May 22 - May 29
Published by
Inquirer and Mirror
–In This Issue –
•Memorial Day Weekend Calendar
Nantucket Yacht Club
THURSDAY, June 12 6-9 pm
Heavy Hors D’Oeuvres Open Bar Silent Auction
Exciting Raffle Packages by Cranberry Alarm Clock
A Benefit for PASCON Palliative and Supportive Care of Nantucket Music
$250 per person
RSVP BY MAY 31
Thursday, May 22
Live Music: Rae the Band
4-7 p.m. Cisco Brewers, 5 Bartlett Farm Road. New York City’s Rae the Band will perform.
Karaoke
10 p.m. Gaslight Nantucket, 3 North Union St. Let your inner rock star shine. No cover.
Live Music: 7 Day Weekend
10 p.m. The Chicken Box, 6 Dave St. New England party band 7 Day Weekend will perform. Additional shows Friday through Sunday. 21 and over. Cover at the door.
Friday, May 23
Behind the Seams
10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, Nantucket Whaling Museum, 13 Broad St. Organized by the Nantucket Historical Association, “Behind the Seams: Clothing and Textiles on Nantucket” presents more than 150 objects from the NHA’s costume and textile collections to tell stories of making, meaning and island identity from across Nantucket history. Free with museum admission.
Live Music: Buckle & Shake
4:30-7 p.m. Cisco Brewers, 5 Bartlett Farm Road. Nantucket’s own alt-country band Buckle & Shake will perform.
Open Night at the Observatory
9 p.m. Loines Observatory, 59 Milk St. Join professional astronomers from the Maria Mitchell Association for a guided tour of the night sky, including the moon, planets, star clusters, nebulae and more. Register on calendar page of www.mariamitchell.org
Live Music: Freeballin’
10 p.m. Gaslight Nantucket, 3 North Union St. New England-based Freeballin brings its high-energy mix of covers and originals to the Gaslight.
Saturday, May 24
Figawi Race Weekend
Marking the unofficial start of the summer sailing season, the Figawi sailboat race pits more than 100 boats of all lengths and designs against each other in a race from Hyannis to Nantucket. The
SATURDAY, PAGE 17
and
ing
By Kendall Graham kgraham@inkym.com
Zack Couron doesn’t just play songs, he builds them live from the ground up.
The 30-year-old multi-instrumentalist, based out of south Florida, will make his Nantucket debut on Memorial Day for a week of performances across several venues, showcasing his unique, one-man live looping performance style.
Couron utilizes a loop pedal station and several instruments including guitars, cajon drums, shakers and keyboards alongside his vocals to create a rich, fullband sound completely solo.
He constructs each track in real time, layering rhythm and melody into something dynamic and unexpected.
“Everything that I perform is always 100 percent made live right in front of you,” Couron said. “There’s no pre-recorded tracks or anything.”
Audiences at Cisco Brewers and the
Brotherhood of Thieves will see Couron create songs from scratch right in front of them.
He will begin by clicking on a pedal placed on the ground with his foot, and play a short section with maybe a shaker or a guitar. When he clicks the pedal again, everything he’s played within that time frame will repeat. From there, he can begin layering more elements (drums, voice, keys) on top of the original track to fill out the sound.
“By the time all of that is going, it sounds like a full band is playing, and then I’ll start singing and playing lead (guitar) on top of it,” Couron said.
“I think being able to do all the instruments all the time keeps me from getting bored on stage.”
Couron has been utilizing looping for
about eight years and has experimented with several different types of pedal stations. He currently uses the Boss RC600 loop pedal that has six individual channels within which he structures his songs, placing one instrument or element in each of those channels.
This set-up grants him total control over the sound dynamics. He can drop and re-integrate instruments at will, which he says helps the audience stay engaged in the performance.
With the six tracks, “There’s six different things I can hit,” Couron said. “So, I could put drums on one (channel), guitar on one, bass on another.”
“That’s a huge advantage with keeping it fresh, because sometimes when people are looping on a single track, they can’t take (things) away and it gets redundant. There are no elements being added or taken out to build up momentum in a song.”
