature has already perfected,” he said. “It’s about accentuating, but you have to start with beautiful ingredients—your meats, seafood, produce, even your olive oil, salt and pepper.”
The menu at Billie’s also offers a bounty of classic “surf” and “turf.”
Steakhouse surf staples like shrimp cocktail, oysters Rockefeller and a seafood tower stacked with local oysters, king crab and lobster are on the menu. But obviously, Billie’s is “steaking” its claim, and USDA prime beef is the star of the show. “We’re bringing big flavors and big portions,” Rhee said. “One of our signature dishes is a 40-plus-ounce porterhouse that’s large enough for two to share—it’s topped off with a two-pound lobster and a red wine
If you are a martini lover, whether you like them wet, dry, dirty, stirred, shaken or jacked up with espresso, Billie’s might be your happy place. “It’s a pretty martini-
Liz Daly Photography
heavy bar with classics and variations like Vespers and French 75s,” said WorgessSmith, who manages the beverage program with her husband, Mark Smith. “We’re going
to highlight draft cocktails as well.” Billie’s espresso martini is made to order, though the bar team is also canning cocktails in-house. With its Miami influence, the look and feel of Billie’s is a radical departure from its predecessor, Dune. The plan was to go for a traditional steakhouse ambience, while also honoring Nantucket’s history, said Worgess-Smith. “It was really important to all of us that it felt sort of Old World and timeless, so we incorporated a Victorian style that’s reminiscent of some of the older, more stately houses on Main Street,” she said. “We’re also using vintage maps in our menu designs and posters in cool ways.” Just like any traditional, high-end steakhouse, it was a must to give the space a comfortable atmosphere that’s warm and inviting. “They’re places for celebrating,” Rhee said.
The upstairs dining room at Billie's features a traditional steakhouse ambience while also honoring Nantucket's historic charm.
Liz Daly Photography
Spicy mango mezcal margarita
LIFE OF A
MARATHONER
Jim Condon and Bridgette Hynes’ tips for staying in shape
Father time has nothing on Jim Congdon. To some, it might look like Congdon is defying the laws of aging. At 63, he’s one of the fastest long-distance runners on Nantucket, and he’s not slowing down any time soon. Decked out in layers of thin, sweat-wicking activewear and Hoka sneakers, he’s the first of the Brant Point Runners to make it to the home stretch on Easton Street, ahead of a pack of runners who run the 5K race around Brant Point and Cliff Road week in, week out. When Congdon hits his stride, it almost looks like he’s floating over the pavement, two feet above the ground as he breezes by. Congdon is no novice to running.
At the 2025 Boston Marathon—his 25th overall marathon—he placed 102nd out of 1,258 men in the 60-64 age bracket with an impressive time of 3:19:52. He’s competed in two world Ironman Championships, regularly competes in triathlons and spent the summer and fall training for the Chicago Marathon, his 26th. He’s become one of the leaders of Nantucket’s growing running community, a collection of contractors, real estate agents, business owners, summer interns and retirees who participate in a cycle of group runs every week. What they have in common is a drive to keep going. They meet up after work every Tuesday. Instead of a starting gun, they wait for the Steamship Authority’s 5:30 horn.
Bridgette Hynes is also at the starting line. An 11-time marathoner herself, Hynes is both a force to be reckoned with on the course and an in-demand running trainer who’s coached marathoners and new runners. So after decades of running, what keeps Congdon and Hynes going? We sat down with Congdon and Hynes for tips on running as well as staying active on Nantucket.
WRITTEN BY BRIAN BUSHARD PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE
Bridgette Hynes and Jim Congdon on the steps of Hynes’ store, Nantucket Run Centre.
How do you build up the motivation to run?
CONGDON: If someone is completely against running, it’s hard to convince that person to get out of the door. But if someone has that interest, it could start with just a 100-foot run, just a gradual introduction into it. For newcomers, it doesn’t always have to be a marathon.
HYNES: As a coach, not all of my athletes are marathon runners. Some of them aren’t training for a race at all, they just want to incorporate running
What about that next step? How do you keep at it once you first get your foot out the door?
CONGDON: It’s the return [from running] that’s incredible. Once you get hooked and you feel that, then the door is open to get more. It’s a very special feeling. I can’t say that I take it for granted because I’m getting older, so I’m starting to think how lucky I am to be doing this at my age. But with the Brant Point running group, you’re certainly energized by seeing people running and seeing the youthfulness and enthusiasm.
into their healthy routines. For someone like that who’s coming from zero miles a week, I’ll start conservatively with them where they’re at. Maybe you have a tangible goal in mind and maybe you don’t, but we’re going to look at where you’re at and start there. Usually that will be an incremental runwalk session for four weeks or longer. It’s a good way to start someone on a running routine because it’s safe—you’re not going guns blazing and you’re not going to injure yourself. Then you see progress.
Jim, you’ve been running competitively for over 35 years. Is it hard to maintain the motivation you had when you started?
CONGDON: When I started running, I ran the Boston Marathon in 1989, and then qualified and ran it in 1990, and then would run it every year. For me and a friend of mine who would do it, January 1 was our start date. The feeling of wellness is something you can accomplish [with running]. If I have a bad day, to go out for a run, not even a long one, I’ll come home and
Jim Congdon has run in more than two dozen marathons, as well as hundreds of races on Nantucket.
just be a different person. For me, I use Brant Point as a speed work session where you’re doing anaerobic intensity, and it’s really for the last four years improved my conditioning in racing.
What are the benefits to running with a group?
CONGDON: When I was younger, I took for granted the aspect of being with people and making new friends. When COVID hit, you were looking for a reason to get together. We were outside, and it dawned on me that the people I was meeting and the relationships I was forming, and it was so enjoyable. Here are people I wouldn’t meet otherwise, and you have something in common. It grows from there.
What running gear do you recommend?
What about biking and swimming? Is there a benefit to alternating forms of exercise?
CONGDON: Cycling and swimming are my curse. I’m a huge fan of cross-training. For me, it’s key to protecting my knees. I don’t run a ton of miles every week compared to what younger people do, and I intersperse it with a ton of biking all year long. In the winter, I’ll sit on the trainer for three or four hours.
“Once you get hooked and you feel that, then the door is open to get more.”
– Jim Congdon
HYNES: Layers, hat, gloves. For winter running, you need moisture-wicking apparel. A good hat and a nice thin pair of gloves—something with merino wool, a base layer. That’s great because it will wick sweat and it’s not too bulky. A lot of people will bundle up, but then you’re sweating and then you’re freezing because of all of the sweat on your body that’s freezing.
What foods and drinks do you use or avoid before or during a run?
HYNES: On-the-run fuel is very nuanced. Everybody has their favorite gel, flavor of gel, brand or gummy. Some people like drinking their carbs. I carry a small assortment of it. There’s so much out there it’s hard to keep up with. My rule of thumb is that any exercise you’re doing—whether it’s biking, swimming or running—if it’s 90 minutes or more that you’re out there, you need to be fueling yourself every 40 minutes at least.
Congdon
and
Nantucket seems to have a tight-knit community of runners. What is it about that running community that’s helped it persevere for so long?
HYNES: There’s a good mix of ages, abilities and levels in the group. Some people might never run a race, but they like to come and run with a bigger mass of people. Some just come out and get some exercise and chat with other runners.
CONGDON: You also can’t find a more beautiful place [to run]. There are trails and miles and miles of roads.
alternates between running
other forms of cardiovascular exercise, including cycling.
DIVINE
INTERVENTION
Father Max Wolf’s journey to priesthood was anything but conventional. Before he became a priest in the Episcopal Church, Wolf held a variety of odd jobs, from a commercial fishing boat in Alaska to waiting tables in San Francisco and New York City, where his guests included Miles Davis, Jimmy Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor and Kurt Vonnegut. Before he administered the body and blood of Christ, he peddled high-end wine to gourmet restaurants. But ultimately, he felt a calling from a higher power.
For nearly a decade, Wolf has not only led St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Fair Street—he’s also become a leader in the community, supporting a number of charitable causes at a time when Nantucket’s housing and food insecurity crises have reached an all-time high. That work is not exclusive to his parishioners, either. Through the church, Wolf has orchestrated the delivery of more than 1,000 bags of groceries to the Food Pantry, donated over 200 bicycles to summer J1 employees, held weekly dinners at the church, provided laundry services for islanders struggling to pay rent, and launched a reading and toy-lending program for children. For his work for the community, N Magazine has named Wolf its person of the year.
Did you always feel called to the priesthood?
No. I grew up in a different Christian denomination and felt called to the priesthood as a boy, but not to the celibate life. The priesthood looked lonely to me, so I ended up working in restaurants. I would see these men coming in, selling wine with the chef and the restaurant owners. I paid attention to wine and started walking the streets of Manhattan. My first sale was the largest sale the company ever had, which was to the Four Seasons Restaurant.
You grew up Catholic. What was your journey like into the Episcopal Church, and why did that church feel right to you?
Nantucket, because Don DeMarco was my customer in the Upper East Side and he had a restaurant here. They said, ‘Max, go out to the island for us on Monday and set up appointments for us.’ When I went back to New York, they asked me to move here for a couple of years, and after two years living here year-round, my company moved me to Boston because it’s so seasonal here.
I went to see my priest at Trinity Church in Copley Square. [That church] had a beautiful message, welcoming everyone to the Sacraments, and women were priests too. A lot of things about the [Episcopal Church] resonated with me. After a couple of years there, I went to see the priest and said, ‘I’m doing really well in the wine business, but I feel that maybe I could do something more essential with my efforts.’ [The church] had me volunteer for 10 years at the Women's Lunch Place, where I sat on the board of directors. Then I went to see an executive coach who worked with successful lawyers and executives, which led me to visit my home diocese in Rhode Island. I brought my wife with me and I felt called. It was something I had to do, to pursue the priesthood. I was compelled. The Bishop asked me a couple questions, and asked my wife what she thought about being married to a priest? She said she would be honored if her husband served God in that way.
My Bishop said, ‘Max, be in the world just like you are a wine salesman, not trying to talk anybody into anything, not proselytizing, but representing the Church like you do your vineyards and your company,
INTERVIEW BY BRUCE A. PERCELAY PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE
Nantucket’s Person of the Year: St Paul’s Father Max Wolf
Since 2017, St. Paul’s Church has hosted its monthly Laundry Love program at Holdgate’s Island Laundry. Courtesy of St. Paul’s Church.
walking the streets, making connections. I’m an extrovert, so it was easy for me to do that. I’m curious about people. When I meet someone, I want to know about them.
Your work clearly resonates beyond the walls of the church. What motivates your community outreach efforts?
We had something called Laundry Love in place, where we hand out laundry cards for Holdgate’s Laundry. We worked with A Safe Place, The Warming Place and the Saltmarsh Senior Center—and then Covid hit. The Community Foundation approached all of the churches to say they had chefs and caterers that were going to [lose their jobs], and were looking for churches to deliver meals to people quarantining. We were the only church that responded to that call, and we first worked with chefs and caterers. We delivered 80 to 100 meals every Wednesday to people who were isolated. From Laundry Love, we
met people from the Community School who would come in and translate for us. They said not all of our children can afford snacks, and we feel bad that they’re left out and that it’s obvious that they're in financial need. We thought if we supplied snacks for all the children, then there would be no differentiation. We’ve been doing that for several years now.
The parish has made a significant commitment. We spend about 15% of our $900,000 budget in the wider community. [Many parishes] have so much trouble meeting their own budgets that they only spend a fraction of that on the wider community.