His live sets weave together threads
of folk, funk, reggae, ska and hip hop, held together by groove-forward improvisation and a knack for reading the room. One set might lean sunny and reggae-heavy and the next could skew soulful and percussive, depending on the crowd and the energy in the room.
Couron was born in Oceanside, Calif. and grew up in San Diego, tagging along to the beaches with his surfer father and uncle who often played artists like Sublime, Bob Marley and lots of reggae music. These early influences helped shaped his sense of rhythm.
“And then growing up a little more, I started to get into folk (music) and artists like Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan,” he said.
He additionally cites a love for hip hop. In addition to his original music, when he performs covers, he’ll often lean into artists like Eminem, Nelly and even
By Peter McEachern I&M Columnist
Remember those carnival mirrors that transformed your reflection into something wonderfully unrecognizable?
The ones that stretched, compressed and reimagined your familiar features into something entirely new?
Sauvignon Blanc is wine’s answer to that hall of mirrors, a chameleon grape whose expression shifts dramatically depending on who’s crafting it and where it grows.
Like those childhood reflections that delighted and surprised us, this impulsive grape reveals different facets of its personality across continents and winemaking philosophies.
Born in the verdant landscapes of western France, Sauvignon Blanc carries its untamed heritage in its very name: “Sauvage,” meaning wild, a nod to its ori-
gins as a freely-growing vine.
First documented in the 18th century, this green-skinned wanderer established its classical expressions in the Loire Valley’s limestone soils and Bordeaux’s diverse terroirs.
These ancestral homes gave birth to two distinct personalities: the flinty, mineral-driven wines of Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé and the more complex, often oak-influenced blends of Bordeaux, where Sauvignon Blanc finds a harmonious partner in Sémillon.
The Loire’s clear expressions – from prestigious Sancerre to the hidden gems of Quincy, Reuilly and Menetou-Salon – speak in whispers of flint, smoke and fresh herbs.
Each appellation adds subtle variation to the theme: Sancerre’s elegant purity, Pouilly-Fumé’s smoky intrigue, Quincy’s approachable lightness, Reuilly’s delicate aromatics and Menetou-Salon’s structur-
al complexity.
Though united by their vibrant acidity and mineral backbone, each tells a distinctly different story of its slice of Loire terroir.
By the late 20th century, Sauvignon Blanc had embarked on worldwide adventures that would forever expand its repertoire. The 1970s introduction to New Zealand’s Marlborough region sparked nothing short of a revolution.
In the intense sunshine moderated by cool maritime influences, Sauvignon Blanc found a new voice: exuberant, aromatic and instantly recognizable.
New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc’s explosive tropical fruit and vivid herbaceousness rewrote the rules. They catapulted this once-regional grape into international stardom.
This success story inspired winemakers across California, Chile, South Africa and Australia to explore their interpretations, creating a global tapestry of styles that continues to expand.
A tale of two
Today’s Sauvignon Blanc landscape reveals two predominant philosophies, CELLAR, PAGE 16
By Sierra Hurd Contributing Writer
John Green’s newest nonfiction book reminds us all why he is so beloved.
From “Looking for Alaska” to “A Fault in Our Stars,” Green has emerged as the master of plain language in young-adult fiction.
He expertly addresses such everyday topics as friendship, romance, the struggles of social life and communication –and of course, illness – in a manner that is accessible to the everyday reader.
He never lectures to his readers, or dares or shames them into thinking more deeply about a topic.
Instead, he says, “Here are some things I’ve been thinking about lately, can I share them with you?”
Green’s particular brand of humor and deeply humane approach to difficult topics first captured my heart when I read “A Fault in Our Stars” as a teenager.
Green’s first foray into nonfiction, “The Anthropocene Reviewed,” captured me in a similar manner.
A series of essays, “The Anthropocene Reviewed” draws parallels between Halley’s Comet, the QWERTY keyboard and more from Green’s own lived experiences.
The not-quite-a-memoir brought me to tears on more than one occasion, so I was sure Green’s next book would move me as well.
Typically, a book about tuberculosis wouldn’t be a first choice for me, but I purchased “Everything is Tuberculosis” almost the moment it hit the shelves.