Above: St. Paul’s toy lending library for children. Below, over 200 bicycles that make up St. Paul's bike donation program for summer employees.
“My Bishop said, ‘Max, be in the world just like you are a wine salesman... representing the Church like you do your vineyards and your company, walking the streets, making connections.’”
– Father Max Wolf
You have chosen to throw yourself into the community—is that something that’s unique to you or is that part of a priest’s role at an Episcopal Church?
From your exposure to Nantucket and the needs of the island, have you noticed an increase in that need, and does it extend beyond people you would normally expect?
Yes. I met someone a few years ago that worked for the town and she told me that she spent 70% of her income on rent. Most of us would spend 30% of our income on housing. That was a professional person on the island. I know other people at the hospital are in need. The cost of housing affects everything on the island when people have to make such a commitment just to house themselves.
On a higher level, are you able to attract young people to the Church today? Do young people still embrace religion?
It's both. My Bishop in Rhode Island said that most clergy are hiding in their studies and they’re not out in the world. I think that’s true of a lot of Clergy. I know with one of my predecessors, they said they could never find him, but he preached brilliant sermons on Sunday, so during the week he was preparing his sermons. I prepare my sermons by being out in the world. When I interact in the community, that’s what I talk about on Sunday. We read from Hebrew scripture and the Gospel and the epistles, and I try to relate what’s happening in our community to that. There are others that do that, and my heroes as a child were people that were trying to meet those needs. I think that’s from my parents, and that was the model I had.
Our parish is growing, and incrementally in the offseason. We have a lot of young retirees in their late 50s and early 60s, and we have a lot more children in the summer than we do in the school year because we have so many parishioners from Texas and from the South where it’s natural for them to bring their children to church and to be churchgoers themselves.
But I think it’s a challenge for most of our churches. People have said to me that if their children want to see their friends, it’s at the Boys & Girls Club on Sunday morning playing soccer, not at church. That’s what we’re up against. Churches all over the world say our children are the future of the church, but we need children in the present, because we need their perspective and their energy. I always tell our people that first we pray for our children and their families, and then we ask
St. Paul’s Suppers provides weekly meals for 80 to 100 islanders. Courtesy of St. Paul's Church.
not how we can recruit them, but how we can serve them. Most religions across the board are struggling with [declining numbers]. I’ve had Rabbis tell me, ‘We’re not able to pass on this ancient tradition to the next generations.’ That’s the challenge.
How has the Interfaith Council come together on the issue of food insecurity on Nantucket?
Over 30 years ago, the town asked the Interfaith Council to take on the Food Pantry. Rather than having a town staff vetting what was happening, the Interfaith Council as a nonprofit had a staff that could feed people. It started at the basement of St. Paul’s on Fair Street, and when it outgrew that space, it moved to the Transportation Center. We’ve taken on the role of getting the word out that there are sources of food here. We’ve also been cooking meals at the commercial kitchen at St. Paul’s. We’re renovating our basement now to bring back the free community dinners we’ve had for years.
The Interfaith Council quickly took on this role of feeding and caring, which is natural for us in different faiths.
Nationwide, we have not seen the kind of partisan division we have now since the Civil War. Do you think the Church as an institution can help cure the great divide? What is the prescription to keep the temperature down and help people find common ground?
So much of the division is based on fear, and a lot of our fear is based on the fear of death. Sadly, some of our religious efforts can also add to division. In my church, we have people of diverse cultural and economic backgrounds, and I always cherish insights from people who think and vote differently. We don’t try to change each other’s minds. I’ve experienced in the Episcopal Church when a congregation is open-minded and not one-sided politically that we have so much more discourse and respect for each other. We vow in the Episcopal covenant to respect the dignity of every human being, not just people who vote like us, come from the same economic class as us or look like us. That’s how we strive to live our lives. An openminded religious practice is a great cure for the division.
After 9/11, that tragedy briefly at least brought us together. I was in Delaware then and had two services the week of 9/11, and the place was packed, standing room only. People were turning to a higher power in that kind of crisis. I don’t wish another crisis on us, but we have so many challenges in the world now and I trust that those challenges will unify us, not further divide us.
Nantucket has problems like the rest of the country, but it always seems to find a way. What lessons do you think Nantucket can impart on the rest of the country on how to deal with social and economic challenges?
Those of us that live here experience Nantucket as a close-knit, compassionate community. We look around and care about the needs of others, and that can be translated on a larger scale to large cities even. When I moved here, people said Nantucket was going to be so uniform. It’s not. Our children come from 17 different countries, and our children get along with each other. With our Ready Set Read program, we see children from so many different languages and cultures being friends with each other. That is what’s going to break down these barriers. If cities and towns around the country can embrace that diversity—which is the cornerstone of our nation—that gives me great hope to overcome any political division.
Left: Bags of groceries and supplies donated to the Food Pantry. Below: Wolf with a J1 employee who participated in the bike share program.
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TOWN · 9 PLEASANT STREET · $10,995,000 Historic home with four floors and stunning gardens.
TOWN · 34 PINE STREET · $2,695,000 Charming antique gem with a garden-level apartment.
SURFSIDE · 20 EVERGREEN WAY · $3,195,000 Expansive main house and cottage in a private setting.
HOME at LAST
WRITTEN
BY
BRIAN BUSHARD
Nourish Nantucket and the Land Bank to House the Food Pantry
It started as a Nantucket Elementary School class project in the spring of 1989. A group of children had heard stories of island families going to bed hungry, so they started a food drive, providing nonperishable goods to what was then a makeshift pantry in the basement of St. Paul’s Church. It was the first time the basement pantry accepted food outside of the holidays. It was also a wakeup call. Two years later, the Food Pantry had its own building.
In the three dozen years since that initial food drive, hunger on Nantucket has climbed dramatically. Today, an estimated 21% of year-round residents struggle to put food on the table, while 46% of Nantucket Public Schools students qualify for free and reduced school lunches.
A new report from the Greater Boston Food Bank found 34% of households across the Cape and islands struggled with food insecurity in 2024, a 14% increase from just one year earlier. The Food Pantry has become the most pivotal food provider but its lease with the town was set to expire and finding a new home became critical.
is so small, they can only accept a certain amount of donations at a time before they have to get it out the door,” Nourish Nantucket Executive Director Meg Browers said.
In what became a highly charged story about the Food Pantry losing its lease, the search for a new home became a cause célèbres, given that the loss of services through the food pantry could have been catastrophic to the food security network. “The collaboration between the Land Bank and Nourish Nantucket in arriving at a joint solution to a pressing problem was an extraordinary example of the value of teamwork on Nantucket,” said Bruce A. Percelay, creator of Nourish Nantucket and chairman of its Advisory Council.
“This is the ideal collaboration we were looking for so we can work on agriculture, assisting with food insecurity and supporting local food systems.”
– Rachael Freeman
Thanks to a collaboration between the Land Bank and Nourish Nantucket, the hunt for a new food pantry is now over, a critical step in solving the island’s food insecurity crisis. “Because of the space limitations of where [the pantry] is now, because the building is so small and their storage capacity
In a pivot from its conventional role as a conservation organization, the Land Bank entered into the food security arena as a result of its search for a facility to process deer meat that could be used as a high-quality protein for those lacking in balanced nutrition. The Land Bank was also looking for a place that could process other local meat products, to provide farmers with a sustainable butchery for locally raised livestock and poultry. As it happened, the Land Bank’s search coincided with Nourish Nantucket’s effort to find a home for both the Pantry and Nourish Nantucket itself. “This is the ideal collaboration we were looking for so we can work on agriculture, assisting with food insecurity and supporting local food systems,” Land Bank Executive Director Rachael Freeman said.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE
Back row: Chris Sleeper, Brooke Mohr, Bruce Percelay and Rachael Freeman. Front Row: Meg Browers, Posie Constable and Ruth Pitts.
The new facility on Boynton Lane not only provides more storage space, it also gives participants more privacy compared to the downtown building and opens the door for a host of programs that advocates say can fill in the gaps when it comes to feeding islanders. According to Nourish Nantucket, filling those gaps—such as medically tailored food, deliveries and nutritious options—is crucial. “We describe the Food Pantry as the traditional backbone of the food security system, but the system needs to be a lot more than that, and that’s why we were looking for a space that could accommodate more programs than just a traditional food pantry,” said Brooke Mohr, Nourish Nantucket board president.
“On Nantucket, you can make six figures and still be food insecure.”
– Meg Browers
Among the new programs that will operate out of the Boynton Lane facility is a food rescue program to repurpose unused food from restaurants, hotels, inns and rentals. The venison processing facility, which will be staffed by the Land Bank, allows hunters to donate surplus deer to feed islanders in need while culling Nantucket’s overpopulation of deer—a state initiative currently not in existence on the island.
Photo by Charity Grace Mofsen.
“The
Nantucket of today is different from the Nantucket when the Land Bank was born and we are now participating in broader solutions, including allocating some of our funding to address housing, coastal resilience and food insecurity.”
– Mark Donato
While food insecurity nationwide might be associated strictly with low-income earners, the problem on Nantucket has become so dire it now reaches a wide range of working people, including teachers, town employees and members of the Coast Guard. Even with decent pay, the combination of high rent, staggering home costs and a lack of affordable
The Food Pantry is run under the Nantucket Food, Fuel and Rental Assistance program through the Nantucket Interfaith Council. Pantry Manager Ruth Pitts said a new space for the pantry is a game changer, though she admits the pantry can only go so far in addressing food security so long as islanders continue to struggle with high rent, language barriers and seasonal work. “[A new location] answers a whole lot of questions and it makes it more accessible,” she said. “If privacy affects just a few people who feel uncomfortable going to the
Food Pantry, then we will be able to see more clients [at the new facility]. Really if we can see more clients, that's the goal.”
Volunteers stocking the shelves at the Food Pantry on Washington Street.
Land Bank Commissioner Mark Donato
For the Land Bank, the property marks a significant expansion in its collaborative efforts with other island organizations to address issues that go well beyond the Land Bank’s three core tenets of conservation, recreation and agriculture—three areas it considers when purchasing land, according to its enabling act. “The Nantucket of today is different from the Nantucket when the Land Bank was born and we are now participating in broader solutions, including allocating some of our funding to address housing, coastal resilience and food insecurity,” Commission member Mark Donato said. Emily Goldstein Murphy, the Land Bank’s director of environmental and agricultural resources, added the deer processing facility combines all three arms of the Land Bank’s mission— agriculture through a livestock and poultry butchery, conservation by reducing the deer population, and recreation through hunting.
“
The collaboration between the Land Bank and Nourish Nantucket in arriving at a joint solution to a pressing problem was an extraordinary example of the value of teamwork on Nantucket.”
Bringing the new facility to fruition between multiple agencies and in a remarkably short period of time was not an easy task. According to Freeman, Percelay was instrumental in that process. “Between his skills in understanding real estate transactions and buildings plus commercial development and his negotiation capacity, he has been really influential.”
– Bruce A. Percelay
Throughout Nourish Nantucket’s first year, one point keeps coming up. Nantucket has no shortage of complex problems—a lack of affordable and workforce housing, sea-level rise and erosion. But hunger, unlike those issues, has a solution.
“We’ll never fix the fact that people on this island struggle to make enough to afford the high cost of living here,” Browers said. “Our goal is to have food security programs that enable the people who are hungry to get the food they need.”
Nourish Nantucket’s prepared meals program, one of a handful of operations it launched this year.