Clocking in at under 200 pages, this book is an incredibly readable and heartfelt study of a disease that still has a massive impact, though we in the global north would avert our eyes.
In “Everything is Tuberculosis,” Green expertly weaves personal anecdotes about his time working with and befriending TB patients with historical and social context as well as the finer scientific explanations for the disease’s spread.
It is a book perfect for seasoned public-health readers as well as those trepidatious of the genre.
A particularly poignant piece of this story is Green’s meeting of Henry, a teenage boy with tuberculosis at Lakka Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone. When they first met, Henry was 17, but so small as a result of malnourishment and the wasting disease that Green mistook him to be the same age as his own son (also named Henry), who was 9 at the time.
Despite years spent fighting the disease, Henry was bright-eyed and goofy, spending time cheering up other patients and being adored by his nurses.
He was also deeply sensitive, writing poetry that was at times both despairing and hopeful without being overly sentimental. One such poem thanks his mother Isatu, who “stand(s) close, when others ran away.”
As Green describes the societal factors that influenced and were influenced by tuberculosis across history, we always come back to Henry’s story, grounding the narrative in the present day.
And what an influence tuberculosis has had. From your typical cowboy hat to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand to the very state of New Mexico, TB had a hand in all of them.
In addition to these interesting anecdotes, Green describes our changing understanding of the disease and how to treat it.
We begin with phthisis or “the wasting disease” in the Middle Ages and into the Industrial Age, which was understood to be a result of one’s constitution or unhealthy lifestyle.
Later it became known as consumption and was often romanticized as a “flattering malady” due to its association with respected artists and writers like the Bronte sisters, Edgar Allen Poe, Chopin and many others.
TB wasn’t recognized as contagious un-
til the late 19th century, and later there developed a race among scientists to come up with treatment.
Since then, we have developed vaccines and a variety of treatments for the different strains of TB, to the point where the disease is nearly a non-issue in developed nations.
Still 1.25 million people died from tuberculosis in 2023. Why is that? To get into the details of the historical inequities that have kept the disease alive for so many years is too much to tell in this column, but Green recounts it in a clear, digestible manner.
Green shows the reader that tuberculosis is a disease that is both a result of poverty and one that worsens poverty,
and points directly at the historical context that cause certain communities to suffer from both.
“Everything is Tuberculosis” is a history of the disease, a personal narrative, but mostly a call to action.
Green encourages readers to consider the root cause of tuberculosis: injustice. In a world where everyone can eat, access healthcare and build community, tuberculosis might disappear altogether. Ultimately, Green takes us through the vicious and virtuous cycles that have led us to where we are today and poses a question: which type of cycle will we cultivate?
Sierra Hurd is the young adult librarian at the Nantucket Atheneum.
By Neil Foley Contributing Writer
The leaves have unfurled, The Juice Bar has opened its doors and the pollen-filled perfume days of late May have arrived con gusto.
Spring is my favorite season because of the welcome swell of activity in the natural world after months of dormancy and cold winds.
The island has been blessed with a steady progression of flowering shrubs from shadbush to cherry blossom to beach plum and lilac.
But we will soon be clobbered by the cascade of pitch pine pollen turning everyone’s car a dusty yellow.
Before this pollen powdering, head down Warren’s Landing Road to the edge of Madaket Harbor for a beautiful sunset and a look at a seasonal spectacle of our intertidal zone.
Down Madaket Road past the landfill is a turn-off for Warren’s Landing Road, a dog-legged transition from solid pave-
ment to sandy roads that has seen a noted uptick in development over the last few years.
You can carefully park along the road, but biking or walking is preferred as you pass the quaint neighborhood of Fisher’s Landing.
Warren’s Landing got its name from a tale of bickering cousins, a quintessential small-town occurrence. In the late 1800s, Washington Irving Fisher and his family owned a large farm parcel out in the Madaket/Dionis area, part of which is now the neighborhood known as Fisher’s Landing.
Fisher’s cousin and verbal sparring partner Warren Ramsdell was given permission to pull his fishing dory up on the land adjacent to Madaket Harbor, hence the name Warren’s Landing.
For more on this history and saucy stories of their rocky relationship, you can check out the oral history interview with
Bryan King from the Nantucket Historical Association.