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IMEALS on Media
INTERVIEW BY BRIAN BUSHARD
PHOTOS BY EMMA FISHMAN
Wishbone Kitchen’s Meredith Hayden on Nantucket
n just five years, Meredith Hayden has gone from private chef to perhaps the most popular celebrity chef and lifestyle influencer today, her generation’s Martha Stewart. At just 29, Hayden—known for her social media brand Wishbone Kitchen—has released a New York Times bestselling cookbook, has cooked for a live audience on late night television and has amassed a following of over 4 million people on TikTok and Instagram, starting from the small account she created to document the daily grind of her life as a private chef for designer Joseph Altuzarra at his house in the Hamptons during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hayden, who grew up summering on Nantucket with her family, hosts the popular YouTube series “Dinner with Friends.” She released her first cookbook, The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook, over the summer, and continues to reach millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram with her recipes. She sat down with N Magazine to spill the beans on her new book, the role of social media for celebrity chefs, the food trends she’s looking forward to and her favorite restaurants on Nantucket.
What is your connection to Nantucket?
My parents visited Nantucket for the first time before my brother and I were born. They went with friends and fell in love with the place. In 1997, I was a year and a half, and they rented their first Nantucket house for a few weeks with my cousins. We rented every summer from ’97 until 2004, so growing up, Nantucket was synonymous with summer for me. In 2005, my parents bought a house in the same neighborhood that we grew up renting, and we’ve been there ever since. I have spent many summers working there full time and lots of time during the offseason.
Where on Nantucket did you work?
I worked at the Lilly Pulitzer store, and before that, I worked at The Pearl. I was a hostess there, and I was an intern at BlACKbook.
How would you describe Nantucket’s food scene?
Just off the bat, Nantucket has the most amazing food community. The chefs out there are so talented, it’s insane. You’re getting such creative and delicious interpretations of so many different cuisines. Growing up, we didn’t go out to dinner at those amazing restaurants too much. We stuck to cooking at home a lot, so when I think of the Nantucket food scene in terms of my childhood, I think of grilling on the beach and picking up seafood from Sayle’s, but now I look forward to visiting The Nautilus every summer or The Pearl. All of those restaurants are just so incredible.
Meredith Hayden, the founder of Wishbone Kitchen, grew up summering on Nantucket and still spends summers on the island.
“Just off the bat, Nantucket has the most amazing food community.”
– Meredith Hayden
You’ve been a private chef and you’ve worked in restaurants, but you’ve made the jump to YouTube, TikTok and beyond to the point where your career has really exploded. What was the impetus to launch a lifestyle brand?
As a chef, most career paths don’t offer a ton of flexibility when it comes to your personal life. You’re often working nights, weekends and holidays, and I just knew that down the line, when or if I wanted to start a family, I wanted to be able to be home more than a restaurant chef or a private chef would be. I was raised by a stay-at-home mom. She’s fantastic. So I always kept that in the back of my mind as I started navigating the food media space, because that was the only job that I could think of that would provide me the kind of flexibility that I wanted, while still allowing me to cook and express myself creatively. I started posting on TikTok because I wanted to promote my private chef services. But it blew up so quickly that I just skipped that step.
How have TikTok and Instagram changed the game for celebrity chefs?
It gives the power to the creators, rather than large media conglomerates. You no longer have to be chosen by a food magazine or a television show to have a platform and to share what you’re passionate about. You can create that platform for yourself. I think that creative freedom has allowed so many amazing and talented people to come out of TikTok that we might not have gotten to meet if it weren’t for the app. That’s been my favorite thing— the democratization of the media.
Do you have a comfort food? Spaghetti and meatballs.
What’s a good recommendation for a winter meal?
I really love going to Via Mare during the offseason. It’s so cozy there. Whenever I’m in town during the offseason, I really load up on chowder. I don’t really do chowder during the summer. And scallop season is in the winter, so that is something to look forward to. Stroll is also my favorite weekend on Nantucket, so all the fun, festive beverages that everyone comes up with for Stroll is definitely something to be excited about.
Are there any food trends you’re expecting?
Soup has been really taking off, and I think soups and stews are going to continue. I feel like a pot roast could totally go viral or be a trend these days, which is so not sexy, but I stand by it.
What is your approach to cooking?
I always like to say that it’s food that’s as much fun to make as it is to eat, which can mean different things to different people. I always say to people that if you’re not enjoying yourself while making a meal and serving a meal, the people you’re serving it to will know. Save everyone the trouble and make a menu that you’ll feel the most confident and the most at ease preparing, and not trying to whip out some super fancy recipe to impress people. Now, as somebody who’s a trained chef, I often enjoy making those super fancy recipes as a weekend challenge in the same way someone might enjoy a jigsaw puzzle. I have a ton of fun doing those really complicated recipes, but I don’t think by any means the average home chef should be forcing themselves to make those kinds of things.
How have you incorporated Nantucket into your recipes?
The cover shot [of The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook] was actually taken in my parents’ house on Nantucket. We had shot a bunch of the recipe photos in a studio in Brooklyn in the spring, and I remember thinking that the photos didn’t feel like me enough, because they were all taken inside with very specific lighting that didn’t necessarily give you that outside summer vibe. Then we did a second photo shoot over in the Hamptons and captured a lot of the more outdoorforward shots there, and we still didn’t feel like we got the cover. So we did a third shoot at my parents house to save money. Those photos that we shot in the Hamptons and on Nantucket really make the book feel whole, because they really depict what I think of when I think of summer and what my experience has been.
Do you think there are any hidden gems on Nantucket or restaurants that fall under the radar?
One of the most popular questions people ask me is when they’re going to Nantucket for a bachelorette party, where should they go for a big group dinner? While I love all the restaurants on Nantucket, I do think they are very expensive, and sometimes it can be stressful when you’re on a group trip. I always tell people my favorite place to bring friends for a big group dinner is the Lobster Trap, because it’s so low key, but you’re getting the quintessential New England meal, where you get the steamed lobster or the clam bake. My family also loves picking up from Sayle’s Seafood or any sort of seafood takeout, where they prepare it for you.
Left and below: Hayden on the beach on Nantucket and around town in the Hamptons, where she’s building a house.
BENEATH THE SURFACE
WRITTEN BY BRIAN BUSHARD
Shipwreck hunters locate a lost ship off Nantucket—and lose one of their own.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE
The crew of the D/V Tenacious, moored in Nantucket Harbor in July.
Left to right: Rick Simon, Joe Mazraani, Jennifer Sellitti, Tom Packer, Andrew Donn and Eric Takakjian.
Diver Joe Mazraani photographs a piece of ST Seiner’s equipment.
NEditor’s Note: N Magazine spoke with the crew of Atlantic Wreck Salvage while they were moored in Nantucket Harbor in July 2025, the day before their latest diving expedition for shipwrecks off Nantucket. On that trip, the crew’s captain, Joe Mazraani, tragically passed away. We have reframed the story for our winter issue as a tribute to Mazraani and his wife Jennifer Sellitti.
early 150 miles east of Nantucket, the husband-andwife team of Joe Mazraani and Jennifer Sellitti have found what they were looking for. Over 200 feet below the surface, a blip on the sonar shows something big. It first appears as a giant object—possibly a rock or a shipping container—on the seafloor. Fishermen know these blips as “hang logs,” or the exact coordinates where fishing nets have become stuck in the past. For fishermen, they’re areas to avoid. For Sellitti and Mazraani, they’re treasure maps.
waves through the diving community. Mazraani had been renowned as one of the most skilled shipwreck hunters and technical divers in the world. There was no reason to suspect diver error or equipment failure, the company stated.
“Diving is a tool. It’s a means to interact with a specific point in history.”
–
Mazraani and crew member Eric Takakjian anchor their boat, the Tenacious object and dive down some 200 feet, where they become the first shipwreck hunters to identify the wreck of the Seiner, Maine-built fishing vessel traveling out of New London, Connecticut, that sank in Georges Bank in 1929, a maritime disaster that killed all 21 crew members on board. By diving to the seafloor, Mazraani and Takakjian are the first people to lay eyes on the ship in nearly 100 years.
Joe Mazraani
“We’re grieving and we will be forever,” said his wife, Sellitti, on a phone call one month after the trip.
“We’re working together to figure out what’s next. Everybody who’s been a part of the crew is looking forward to continuing to move forward, continuing to work and continuing to explore the shipwrecks of the North Atlantic. What that looks like will be difficult because Joe was synonymous with the Tenacious, so stepping into that void is really difficult.”
Mazraani and Sellitti had made shipwreck hunting an annual endeavor for over a decade.
“Shipwreck hunting has been a lifelong passion,” Mazraani said aboard the Tenacious, moored in Nantucket Harbor, just one day before hitting the open ocean in July to find the lost wreck. “Diving is a tool; it’s a means to interact with a specific point in history. It tells the history of mankind, of commerce, immigration, cross-cultural ties.”
Diving hundreds of feet below the surface comes with inherent risks, something each member aboard the Tenacious is well aware of. This is where the story takes a tragic turn. Just three days after N Magazine sat down with Mazraani and his Atlantic Wreck Salvage crew, Mazraani died while exploring another shipwreck in Georges Bank, sending shock
For most of the year, they were attorneys, with Mazraani practicing criminal and civil law, and Sellitti serving as a public defender for the state of New Jersey. But for several weeks in the summer, the only place they wanted to be was on the open ocean, exploring shipwrecks—a lifelong passion that’s become a self-imposed mandate to bring closure to the families of the passengers lost at sea.
“Some will say that the type of exploration Joe engaged in is not worth the risk. If viewed in isolation, perhaps it isn’t,” an online tribute stated. “But nothing Joe did happened in isolation. It was his way of life. Joe understood better than anyone that life offers no guarantees. He lived every moment fully, without compromise. He did not want to die doing what he loved—none of us do. He wanted to survive it, to grow old doing it. But Joe embraced a life of extraordinary risk, and he would be the first to say that doing so was far better than a long life half-lived.”
The D/V Tenacious
FINDING LE LYONNAIS
Last August, nearly 100 nautical miles east of Nantucket, Mazraani and Sellitti found another wreck they had been researching for years: the French passenger vessel Le Lyonnais. Once considered one of the finest ships in the
resting silently for nearly 175 years, gradually collapsing in on itself in 250 feet of water. Le Lyonnais was the victim of one of the greatest hit-and-runs in human history when it was struck by the American ship Adriatic on November 2, 1856. Over 100 people died on board the ship.
“When you start to learn more about the passengers, then you start to care about these people and ultimately you feel like you have a duty to tell their stories and a duty to find their final resting place,” Sellitti said. “That’s the very definition of obsession. It snowballs to a point where I have to find this shipwreck because I’m not going to be able to rest until I do.”
The ship they laid eyes on was not a typical passenger vessel for its time. Le Lyonnais was built in perhaps one of the greatest transition periods in maritime
history, when traditional sails gave way to steam engines. As a result, Le Lyonnais was built with both masts and smoke stacks. A New York Weekly Herald reporter at the time wrote that it was “built in the strongest manner” and “fitted and sound in every respect.” Its cabins were fitted with Venetian blinds. Its engine was thought of as premier. “People were grappling with the idea of burning fires in the underbellies of ships, which sounded weird at the time, so they wanted a backup of sails,” Sellitti said.
“It’s the kind of stuff you think about when you’re a kid.”
– Joe Mazraani
Even with modern technology, finding a shipwreck can be an excruciatingly long endeavor, with no guarantee you’ll ever find what you’re looking for. Most of that work actually happens on dry land, behind a computer
Above: The anchor windlass of the ST Seiner, a ship that sunk in 1929 and was only identified on the seafloor this year.
Photo by Andrew Donn.
Below: Seiner’s double drum trawl winch. Photos by Joe Mazraani, Becca Boring and Andrew Donn
Diver Andrew Donn swims above one of Seiner’s trawl doors.
Photo by Joe Mazraani and Becca Boring
and in research libraries. “Shipwreck hunting is 95% research, and only 5% of it happens on the water,” Sellitti said. “The ocean is enormous. It’s not a needle in a haystack; it’s more like a needle in a field full of haystacks.” That, and the danger factor. “Le Lyonnais is really pushing the boundaries of citizen shipwreck exploration to the extreme,” Sellitti admitted before the trip. “These dives are the same thing as when you see [free solo climber] Alex Honnold climbing a 1,000-foot wall without a rope.”
In the case of Le Lyonnais, the initial search area started out as 100 square miles, more than twice the area of Nantucket in a stretch of ocean known for dangerous currents and where visibility on the seafloor can be as clouded as just 20-30 feet. Months before her crew hit the water, Sellitti found herself researching not only information about the sunken ship, but the accounts given to local newspapers by its survivors weeks after the crash. At one point, Sellitti made an Ancestry.com account for each survivor to learn more about their backgrounds and motivations, and why any of them might lie to the press. “From being a lawyer, I’m used to multiple witness statements and trying to stack them on top of each other to determine who’s telling the truth and who’s not,” she said.
Sellitti and Mazraani had been planning on returning to Le Lyonnais this summer, though the dive never happened. “Who doesn’t want to find a shipwreck?” Mazraani told N Magazine in July. “It’s the kind of stuff you think about when you’re a kid.”
The team preparing for a second set of dives to ST Seiner.
Left to right: Rick Simon, Tom Packer, Joe Mazraani, Jennifer Sellitti, Eric Takakjian, and Andrew Donn.
Photo courtesy of Atlantic Wreck Salvage
The launch of Seiner’s sister ship, Harvard, in 1925. Courtesy of the Boothbay Region Historical Society
REMEMBERING JOE MAZRAANI
In many ways, Mazraani was the face of the franchise for Atlantic Wreck Salvage. Originally from Lebanon, Mazraani grew up summering on the Mediterranean, before immigrating at age 15 to the United States. According to an online tribute, he received his scuba diving certificate in the mid-1990s, and quickly became obsessed with diving for shipwrecks on the Eastern Seaboard. He founded Atlantic Wreck Salvage in 2010, buying the Tenacious specifically to explore shipwrecks in deeper water.
In his 15 years with Atlantic Wreck Salvage, he dived to some of the most iconic shipwrecks in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, including the Andrea Doria, the HMHS Britannic—the Titanic’s sister ship—and the Lusitania, the passenger ship whose sinking roped the United States into World War I. Finding shipwrecks was not only exhilarating; it was bittersweet knowing the shipwrecks his crew identified had for years served as graveyards for passengers lost at sea.
to promote shipwreck exploration and inspire the next generation of hunters. “Of utmost importance to Joe was educating the public about maritime history and inspiring the next generation of shipwreck divers,” the online tribute stated.
The tribute continued: “What is important to remember is that Joe died in the happiest place he had ever found, a place he spent so many years of his life trying to reach: aboard D/V Tenacious, miles and years from where he started, and with Jennifer and some of the people he loved the most right there with him. He would not want grief to stop us. He would want it to ignite in us the same spirit and passion that drove him—to relentlessly pursue the things we love, to share them with the people we love, and to live as if every day is a rare and extraordinary gift. That is his legacy.”
“We are never going to be Joe Mazraani, but together we can be something he would be proud of.”
– Jennifer Sellitti
As for what comes next for Atlantic Wreck Salvage, Sellitti isn’t quite sure. In a sense, it’s fitting that their last discovery with Mazraani was the Seiner, a ship that Atlantic Wreck Salvage had deemed a high priority to identify because its entire crew had gone down with the ship. Sellitti hopes the identification of the wreck can provide some long-awaited closure for the descendants of the Seiner’s crew.
“We are never going to be Joe Mazraani, but together we can be something he would be proud of,” Sellitti said. In his tribute, Atlantic Wreck Salvage announced the creation of the Captain Joe Mazraani Memorial Fund
Diver Joe Mazraani
A MOVING STORY
WRITTEN BY BRIAN BUSHARD PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE
Eight years after paralysis, Warren Ard is moving houses.
After his accident, Warren Ard installed a bluestone patio and two brick ramps to his house.
On the morning of March 3, 2017, Warren Ard decided to take one last run down the mountain in the Adirondacks where he was skiing with his family on a vacation from Nantucket. Ard, a carpenter working frame-to-finish on the island, had been a lifelong athlete but a self-described novice skier who knew when to be cautious, so he hit a moderate blue square to end his day, hoping to steer clear of a trail that might be too steep. He didn’t know it then, but it would be the last time he would stand on his own two feet.
It was late in the ski season, and after a few rainstorms and freezing nights, some of the trails had become blanketed with a sheet of ice—poor skiing conditions for anyone on the mountain that day. As it turns out, Ard had called nearly a dozen other ski resorts that morning to check if they were still open, and all but one of them had decided the conditions were too poor to ski—all but one mountain called Woods Valley, a relatively small resort with a 500-foot vertical drop from summit to base.
On what would have been his last run of the day, Ard found himself skiing a safe distance behind his wife, Lauren, when he slipped on ice. Unable to catch himself, he barreled 300 feet downhill directly into the pole of a chairlift. He knew the second it happened that he was paralyzed. In the blink of an eye, everything—his career, his family, his hobbies, his day-to-day life— were completely and irreversibly changed. He was only 36.
“When you fall down, the first thing you do is jump up and look around to see if anybody saw you fall, and
I couldn’t get up,” said Ard, now 45. While he could lift his head off the ground, that was about all he could muster. As some time went by, he started looking around and saw his sister and wife heading back up on the lift directly above him. “I said, ‘Call 911, I’m paralyzed.’ I knew right then what happened, but I didn’t know everything that comes along with it,” he said.
Ard—a carpenter, golfer and former student athlete from Maine who once placed second in the statewide one-mile and 800-meter events as an eighth grader— had broken his back at his T-4 vertebrae, leaving him paralyzed from the chest-down. While he had full control over his head, neck, shoulders and arms, he would never walk again. “I had kids at 25 because I wanted to coach them, wanted to be active with them, run with them and do all that stuff, and that’s what got taken away from me,” he said.
“It took me two years to accept that I wouldn’t walk again.”
Just like that, Ard’s life on Nantucket had stopped in its tracks. Ard, who had always stayed busy with projects at his own house and with the company he ran with 40 employees, was suddenly stuck in a situation he had never been in before. The next year and a half would be a series of operations and physical therapy sessions at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown. “Life changes in the blink of an eye—it’s a true saying,” Ard said.
– Warren Ard
“Life gets flipped upside down. I was running a 40-man crew, and then I was off-island for a year and a half.”
But Ard didn’t let the life-changing accident stop him. Eight years later, he has reconstructed his business, his house and his life—quite literally. After the accident, he took up house moves, of all things, leading his crew from the seat of his wheelchair with a
remote control and a tablet to steer and control the hydraulics on a moving house. Since then, he’s led over two dozen house moves on the island, including five this past fall.
At his own house, he’s leading his crew on a series of projects, including a bluestone patio he finished this summer, as well as two brick ramps to the first floor of the house, an elevator, a pool and a new basement that required Ard to temporarily lift the house itself. “I bought my first excavator to do this pool, and when people found out I had an excavator, I got asked to do another job and then another job,” he said. “Business actually picked up after I broke my back.”
hours on end. He can still drive an automatic car, using hand controls to access the pedals. The community also rallied behind him, helping with projects around the house and leading a fundraiser at Faregrounds Restaurant and a GoFundMe page that raised money for his physical therapy. “Without my crew and my job, I would be home sitting on the couch, because I wouldn’t be able to get into the machines,” he said. “I had to keep it going.”
“It took me
Even without the ability to move his legs, Ard still finds himself working a skid-steer for
“I had kids at 25 because I wanted to coach them, wanted to be active with them, run with them and do all that stuff, and that’s what got taken away from me.”
– Warren Ard
Top and bottom: Ard works on construction projects at his house. Bottom: Ard leads a house move. Courtesy of Warren Ard
Warren Ard with his wife Lauren and two daughters.
Photo by Lisa Frey, courtesy of Warren Ard
two years to accept that I wouldn’t walk again,” he continued. “It was a lot of tears, a lot of long talks with my wife. I felt like I was a burden even though everyone kept telling me I wasn’t a burden. I could see it on their faces, but nobody would say it. Just asking for a cup of water. It’s always at the back of my mind that I’m a burden, and that’s why I’m trying to be independent.”
Ard still thinks about the accident. The day it happened, he had been torn between skiing and taking his daughters to Ben & Jerry’s, but wanted to give his daughters a taste of adventure so he hit the slopes. “I think about it a lot—I should have gone to Ben & Jerry’s,” he said. Living as a paraplegic has also raised a set of whatif questions he inevitably dwells on from time to time.
“Life changes in the blink of an eye— it’s a true saying.”
– Warren Ard
What if he had lost the ability to move his arms? What if something else went wrong?
But at the end of the day, things have their way of going on. Ard made major adjustments to everything around him so he could keep living the life he wanted with his friends and family. Life, he said, isn’t defined solely by the lifechanging moments you experience. He’s still raising his kids, working and saving money to send them to college. He’s now been married for 18 years to Lauren and is working on a lake house in his home town in Maine. And in the face of everything that’s happened, he’s remained modest. “A lot of people say I’m an inspiration but I don’t see how. Life goes on.”
Ard’s family on the bluestone patio around a newly finished pool at their house.
HOMELESS Hope for the
WRITTEN BY LARRY LINDNER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE
For the homeless on Nantucket, The Warming Place provides shelter.
The saying “No good deed goes unpunished” could have been coined for Efren Peralta. He was working for a business last year that provided employee housing when a coworker was fired. Knowing that his coworker relied on employee housing also, Peralta let him crash at his house for a few nights. When his boss found out, he too was fired, making Peralta homeless.
With all of his belongings stored in his car, Peralta spent his days looking for jobs, sometimes getting work as a day laborer, sometimes looking for volunteer work to keep busy, and sometimes sitting inside the bus station to keep warm in cold weather. He spent his nights bouncing from couch to couch at different friends’ places when he could or taking a boat to Hyannis for a relatively cheap hotel room, chipping away at his fund to put his daughter through college. “Rent is very expensive,” Peralta, born in the Dominican Republic, said through a translator. “You can pay rent and not eat, or eat and not have enough money to pay rent.” Only after five
Efren Peralta spent months on the job market after losing his job and his housing, when The Warming Place helped him get back on his feet.
The Warming Place Board President Deb DuBois (left) with Vice President Vincent DeBaggis and Board Member Tricia Vanacore.
months into his odyssey of homelessness did he find The Warming Place, Nantucket’s free shelter for those without a roof over their heads.
Hundreds of people on the island find themselves homeless. Most of them are among the so-called hidden homeless, perennially couch surfing or perhaps living in an unsanctioned, unplumbed dwelling like a cellar. As many as 100 others at any one time fall under the umbrella of what can be termed the literally homeless, spending their nights
boarded whether any of the kids’ moms knew of a place where he could stay the night. Some on Nantucket sleep in their cars, and in the morning drive to people’s homes to clean them, despite not having a place of their own.