These impressive audio resources from the NHA can illuminate so much fun tidbits of history from islanders, washashores and people of note.
As you venture onto sandy pock-marked roads, look out for turtles moving back to multi-generational nesting grounds and placing themselves in harm’s way.
If you encounter a crossing turtle the best thing you can do is to pull off and turn on your hazard lights. Safety for all is key as you try to help another creature.
If the turtle is small enough, carefully grabbing it by the back of the shell will prevent any errant bites while you move it across the road in the direction it was heading.
No need to move it down the road or turn it around, the turtle knows where it wants to go, and you are just ensuring safe travel.
If the turtle is too big or dangerous you can also simply stand behind it and make sure that it moves slowly but surely to the other side.
At the largest sandy turn in the road, head straight into the narrow road that leads through the shrubby veil and out to the beach of Madaket Harbor.
In the shallow waters near shore, look for horseshoe crabs making their annual journey from deep offshore water to the
intertidal zone to breed.
Wandering male crabs will seek out a larger female and latch on to her shell as she digs into the sand to lay her eggs.
These clusters of breeding crabs can get large as small males jockey for position to fertilize the spawning female.
As part of this annual pilgrimage, the Nantucket Conservation Foundation and Maria Mitchell Association organize counts of breeding horseshoe crabs at
high tides around the full and new moons.
NCF’s surveys conducted along the beach at Warren’s Landing since 2009 have shown substantial increases in population over the last 10 years.
I was lucky enough to have a record high count of 1,371 crabs during a onehour nighttime survey at the end of May last year.
While you may not see as many as that survey, you can still marvel at these liv-
ing fossils moving quietly through gently lapping waves.
Sun sets on Madaket Harbor later and later each day as the warm nights of summer approach. There is no reason to cloister your evenings under blankets and behind windows. Get out and experience the beauty of May in full effect.
Neil Foley is the interpretive education coordinator and ecologist at the Nantucket Conservation Foundation.
Editor’s Note: This article is reprinted from the spring 2025 issue of the Nantucket Historical Association’s Historic Nantucket magazine
By Phoebe Botticelli-Pohl NHA Property Records Specialist
When the Nantucket Historical Association acquired the Old Mill in 1897, it was already one of the island’s most visited tourist attractions, as evidenced by the proliferation of photographs, paintings and other visual representations produced in the late 19th century.
Most of these convey an identical air of romantic antiquity.
The mill appears atop the unkept meadows of Windy Hill in a painterly state of disrepair: the shingles weathered and missing in patches, the windows and doors falling crooked away from their frames, and the sagging tail pole propped
up on an impromptu armature.
The few images that do stand out show the distinctive structure in a drastically different state.
Captured in the final years of the century, they show the results of the NHA’s preliminary repair efforts which left the mill with a bright new exterior and a straight, solid tail pole.
The NHA hesitated briefly before making these necessary improvements.
They understood that the public appreciated the mill’s rustic and worn appearance, but also that its longevity relied upon consistent upkeep.
Describing the dilemma, recording secretary Mary Starbuck recounted, “The question resolved itself into this: Shall we keep a picturesque ruin, for, at the longest, five years, or shall we repair and
shingle the outside and so preserve for an indefinite number of years the ancient interior?”
When they chose repair, this early cohort of NHA stewards set an institutional precedent for prioritizing the preservation of the mill’s working mechanism.
And in the case of fixed-body smock mills, few features are more important than the tail pole, the long boom that rotates the cap and turns the sails into any prevailing wind.
A prominent feature both visually and functionally, this massive 65-foot spar has always been the subject of fervent theorizing, with many wondering specifically about its source.
Some suggest that the original beam was felled locally from among the stands of oak that grew on the outskirts of town.
Others purport it was salvaged from a shipwreck.
Although we will never have a definitive answer, studying its subsequent replacements sheds light on the many incredible difficulties associated with acquiring, transporting and installing a timber of this size.
Decades after the initial repairs of 1897, the Old Mill was once again defunct, prompting an intensive renovation by the organization in 1935.
The goal was to restore the mill to full MUSEUM, PAGE 16
By Susan Nestor Levy I&M Columnist
On foggy, rainy days, soup with great bread is the culinary equivalent of tucking into a down comforter in front of a wood fire.
Homemade soup, executed properly, is a higher food form than canned soup, and should rightly have its own name.
Blended goodness, savory spoon stew or fork-less forage come to mind as descriptors of varieties of this timeless dish. Today’s delicacy is pea pancetta spoon stew (aka split pea soup with pancetta).
Combing through split pea recipes uncovers a kind of culinary decision-tree
puzzle, requiring five critical decisions during the preparation step.
• Decision 1: To soak or not soak split peas in water overnight. Answer: Soak. It eases digestion, but is not essential if time is of the essence.
• Decision 2: Water or broth for liquid?
Answer: Water boiled with fresh carrot, celery and potatoes makes a mock vegetable broth, less salty than store-bought broths.
• Decision 3: Skim the foam off the top during simmering? Answer: Yes. Foam creates a blanket over the soup, delaying
cooking. Foam is ugly. No need to hover, just skim in the first few minutes and accept imperfection.
• Decision 4: Throw a ham bone/ham hock into the stew during cooking? Answer: Only if one is laying around. This recipe calls for pancetta and baked ham, both providing good flavor, despite losing the added richness of the marrow in a bone or hock.
• Decision 5: Spice simply or exotically? Answer: Simple, basic spices are best: Salt and pepper, fresh parsley and thyme, dried marjoram and rosemary.
After making the above decisions, a couple simple variations on traditional recipes add a bit of interest to the pot.
Adding a bit of white wine (reduced to disappear in the sautéed vegetables) and using fried pancetta for both the soup and a topping combine to create depth of flavor.
Pancetta, or variations of it, has been giving food flavor for centuries. Many of our presidents enjoyed pork in all its fresh, smoked and salted variations. Our 16th president managed to enjoy eating pork as an adult despite keeping a pig as a pet as a child.
President Abraham Lincoln’s bodyguard, Colonel William H. Crook (sadly absent the night the president was
(Continued from page 13D)
working order, a task that included recutting the grind stones, recanting the sails and, of course, replacing the tail pole.
The members of the NHA’s Old Mill Committee were evidently “much worried about obtaining a boom suitable for the tail piece.”
That is until Edna Prentice, owner of the beloved island restaurant The Skipper, offered up a suitable spar.
Her donation was the tall mast of the Allen Gurney, the intentionally grounded antique coastal schooner that housed the tea room of her restaurant on Steamboat Wharf.
With the simple addition of a short splice, the timber was successfully repur-
posed and the mill opened for the 1936 season on July 11, with a public demonstration of the fully articulate, rotating cap.
Not only had the NHA restored the signature swivel of the antique machine, but it had done so with an inventiveness and frugality that added to the structure’s already rich and lengthy history.
As NHA secretary Catherine Ray Egers wrote in her 1936 annual report, the “gift of the Skipper mast lends a new note of historical interest as well as value to the mill, in as much as it has served one purpose and is now serving another equally well.”
Nearly 40 years later, in 1972, the NHA replaced the tail pole for a third time.
Although the mast of the Allen Gurney had served the mill well until the late 1950s, the machine had rested in a state of dormancy and disrepair for over a decade.
As in 1935, the major obstacle facing the organization was the procurement of the proper length of heavy timber.
According to newspaper accounts, two years of searching proved entirely unfruitful before the NHA enlisted the expertise of board member Albert “Bud” Egan Jr. and his crew at Marine Lumber Company.
They quickly found an appropriate replacement in the inventory of a New Hampshire-based lumber supplier that specialized in the trade of telephone
poles.
The new treated cedar spar was 23 inches in diameter and weighed more than 3,800 pounds.
Once it arrived onsite, local contractor Mike Lamb devised a plan for its installation.
He and his crew built a temporary trussed chute just under the existing tail pole.
After cutting away the old beam in short lengths and sliding them down the wooden armature, “the new pole was placed in the same chute and dragged upward with a truck and block and tackle to the top of the mill, where it was secured.”