People talk about the Nantucket Shuffle, where seasonality dictates where and how some people live, but in a certain way it’s more like musical chairs. There are more people needing a home than there are affordable spots available. Someone is going to be squeezed out of
While some homeless people on Nantucket grapple with substance abuse or mental health challenges that don’t allow them to maintain jobs, many of both the hidden and literally homeless on Nantucket contribute to the island’s economy and vital services, sometimes working steady, full-time jobs. Zahra Kasza, development director of The Warming Place, puts it this way: “The unhoused are not fringe members of the community. They’re just members of the community.”
The problem was laid out in a recently released Nantucket-based documentary “Room for Us?” In the film, a teenager explains that a school bus driver whose route she was on for three years would ask every single time she
ones without someone’s couch to crash on—offering an overnight cot at either the Summer Street Church or the First Congregational Church, as well as a hot meal. In recent years, B-ACK Yard BBQ has donated the majority of the meals, with significant meal contributions also coming from the Knights of Columbus, St. Paul’s Church and the Brotherhood of Thieves.
Also provided: laundry cards, grocery assistance cards, toiletries and once-a-week showers at Health Imperatives, across the street from Nantucket Cottage Hospital. Additionally, the Warming Place helps unemployed homeless people land jobs, going over how to fill out an application and assisting with job references.
The Warming Place staff, board and volunteers, left to right: Anne Perkins, DeBaggis, Director of Development Zahra Kasza, Vanacore, Peralta, Shelter Manager Lucia Redondo and DuBois.
And they help connect homeless people with social services such as Fairwinds and Mass Health. In other words, the end game is not just about addressing the immediate crisis; it’s about getting people back on their feet and housed.
Peralta found The Warming Place last February, when others were also seeking shelter. “The first year [2021] we had only five people,” said Warming Place board president Deb DuBois. “The second year, we moved up to serving around 10. Last year we had 40. We know there are many more people out there."
Despite what The Warming Place can offer to those who find their way to it, the strain of homelessness remains staggering. “When we first opened up, we got newspapers donated,” said DuBois. “We got checkers and cards. But no one wanted to read or play. I didn’t understand it. Somebody said, ‘Deb, there’s so much stress in my life. Even to
play checkers is too much.’ We had one guy—in one week of being on the street he was having memory problems that he hadn’t had before.”
“When I had nothing, The Warming Place gave me hope.”
– Efren Peralta
Another complication: The Warming Place does not have its own facility and cannot offer overnight shelter 12 months a year. It relies on the two churches during the slow winter season— from November 1 through April 30—but has no place to accommodate people overnight from May through October. “The homeless shelter is homeless,” said Kasza. Even during the winter, cots and linens and food have had to be moved between the two churches. “The goal is to have our own independent structure,” Kasza explained. “We are actively looking for a place we can use year-round.” Any option for a new facility would require donations, as do salaries for shelter staff who serve dinner, stay overnight and serve breakfast in the morning before cleaning up so the church can be used again. “Our payroll is
significant,” DuBois said. Peralta was grateful for everything The Warming Place provided, but more so for what happened when staff there found out that he had been in food service as a pastry chef in Spain, where he lived after he left the Dominican Republic but before coming to Nantucket to fast-track his savings for his children’s education. When they saw there was a job opening at Bartlett’s Farm, they assisted him with an application.
After nine months without a key to his own residence, he’s now employed in the Bartlett’s Farm kitchen, helping out with baked goods and other food preparation. He also has a place to live, in staff housing at the farm. “My story has a happy ending,” he said. “When I had nothing, The Warming Place gave me hope. Now I have work, housing, and I want to give back.” He plans on volunteering at the shelter this winter, as do dozens of others who want to help homeless people.
If you would like to volunteer, give a cash donation, send something from the organization’s Amazon wish list (items range from hand warmers to protein bars), or simply learn more about what it means to be homeless, visit TheWarmingPlace.org.
Top: The Warming Place shelter manager Lucia Redondo.
Right: Shelter volunteer Anne Perkins.
A Thriving Nantucket Depends on ALL of Us.
Please help the Community Foundation make a difference by donating to The Nantucket Fund, our permanent grantmaking fund that suports critical programs and initiatives essential to our Islanders’ wellbeing, convening community leaders, and guiding informed philanthropy.
This year, The Nantucket Fund has provided a record $1 million in grants to local nonprofits. Currently, we are only able to meet half of the requests from organizations on the front lines helping those who are coping with personal struggles, in need of food or safe housing, searching for affordable childcare, and hoping to age in place with dignity.
Your gift means more neighbors in need can be supported. Together, we can keep Nantucket thriving today and for generations to come. Please give generously to CFNAN.org
Elder Services of Cape Cod & the Islands, Our Island Home
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Housing Nantucket
LIGHTING UP
THE SEASON
WRITTEN BY BRIAN BUSHARD
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE
Scott Bamber’s Christmas Spectacular
Bamber’s collection of over 500 blow-up Christmas decorations puts Clark Griswold to shame.
For 10 months out of the year, it’s just another cedar-shingled house with a green lawn. But for the months of November and December, it’s not only the most recognizable house on the island, it’s one of Nantucket’s biggest attractions.
For the past 29 years, Scott Bamber has been decorating his house with so many Christmas lights it puts Clark Griswold to shame. He even puts a Grinch decoration on his neighbor’s yard, not out of spite but because his neighbor’s daughter likes it.
Make no mistake, this is no simple operation, costing thousands of dollars and requiring weeks of labor. While Bamber might sound like a Grinch himself lamenting about the
work that goes into it, his heart grows three sizes when he sees the line of kids outside his house on Friendship Lane to catch the light show. “It’s another cost, it adds up and I’m out here every day in the freezing cold,” he said. “But I do it for the kids.”
Christmas comes early at Bamber’s house, where on November 1 of every year, he’s outside with a crew of family, friends and volunteers stringing over a mile of lights around his fence, the outline of his house, the two-bay garage, flagpole and every bush and tree in his yard. For the next four weeks, he's putting up roughly 50 blow-up lights, five Christmas trees, a functional mini train and Santa’s team of reindeer.
Before and after Bamber lights up his house for the holidays.
Bamber says this is his last year decorating his house, though to be fair he's been saying that for several years.
B“We don’t just add one, we add dozens [of decorations] every year.”
— Scott Bamber
amber’s collection of Christmas decorations now includes a staggering 500 individual blow-ups. He stores most of the decorations in a container offsite, which when full, weighs over 12,000 pounds—the train engine alone weighs 600 pounds. Setting them up in the yard doesn’t only take a crew; Bamber brings in a 65-foot lift, three 250-foot extension cords, four underground wires, five three-way cords and two 200-amp power banks—everything but a partridge in a pear tree.
Every year is different. Most years, the decorations are tied to different Christmas themes, which in past years have included candy and snow. Sometimes, the display centers around a recent movie. The year Disney’s “Frozen” came out was a big year in the world of Christmas decorations, Bamber said. “We don’t just add one, we add dozens [of decorations] every year,” he said. “They started out at four-feet high, and then eight feet, and now we have a 12-foot Santa and an 18foot Grinch. The deer are nine feet tall.”
It takes about a month to set everything up at Bamber's house on Friendship Lane.
In 29 years of decorating his house, Bamber has been shocked, tripped, stumbled and one time he even fell off his roof while stringing lights around the frame of his house. All said, between the half pallet of string lights, some 10,00012,000 candy canes and the spike in his electric bill, Bamber is looking at $10,000 per year.
With those costs rising, Bamber says this is
his last year decorating his house, though he's been saying that for several years.“It’s a lot of work but it’s fun. I like doing it and I like doing it for the kids. I want to stop but I can’t. My son just had a baby and I’m a grandfather. Everybody says to me, ‘You can’t give up, we’ll help you.’”
One person who has been helping Bamber for years is his friend Tammy King, who shows up with a crew of volunteers to install the lights and conceive a vision for each year’s display. “Even though he sounds like the Grinch, his heart is big,” King said.
Is It Time to Cull the Herd?
WRITTEN BY BRIAN BUSHARD
IPHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE
Could killing the deer population curb Lyme disease?
t’s a staggering number—10,000 deer on Nantucket. If that number is true, as state officials estimate, that means the island has more than one deer for every two yearround residents and more than 200 deer per square mile. But it’s not that number alone that has ecologists scared. It’s the ticks they carry. “A female deer tick lays 2,000 eggs,” said Tufts University professor Sam Telford, who has been studying ticks on Nantucket since 1985. “I have personally picked off 99 engorged females from a single deer, and that represents only a week’s accumulation because it takes seven days for a tick to feed. If you extrapolate over the 16 weeks that adult ticks are usually around, you get 2,000—that’s the progeny from a single deer.” Multiply that number by the 10,000 estimated deer on Nantucket and you end up with the most terrifying estimate of all: 31 billion ticks.
Proposals have ranged from extending the hunting season, to releasing genetically engineered mice, and killing every single deer.
While it’s nearly impossible to know the real tick population, it’s safe to say Nantucket has a tick crisis. With the growing deer herd, cases of tick-borne illnesses, including Lyme disease, documented at Nantucket Cottage Hospital have risen, as have deer-on-vehicle collisions reported to the Nantucket Police Department. Not only that— ask any farmer, landscaper or ecologist and they’ll tell you about the scourge white-tail deer have been on island vegetation. For Todd Rainwater, a summer resident and a trustee of the Rainwater Charitable Foundation, the solution comes down to a simple transitive equation: No deer equals no ticks, and no ticks means no Lyme disease.
It might sound extreme, but Rainwater believes the only viable option when it comes to solving Nantucket’s tick problem is not just to hunt more deer, but to wipe out the entire deer population. “It feels to me like Bill Gates saying we should reduce polio a little bit in these other countries—no, we should wipe it all out. If we can remove [tick-borne illnesses] entirely, we should,” Rainwater said.
While it’s perhaps the most intensive option for solving the spike in Lyme disease, it’s far from the first proposal. Just this year, state regulators approved an extension to the deer hunting season on the island, allowing primitive firearm hunting (muzzleloaders or archery) through the end of January. The Nantucket Land Bank, meanwhile, is considering applying for a deer damage permit to take out deer eating up native island species on its properties. “When deer are actively seeking food, they’re probably changing the ecology of the island right under our noses
without us knowing it because they’re preferentially eating species before moving on to other species in our fragile habitats,” Land Bank Executive Director Rachael Freeman said.
Researchers at MIT are also working on a project to release thousands of genetically modified mice that would be immune to Lyme disease. That project, which was the subject of a recent 60 Minutes segment, would not address the deer population, but rather the mice that serve as the primary host of the Lyme bacteria. Not all ticks carry Lyme disease, though they can contract it by biting an infected mouse. But if those mice are immunized to Lyme, as researchers propose, then uninfected ticks would remain uninfected, breaking the cycle of transmission.
NANTUCKET’S DEER PROBLEM
All of these proposals are the result of a renewed sense of urgency to address tick-borne illnesses. Roughly 15% of island residents have contracted Lyme disease, which can cause fever, headache, fatigue and rash, and if untreated can spread to joints, the heart and the nervous system. The incidence rate of Lyme disease is now more than 22 times higher on Nantucket than the state overall. Nantucket also leads the state in cases of babesiosis and human granulocytic anaplasmosis, which are both spread by deer ticks. On top of that, the introduction of the lone star tick has sparked new concerns over tick-borne illnesses, including alphagal syndrome, an infection known to cause red meat allergies. Look no further than Martha’s Vineyard for a sign of things to come—cases of alpha-gal on the Vineyard have climbed from two positive tests in 2020 to 523 positives from over 1,200 tests in 2024.
Meanwhile, vehicle collisions with deer on Nantucket have soared over the past 15 years, from 29 in 2010 to 106 in 2021, according to the Nantucket Police Department. A record 110 reports of deer-on-vehicle collisions were made from July 2024 to June 2025—a number that Police Chief Jody Kasper believes is likely an undercount.
Tufts University Professor Sam Telford finds dozens of larval ticks from a swipe of a terry-cloth flag through the brush at the UMass Field Station.
So is it time to cull the herd? It’s a strategy that has worked in other places. In the mid-1990s, Lyme disease had become so prevalent on Monhegan Island, in Maine, that contracting it was two-anda-half times more likely on the island than it was across the rest of Midcoast Maine. Over a span of several years, researchers implemented multiple methods to address the issue, first by applying pesticides and then by spreading poison to wipe out the island’s rats—though that project ended abruptly after a dog became sick from attacking a poisoned rat. But just like Nantucket, the problem lay with the deer. In 1997, islanders voted to bring in a sharpshooter to kill off every last deer on the small island. Only two cases of Lyme disease have been reported there since.
Another project closer to home was
conducted a decade earlier, with a herd of 52 deer on Great Island, a peninsula in Yarmouth, being wiped out—except for one doe that “evaded hunters and survived through 1986.” Without deer, the island vegetation “recovered strongly,” while the number of larval ticks “decreased precipitously” in the two years after the herd was killed, with larval tick numbers continuing to decrease gradually after that.
Telford, one of the researchers on the Great Island project, said that deer are the key to Lyme disease prevention. Without deer, there are no ticks. But killing the entire herd might not be necessary, he said, adding that even a reduction in deer density to the state-recommended 12 to 18 per square mile would go a long way to wiping out tick-borne illnesses on Nantucket. Telford’s target number is even smaller, at
about six to eight deer per square mile.
“If you look, animals are not evenly distributed, so you have pockets of them here and there,” he said. “It’s the same problem with deer—they congregate in certain areas. With more and more animals, those areas get bigger and bigger until they coalesce and they’re all over the island. But if we have [deer] using half the space, then that space that used to be occupied by deer is no longer occupied by deer.”
AN ISLAND OF HUNTERS
It’s safe to say that thousands of years ago, when Nantucket was connected to the mainland, deer roamed the area freely, though when English settlers arrived on the island in 1659, there were no deer. It’s become an island legend that in 1922,
“It feels to me like Bill Gates saying we should reduce polio a little bit in these other countries—no, we should wipe it all out.”
– Todd Rainwater
by Ray K. Saunders
Photo
fishermen spotted a buck floating in the Sound, rescued it from the water and brought it on the island, where it “seemed to have recovered from its exhaustion and was in good condition,” and was “taken on a truck out of town and set free in the pine-trees near the second milestone,” The Inquirer and Mirror reported at the time. Fearing the deer, nicknamed Old Buck, was lonely, a number of does from Michigan were released over the next few years to provide the buck “companionship” and to “give the island, in due time, a small herd of the graceful creatures.”
Fast-forward 100 years and Nantucket boasts the densest deer herd and one of the largest active deer hunts in the state. Last year, hunters on Nantucket killed 863 deer, just below the record 879 harvested the year before, but representing only a fraction of the island’s deer population. “Controlling the herd is important, but if the herd is at 10,000, then shooting 800 isn’t going to make a big difference,” said Nantucket Cottage Hospital’s Dr. Tim Lepore, an expert in tick-borne disease. “We need to know what the real number is, because there’s a big difference with a population of 2,500, if you’re killing 800, versus a population of 10,000.”
If the deer population estimate is correct, then in order to reach the state’s recommendation of 12 to 18 deer per square mile, hunters would need to reduce the herd to roughly 900 deer. Martin Feehan, a deer and moose biologist at MassWildlife who made the estimate of 10,000 deer, said there are more steps that could be taken to increase the annual harvest. One idea is to open more properties to hunting. (All Land Bank and Nantucket Conservation Foundation properties are open to hunting, except
for the Land Bank’s two golf courses, Burnt Swamp Trails, Cato Commons and Burchell Farm, and NCF’s Tupancy Links, Sanford Farm, Little Neck, Trot’s Hill, Squam Farm, Masquetuck and the Nantucket Field Station.) “You really have to get the harvest to double or triple where it’s at currently to start seeing a decline in the population,” Feehan said. “That would have to persist for a long period of time to get the density down.”
Some hunters have proposed annual extensions to the hunting season, as well as the creation of a venison processing
“If we can remove [tick-borne illnesses] entirely, we should.”
– Todd Rainwater
to be hunters, and unfortunately in our field, there has been a celebration of nonconsumptive use, things like leave no trace, leave only footprints,” Engelbourg said. “Changing the narrative on that and saying, ‘We’re not going to force anyone to kill an animal but celebrate that this could be a good thing for the environment and not a bad thing’— that could make a huge difference on sustainability on Nantucket.”
Rainwater recognizes that killing every deer on Nantucket would be a hard pill to swallow. Wiping out the herd would effectively put an end to hunting, ending a hobby for year-rounders and a source of offseason tourism. There’s also the cuteness factor of deer, though Rainwater said that argument is “ridiculous.”
facility that could allow hunters to donate meat to island organizations like Nourish Nantucket. Seth Engelbourg, a naturalist educator at the Linda Loring Nature Foundation and a hunter himself, wants to see more hunting education and a general promotion of hunting with best practices for safety publicly available. “As Nantucketers and as environmental stewards, we have a moral responsibility
“To the hunters, if we can get Tim Lepore on board, that’s a two-for-one,” Rainwater said. “We would have his buy-in as the doctor of all doctors on Nantucket, and he has connections to the hunting world.” Lepore said he’s interested in the idea, though he admits buy-in would be a “radioactive issue” on the island. “Can you kill all the deer? No, you can’t,” he said. “It’s difficult to kill your way out of it because the deer are having twins and triplets. It is very difficult to affect them on that level, so the next level is controlling ticks. But each female tick is laying 2,000 eggs, so that is also difficult to control.”
There might not be a single solution to rid the island of tick-borne illness. The only thing everyone can agree on is that there is a critical problem, and if nothing changes, the number of deer and ticks will only increase. “In 500 years when the island sinks beneath the waves,” Lepore said, “the last thing will be a tick holding on to a piece of beach grass.”
Sam and Heidi Telford are collaborating with MIT's Kevin Esvelt on a genetically engineered mice project to rid the island of Lyme disease.
Bringing Home the
BACON
WRITTEN BY BRIAN BUSHARD
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE
Dylan and Caroline Wallace’s sustainably raised pigs
Dylan and Caroline Wallace might be the human embodiment of the farm-to-table movement, from growing vegetables and herbs at their farm to producing honey and even drying their own sea salt by the bin, from buckets of ocean water from Madaket Beach— they live off the fat of the land.
Dylan and Caroline Wallace have now brought back another form of agriculture that hasn’t been seen on Nantucket in nearly 100 years: retail pasture-raised pork. “It's going back to sort of a simpler time, which I think is cool,” said Dylan Wallace, the
owner of Eat Fire Farm on Land Bank property on Hummock Pond Road. “So many things are complicated now with technology that it’s nice to do something that’s a little slower and more intentional.”
A dozen bristly piglets can be seen running around a makeshift sty in Wallace’s backyard with their mother, a rare American Guinea Hog—considered a “threatened” breed by The Livestock Conservancy. They’re not the only pigs on Nantucket, but they’re the first to be commercially available for retail and wholesale, and island restaurants have already started to bring home the bacon.
Sausages from Eat Fire Farm’s pigs that were raised on Nantucket and processed at an off-island abattoir.
Courtesy of Caroline Wallace.
Caroline and Dylan Wallace
The pork chops on the Nautilus’ fall menu come from Wallace’s pigs. The pork belly in the Gaslight’s pork buns? It’s also from Wallace’s pigs. So is the bratwurst that had been available over the summer at 167 Raw, as well as the sausage Wallace tops on the pizza he makes at Eat Fire Pizza, the mobile pizza oven that makes regular stops at Cisco Brewers. This year, the meat has also been available through The Hive on Amelia Drive, after being processed at an off-island abattoir. Dylan and Caroline have been eating some of the leftovers. “We’re having bone-in chops tonight, and we’re eating bacon all the time,” Dylan said. “Whenever we go visit somebody, we bring some meat.”
space to roam outside, where they can eat a variety of grasses, shrubs and roots, making their meat both tastier and more nutritious. Compare that to commercial slaughterhouses that source their pork from giant indoor pens, where cooped-up hogs pig out almost exclusively on grains.
“It’s like if you were fed broccoli every day. Not only would you be sick of broccoli, but the variety of vitamins would not be there,” Dylan said. “You can think of the pigs we’re raising as getting that whole rainbow of nutrients that they need. That makes them healthier and happier, and a lot more nutritious.”
Not only do they taste good; they also serve an agricultural purpose. By
It’s not just pork chops, sausage and bacon, either. After two batches of pigs, Wallace turned in a supply of loin rib chops, hocks, spare ribs, uncured smoked jowl, ground pork, country-style ribs, chorizo, belly slab and bratwurst. There’s a benefit to eating locally grown meat. As opposed to the commercially raised pork sold in bulk at grocery store chains around the country, Wallace’s pigs are given
eating down to the root, these piglets work like a dozen rototillers, weeding out a plot of land and preparing it for seeding. In fact, Wallace’s endeavor into pig raising started as a land management operation, not as a means
Eat Fire Farm offers loins, chops, sausage and bacon.
Courtesy of Caroline Wallace
to sell meat. Instead of bringing in heavy machinery, the idea was to just bring pigs, and let them eat away at the poison ivy, bayberry and wild bramble. “The byproduct is the meat,” Caroline said.
Dylan and Caroline Wallace hope to expand the operation to multiple breeds of heritage pigs, allowing them to dig up the roots on other properties where homeowners are looking for alternatives to gas-powered machinery to till the soil. They also hope to offer more meat products from their pigs, including whole pigs that islanders or restaurants could purchase. “We’re trying to create the community that we want to live in, and not feel like we have no control over it,” Dylan said. “Now I'm really excited having a partner like Caroline, being able to take on this big release and do more, and hopefully be able to afford to spend more time farming.
Eat Fire Farm pork chops on a bed of herbs.
Courtesy of Caroline Wallace
Nantucket’s Leading News Source & Beyond
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INTO THE ARCTIC
WRITTEN BY BRIAN
BUSHARD
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT
hief photographer travels to Greenland.
NOBLE
Kit Noble’s photography excursion in Greenland brought him into a sea of warehouse-sized icebergs, humpback whales and seagulls.
It’s early August, roughly 2,000 miles due north of Nantucket. It might not be obvious from the sun just starting to set on the horizon, but it’s midnight on Greenland’s west coast. Kit Noble came to this place to chase the midnight sun, a bucket list item for any photographer searching for the fleeting golden hour sunlight. When you’re this far north at this time of year, the sun never sets. Golden hour becomes fourand-a-half hours of dream lighting, when the icebergs surrounding him glow in picturesque shades of orange and pink.
The territory (a part of Denmark) has been on Noble’s bucket list for over five years
Noble (right) on one of two nearly identical red sailboats, which took him and a group of photographers around a sea of icebergs.
While Noble could have stayed on Nantucket this August, he instead chose the 40-degree tundra north of the Arctic Circle, where sled dogs outnumber people and there’s no road out of town. He might be the first Nantucketer to visit this part of the world. “As soon as you get off the plane, you can smell the ice,” said Noble, N Magazine’s chief photographer who has called Nantucket home for the past 15 years.
“It’s almost like sticking your face in the freezer.”
– Kit Noble
“It’s hard to explain. It’s almost like sticking your face in the freezer.”
This wasn’t an ordinary vacation, but one of a series of photography excursions that have brought Noble to the ends of the Earth. Several years ago, he traveled to Patagonia for a photo tour of the southern tip of South America. He’s also been to Machu Picchu in Peru, Costa Rica, Iceland, India, South Africa, Vietnam and the open ocean. The purpose of these trips is not to relax in the comfort of a luxury resort, but to explore a new part of the world and capture something he’s never seen before. He’s sightseeing through the lens of his Sony.
For the first four days of the trip, he’s solo, wandering down hiking trails that line the shoreline of Disko Bay in western Greenland. The walks take him to an alien landscape, a twisting ice fjord and a sea of icebergs floating and shifting throughout the day, at some points profoundly still and at others cracking as they collide and collapse. “They’re beautiful, peaceful and quiet, but they have these incredible explosions that sound like a thunder clap,” Noble said.
Kit Noble has gone on several trips like this, including photo excursions to Patagonia, Iceland and Peru.
The town of Ilulissat in western Greenland.
Icebergs in Disko Bay.
“[The icebergs are] beautiful, peaceful and quiet, but they have these incredible explosions that sound like a thunder clap.”
– Kit Noble
It washes away the day-to-day anxiety,” he added. At some point during this four-plus-hour dusk, he sits down at a local restaurant for beef from southern Greenland, brought hundreds of miles north by boat. Greenland is not at the top of the list for travelers for good reason. It never gets hot, there’s no swimming, no beaches and limited options for nightlife. There’s also no true night for that matter when the sun never sets—though in the
winter, there’s hardly any daylight. It’s a world of extremes. Author Annie Dillard once dared “people who shoot endless time-lapse films of unfurling roses and tulips” to “film the glaciers of Greenland, some of which creak along at such a fast clip that even the dogs bark at them.”
“It washes away the day-to-day anxiety.”
– Kit Noble
The territory (a part of Denmark) has been on Noble’s bucket list for over five years. Several days into the trip, he hops on one of two nearly identical red sailboats with a group of photographers who have made the trip to Ilulissat—a coastal town on Disko Bay—from around the world. They come from France, the Netherlands, Vietnam and all over the U.S. in search of the midnight sun. In an hour, they’re within spitting distance of the fjords, glaciers and icebergs, a backdrop in a part of the world Noble has not quite seen before. This is the grand finale. He looks into the viewfinder on his Sony. The photos are otherworldly—a sea of warehouse-sized icebergs, humpback whales and seagulls. This is the moment he’s been waiting for.
“I always tell people that I’m really fortunate having chosen photography as my career because it’s my work, as well as a passion,” he said. “Using my camera on a trip like this is very different from going to a job.”
Noble is solo for the start of the trip, wandering down hiking trails that line the shoreline of Disko Bay in western Greenland.
Fog over the alien landscape that is Greenland.
In Ilulissat, sled dogs outnumber people.
LIGHTS, CAMERA, NANTUCKET!
BEHIND THE SCENES OF ELIN HILDERBRAND’S THEFIVESTARWEEKEND
Jennifer Garner and Regina Hall walking down Main Street during the filming of The Five Star Weekend. Photo by Jason Graziadei
WRITTEN BY MADELINE BILIS
There’s something about the weathered shingles and puffy blue hydrangeas of Nantucket that viewers, all of a sudden, can’t get enough of. When Elin Hilderbrand’s The Perfect Couple landed on Netflix in September 2024, the murder mystery garnered 20.3 million views during its first four days on the platform—and leaped to Netflix’s number-one most-watched TV show. Sirens, another limited series loosely set on the island, debuted on Netflix in May, bringing in 16.7 million views from its first four days available, while The Summer I Turned Pretty boasted 25 million global viewers on Prime Video in the first week of its third season in July.
Hilderbrand is an executive producer on The Five-Star Weekend, where she views her main responsibility as ensuring Nantucket is portrayed correctly. She says the cast—including Jennifer Garner, Regina Hall, Chloë Sevigny, Timothy Olyphant and D’Arcy Carden—who worked on the island from September 20 to October 10, “fully engaged in the Nantucket way of life.”
The Five-Star Weekend, on Peacock, will be the second TV adaptation of Hilderbrand’s work, while five of her other novels are in various stages of development. This one hits even closer to home: Much of The Perfect Couple was filmed in Chatham, but with “FSW,” as it’s nicknamed, the cast and crew came straight to the source. “I’m very happy it will feel genuine for Nantucket people,” Hilderbrand said. “There were a few [island cameos] in The Perfect Couple, and there will be a lot more businesses named in The Five-Star Weekend.”
“Jen [Garner] went and filmed herself weaving a blanket at Nantucket Looms and posted it on Instagram. That just made me grin ear to ear, because it’s so good for the authenticity of downtown Nantucket to be embraced by the cast and by the crew,” Hilderbrand said. “They’ve been going to the brewery and The Chicken Box, and they’ve really been immersing themselves in the ways of Nantucket people. Jennifer Garner loves it. She’s like, ‘Elin, I am in heaven.’ And that makes me feel great.”
The production also tapped yearround residents to stand in as extras, including Hilderbrand’s son. Laurie Richards was also a local extra who stood in the background of a scene at Nantucket Memorial Airport. “I was surprised I didn’t know everyone,” she said. “But I was astounded by the amount of trucks and equipment that’s needed for a five-minute scene. The airport was jam-packed with people.”
The crew of The Five Star Weekend provided a behindthe-scenes look along Centre Street. Photo by Jason Graziadei
Elin Hilderbrand, Jennifer Garner and Barnaby’s owner Wendy Rouillard.
Photo by Tim Ehrenberg
THE FILMING LOCATIONS
• Bartlett’s Farm
• The Chicken Box
• The Summer House
• Nantucket Memorial Airport
• Mid-Island Stop & Shop
• Hy-Line Cruises
• Hatch’s Package Store
• Cru
• Main Street
• Easy Street
• Nantucket Boat Basin
• Sconset
Like Richards, extra Jasmine Alcantara was instructed to dress like a vacationer, so she opted to sport her mother’s Nantucket basket handbag. “A lot of the crew from LA had never been to Nantucket before. And the props people loved my mom’s basket. They were just like, ‘Oh my god, I have to get this bag. Tell me where I can buy one,’” Alcantara said. “They all really wanted to embrace the culture and embrace everything about Nantucket in their limited time there. So we were glad to be ambassadors.”
JENNIFER GARNER
TIMOTHY OLYPHANT
CHLOË SEVIGNY
HALL GEMMA CHAN JUDY GREER
The cast and crew of Five-Star Weekend spent three weeks shooting on Nantucket. Courtesy of the Nantucket Current.
Greetings from ACK
With an increase in TV series and movies set on Nantucket in recent years, it raises the question: Have they made an immediate impact on the island’s tourism? The answer isn’t so clear cut.
Town policy doesn’t allow filming to take place during peak season, so film crews aren’t interrupting anyone’s summer beach walks or nights at The Chicken Box. Even so, these shows are bringing increased visibility to the island, and viewers may feel inspired to book a trip.
“While it’s difficult to measure the direct impact on tourism, this kind of publicity may encourage interest in visiting, particularly outside of the peak summer months,” said Shantaw Bloise-
FILMING, BY THE NUMBERS
12+
Public locations on Nantucket featured in the series
NEARLY 70,000
Copies sold of The Five Star Weekend in its first week
2,692
Miles from Los Angeles to Nantucket
22 Days approved for filming on the island
20+
Cast members on the series
1
Jennifer Garner
Murphy, director of culture and tourism for the town of Nantucket. Hilderbrand’s books are a perfect example of that. “We get visitors that call in, explain they’ve experienced the island through the books, and are looking for information to plan their first visit,” said Peter Burke, executive director of the Nantucket Island Chamber of Commerce.
Still, there’s a fear that Nantucket will be flooded with travelers after the release of yet another show. It’s a fear Hilderbrand has considered.
“Nantucket is self-regulating, so there are only so many boats, there are only so many planes, and there are only so many places to stay,” Hilderbrand said. “It cannot be overrun.”
Instead, she envisions a Nantucket where the season is expanded, allowing for more people to have a classic island experience. “My eventual dream is that Nantucket becomes as busy in November as it is in June,” Hilderbrand said. “The season lasts right up until Stroll and we are able to say we are fully a three-season resort.”
Right: A set built in Eel Point. Photo by Kit Noble. Left and Below: The cast and crew at a shoot downtown. Courtesy of the Nantucket Current
A CHORD STRIKING
WRITTEN BY MADELINE BILIS AND BRIAN BUSHARD PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE
Sitting down with rising young musical talent on Nantucket.
As the lead singer of the band Local Notes, Natalie Mack has played at almost every venue on the island, singing covers of classic rock, country and blues songs to dancing crowds. But before Local Notes frequented The Gaslight, The Rose and Crown and Cisco Brewers, the band was content to play together in her family’s garage.
Mack is one of a handful of young island musicians who got their start in middle school and high school, honing their skills at the Nantucket Community Music Center and performing shows across the island. What they all have in common is a desire to play music starting from a young age, the guts to put themselves out there in a relatively small community, and a great deal of talent.
“The funny thing is, we never really sat down and were like ‘All right, what do we need to do to start playing at these places, make money and get recognized?’” said Mack, who studies theater education and musical theater at the University of New Hampshire. “We just loved what we were doing and kept practicing for fun on the weekends. We would play in my garage for hours and hours.”
Those garage sessions included Aidan Sullivan on electric guitar, Hunter Gross on keyboards, Jerry Mack—Natalie’s father—on drums, Jason Sullivan— Aidan’s father—playing bass and occasionally Gabe Zinser on rhythm guitar and mandolin. “My dad played drums throughout high school. We needed a drummer, and he stepped in to help us out,” Natalie Mack said. “He’s ended up staying on as our drummer, because it’s just turned into something so special.”
Soon, Local Notes started playing small gigs like dinner parties. At one event, Mack said, the manager of Cisco Brewers approached the band and asked them to perform there, which the band has done for the past three years. During any given performance, you’re guaranteed to see Local Notes perform a 10-minute long Queen mash-up, which blends parts of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Radio Ga Ga” and “Don’t Stop Me Now.” “People want to dance and hear certain songs,” Mack said. “They want to have fun. We want to have fun.”
NATALIE MACK
Natalie Mack, of
COLIN HARRINGTON
“When I first joined Foggy Roots, I spent a good year getting the style under my belt because it’s very unorthodox, especially ska drumming, which is so different from how you think about playing a drumset,” he said. “I like playing a lot of things now, and the more I practiced the harder the music got to be. It had to be more challenging for me to keep going.”
The moment came for drummer Colin Harrington in 2019, when he was still a student at Nantucket High School. Island reggae band Foggy Roots needed a drummer, and after hearing Harrington play, they called him up to the big leagues, playing drums in front of a crowd at Cisco Brewers and The Gaslight. “Having people come out and see me, it’s surreal,” he said. “It’s so fun to play music to people and with people who are excited to hear what I have to put out there.”
Six years after that first gig, Harrington has made a name for himself on Nantucket. His home on stage is behind the drumkit, where he’s playing most weeks for any number of bands. Now 24, he has earned his spot drumming for Foggy Roots, as well as country twang band Buckle & Shake—two groups that consistently keep him on his toes as a drummer, requiring him to flip-flop between genres as disparate as reggae and country. Harrington is quick to say he has an appreciation for all genres of music, though as a metalhead at heart, it’s not quite the music he was expecting to play.
Photo by Holly Estrow
Drummer Colin Harrington performing at The Gaslight. Photo by Holly Estrow
Songwriter, lyricist and vocalist Joseph Costanzo can’t remember a time he didn’t want to express himself through music. “The itch of wanting to make stuff is always there,” he said. In addition to writing and recording songs, Costanzo plays guitar and films music videos. He shot his first video, “Pretty One,” with a drone, capturing iconic island
Though he’s been living in Boston and taking online courses through Berklee School of Music, Costanzo spends the summer on the island, performing and continuing work on his forthcoming album, Bliss. “My dream is turning this into a career,” he said. “I want to come back home and be somewhat of an inspiration to people who might want to do the same thing.”
scenes: the harbor at sunset, beach grasses in the breeze and Brant Point Lighthouse, to name a few.
“Nantucket overall is a big part of who I am because it’s such a unique place to grow up. It can change your whole perspective,” the 20-year-old said. “I have this lyric ‘Our whole world was in between these shores,’ because that was all I knew for my whole life.” He also points to Nantucket’s close-knit community as a source of inspiration, which has helped him perform at open mics, birthday parties and places like Lemon Press and The Corner Table.
As for what he performs? “I don’t know if it sounds cliche, but it really depends on what I’m feeling,” Costanzo said. His repertoire ranges from singing over acoustic guitar about riding to the ocean to rapping in boom bap songs—a subgenre of ’90s hip-hop—that skew more gritty. His influences, meanwhile, include Felly, Dominic Fike, Mac Miller, Jack Johnson, Bob Marley and Logic.
JOSEPH COSTANZO
Joseph Costanzo shot his first music video, Pretty One, on Nantucket. Photos by Kit Noble.
BUILT THE HOUSE THAT
WRITTEN BY BRIAN BUSHARD PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT NOBLE AND COURTESY OF LANDVEST
Nantucket’s Dave Killen is selling Boston’s iconic Hancock House.
The historic brick building in downtown Boston was once one of the most important homes not just in the city but throughout the American Colonies. Built and owned by Founding Father John Hancock, the house operated as the headquarters for the Continental Army’s paymaster-general. At the height of the Revolution, it was the site where both patriotic and disgruntled Colonial soldiers received IOUs for their service. Today, it’s one of the 35 oldest buildings in Boston—and it’s for sale, tying it to Nantucket in a completely new way.
“This is the most exciting property that I’ve been involved with from a historical perspective,” said island native Dave Killen, a commercial real estate broker who is selling the Hancock House. “The background in growing up on the island and living through the conversion and the adaptive reuse of a lot of the historic buildings that hadn’t really been touched was a wonderful and unique education. When we get into conversations with property owners, builders and with the potential new owners or stewards of historic sites like this, having that background knowledge
Dave Killen grew up woodworking with his father, Bruce Killen, on Nantucket. Now he's selling one of the oldest buildings in Boston.
is very much a product of growing up on Nantucket. Having an early career here is critical to help drive a successful outcome in these conversations.”
It’s no stretch to say that for Killen, woodworking and historic preservation are akin to a family tradition passed down from generation to generation. Killen, a broker for LandVest, is the son of former Nantucket Select Board member Pam Killen and late builder and woodworker Bruce Killen. He’s the grandson of Sidney Killen, the man responsible for the original Christmas tree on the wooden so-called Killen Dory that’s become a
fixture in Nantucket Harbor every winter.
Dave Killen’s classroom was his father’s mill shop on Cliff Road, called Rock and Roll Millworks/Coskata Woods. Building doors, windows and trim, and sourcing material from reclaimed heart pine flooring and beams were like a final exam. He even built a few flat-bottomed skiffs with his dad at the shop, including one that served for a few years holding the family’s Christmas tree in the Easy Street basin. He was also instrumental in the restoration of an 1887 Victorian cottage on Milk Street, a massive project featured on PBS’ This Old House.
Nantucket’s Dave Killen called the Hancock House the most exciting property he's ever been involved with.
Exposed post and beam work on the first floor of the Ebenezer Hancock House in Boston.
As multigenerational locals that grew up on an island before it began to evolve into what it is now, there was a tremendous amount of traditional knowledge about how buildings were constructed,” Killen said. “That led to an interesting mix of tradition and creativity that is so important to the idea of preservation and adaptive reuse, whether we’re talking about a specific detail or a whole building.”
That education came in handy when he was tasked with selling the Hancock House for LandVest. “When I walked into [the Hancock House] for the first time, I was stunned by how much original work there was,” Killen said. “Growing up out here and working for my father and with some of the other builders of that generation, there
were times when we were doing a restoration or renovation project when you’re digging into walls, and history is literally falling out of the walls.”
Since its time as a headquarters for the Revolution, the house has seen a wide range of uses. In the late 1700s, it was operated as an inn where guests included George Washington and French politician Marquis de Lafayette. For 150 years, the property was home to the longest continuously running shoe store in the country. It was also run as a restaurant at one point, and since 1976—200 years after Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence—it has been owned by the law firm Swartz & Swartz, which preserved the interior of the structure, including its two iconic Later Georgian first-floor rooms. The property is listed for $4.995 million.
The building—an L-shaped design that sits on 100% of the lot—is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been lauded as one of the best preserved examples of the Colonial era. The original beam work is still in place throughout much of the house, along with beveled window casings designed to allow more light into the home’s interior and which are still in place well after
The first floor of the building, which once operated as the headquarters of the Continental Army, maintains one of the best preserved interiors of the late 1700s.
electricity made the style obsolete. One room on the first floor has an original hearth with a beehive oven and an antique mantel. On the third floor, a hipped roof reveals exposed post-and-beam work, with a cathedral ceiling and original eastern white pine flooring. “We want to preserve it,” Killen said. “The stewardship component in all the conversations we’ve had has been key.”
“I think understanding the authenticity of these things, and understanding the level of craftsmanship and architectural detail—starting with the authenticity of the materials through the craftsmanship and the millwork—really helps the conversation with owners and with potential buyers,” he added. “They’re in this world of historic preservation and adaptive reuse, and there’s always this stewardship component with owners and potential buyers. The credibility of these conversations starts in the details.”
The Hancock House sits in Boston's Blackstone Block historic overlay district and is one of the 35 oldest buildings in the city.
The original hearth in the Ebenezer Hancock House.
HER DRESS: CARTOLINA X CENTRE POINTE JEWELRY: THE VAULT
HIM
SWEATER, PANTS AND WATCH: MURRAY’S TOGGERY SHOP
PHOTOGRAPHER: BRIAN SAGER
EDITORIAL STYLIST: PETRA HOFFMANN
HAIR STYLING: DARYA AFSHARI GAULT AND JOHN STANIELON OF DARYA SALON + SPA
MAKEUP STYLING: JURGITA BUDAITE OF ISLAND GLOW
MAGGIE INC. MODELS: BRIAN HANLEY AND LEELA ANZENBERGER
LOCATION: 21 BROAD HOTEL
SWEATER AND JEANS:
COLLECTIONS
HER:
MARISSA
JEWELRY: SUSAN LISTER LOCKE
HIM
TOP, JEANS, BELT AND WATCH: MURRAY’S TOGGERY SHOP
HER DRESS: REMY JEWELRY: KATHERINE GROVER HIM
SWEATER, JACKET AND PANTS:
MARISSA COLLECTIONS WATCH:
MURRAY’S TOGGERY SHOP
SHIRT, SWEATER, PANTS AND WATCH: MURRAY’S TOGGERY SHOP
SWEATER AND PANTS:
MARISSA COLLECTIONS
JEWELRY:
SUSAN LISTER LOCKE
HER
SWEATER AND SKIRT: CARTOLINA X CENTRE POINTE
HAT, SHIRT AND BAG CHARM: MURRAY’S TOGGERY SHOP
BAG: NAGUA
JEWELRY: THE VAULT
HIM
SHIRT, JACKET AND PANTS: MURRAY’S TOGGERY SHOP
HER DRESS: SOUTHERN TIDE
JACKET:
MURRAY’S TOGGERY SHOP
EARRINGS AND RINGS: DARYA SALON AND SPA
NECKLACE:
KATHERINE GROVER
JACKET:
MURRAY’S TOGGERY SHOP
HIM
SHIRT AND SWEATER: SOUTHERN TIDE
PANTS AND WATCH:
MURRAY’S TOGGERY SHOP
HER SWEATER, JEANS, BELT, BAG AND BAG CHARM: MURRAY’S TOGGERY SHOP
LARGE NECKLACE AND EARRINGS: HEIDI WEDDENDORF LONG NECKLACE AND RINGS: SUSAN LISTER LOCKE HIM SHIRT, SWEATER, PANTS AND BELT: MURRAY’S TOGGERY SHOP
HER SWEATER: MURRAY’S TOGGERY SHOP
PANTS: REMY
EARRINGS: DARYA SALON + SPA NECKLACE AND BRACELETS: THE VAULT RING AND GOLD BRACELET: SUSAN LISTER LOCKE HIM
SHIRT, SWEATER, JACKET, PANTS, AND WATCH: MURRAY’S TOGGERY SHOP
WHEN THE FREEZES OVER HARBOR
IMAGES COURTESY OF THE NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION'S ARCHIVES
The frozen harbor in the 1870s from what’s now the Unitarian Meeting House.
The Steamship Nantucket frozen in harbor ice near Brant Point in the late 1800s.
The Easy Street boat basin with a thin layer of ice in the early 1900s.
The fishing vessel Sharon Louise aground on the North Shore, covered with snow and ice, 1960s.
The ferry Island Home passes through the ice to Steamboat Wharf in 1893, as spectators look on.
On Hummock Pond, ice boaters seek freezing temperatures to sail across the hard ice, 1940s.
In colder weather, ice boaters even sailed on top of the harbor, 1910s.
A scalloping boat and dinghy frozen in Hither Creek in the 1960s.
Straight Wharf to Brant Point frozen over in 1961.
Brant Point Lighthouse covered in snow in 1981.
Fishing boats and a Coast Guard cutter docked at Steamboat Wharf in the winter of 1961.
Islanders frolic through the snow and ice over Nantucket Harbor in 1934.
A boat stuck in the harbor in the 1940s.
Workmen and a horse cutting ice at Washing Pond in 1892.
the football team jumping out to a 7-0 record while outscoring their opponents 278-72. The girls field hockey and boys soccer teams clinched their latest state tournament berths, with soccer coach Rich Brannigan notching his 300th career victory. The boys golf and girls soccer teams both put up successful seasons, while the girls volleyball team continued building its young core.
The Nantucket Current was there to cover it all.
NANTUCKET SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
With 11 short films made on and inspired by the island, the Nantucket Short Film Festival put on an event not to be missed on stage at the Dreamland Theater. The winner of this year’s audience choice award was Penny Dey’s “ while NMagazine
Current photographer Charity Grace Mofsen took home the best new filmmaker prize for her film, “The Meeting Place. the Shorts Festival has provided a spotlight on local filmmaking, with dozens of comedies, documentaries, dramas and everything in between on the big screen for a night in October. Films are also available at nantucketshorts.com.
HALLOWEEN PARADE
Halloween fell on a Friday this year, and despite cloudy skies and strong winds, islanders were ready to celebrate. Hundreds of costumed children and families paraded down Main Street for the annual event, put on by the town, Chamber of Commerce and The Inquirer and Mirror, with kids trick-or-treating at downtown shops and restaurants, presenting jack-o’-lanterns for the first annual pumpkin contest, and showcasing some truly memorable and unique costumes.
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Mira Zwillinger
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