Images of the installation show mem-
MUSEUM, PAGE 22
(Continued from page 7)
each with its devoted following. Imagine holding two glasses that capture this delightful dichotomy:
The first contains a wine crafted with Old World reverence that whispers rather than shouts.
It reveals itself slowly, like morning fog lifting over limestone hills, exposing layers of flinty minerality and subtle herbs, with complexity born of patient barrel aging.
New Zealand’s Dog Point Section 94 might be in your glass, its wild yeast fermentation creating a textural tapestry that transcends Marlborough’s typical exuberance.
Or it’s a Matthiasson from Napa Valley, defying California stereotypes with its restrained elegance and mineral backbone.
These wines don’t chase immediate gratification but invite contemplation, their higher price tags reflecting the additional time, technique and tradition poured into each bottle.
In your other hand dances the vibrant, unapologetically bold expression of fruit-forward Sauvignon Blanc.
This style has conquered wine lists and hearts worldwide. This glass practically overflows with aromatic intensity: grapefruit and lime zest collide with tropical passion fruit and guava in a symphony of freshness.
A Kim Crawford from Marlborough or Honig from California exemplifies this exuberant approach, where stainless-steel fermentation preserves every vivid fruit note.
These wines celebrate youth and immediacy, designed not for the cellar but for the moment, the perfect companion for a sunny afternoon, a plate of freshly-shucked oysters or a tangy goat cheese
salad.
They represent modern winemaking’s embrace of fruit expression and accessibility. These wines don’t require a sommelier’s vocabulary to appreciate their charms.
Like those carnival mirrors of childhood, Sauvignon Blanc reflects different versions of itself, sometimes stretched toward tropical exuberance, compressed into mineral restraint.
Each interpretation tells a compelling
story of place, philosophy and pleasure. The beauty lies not in deciding which reflection is “correct” but in appreciating the remarkable versatility of a grape that can transform itself so completely while always remaining, unmistakably, Sauvignon Blanc.
For those eager to explore the many faces of this chameleonic grape, here’s a curated list of fan favorites that showcase Sauvignon Blanc’s remarkable range:
Old World classics
• Alphonse Mellot “La Moussière” Sancerre (Loire Valley, France): The quintessential expression of mineral-driven elegance.
• Pascal Jolivet Pouilly-Fumé (Loire Valley, France): Refined smokiness with pristine fruit.
• Château Smith Haut Lafitte Blanc (Pessac-Léognan, Bordeaux): A sophisticated mostly-Sauvignon blend with remarkable aging potential.
• Domaine Vacheron Sancerre (Loire Valley, France): Biodynamic brilliance with terroir transparency.
New World, old soul
• Dog Point Section 94 (Marlborough, New Zealand): Wild fermentation and barrel aging create Loire-like complexity.
• Greywacke Wild Sauvignon (Marlborough, New Zealand): Textural and sophisticated with restrained fruit.
• Spottswoode Sauvignon Blanc (Napa Valley, USA): Elegance and subtlety from a Cabernet house.
• Cape Point Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc (Cape Peninsula, South Africa): Saline minerality from Atlantic breezes.
Fruit-forward favorites
• Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, New Zealand): The benchmark that started a revolution
• Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, New Zealand): Consistently vibrant and approachable
• Veramonte Sauvignon Blanc Reserva (Casablanca Valley, Chile): Bright tropical notes with excellent value.
• Shaw + Smith Sauvignon Blanc (Adelaide Hills, Australia): Precision and freshness from cool-climate sites.
Hidden gems
• Grgich Hills Estate Fumé Blanc (Napa Valley, USA): A nod to Loire with California sunshine.
• Domaine de la Charmoise Touraine Sauvignon (Loire Valley, France): Tremendous value from a lesser-known appellation.
• Ata Rangi Sauvignon Blanc (Martinborough, New Zealand): Restrained elegance from Pinot Noir country.
• Mulderbosch Sauvignon Blanc (Western Cape, South Africa): Bold flavors balanced by vibrant acidity.
Whether you prefer the whispered complexity of an Old-World style or the jubilant fruit expression of the New World approach, Sauvignon Blanc offers a reflection to match every mood, meal and moment. The only question remains: which face of this versatile grape will you explore next?
Peter McEachern is the general manager of the Nantucket Yacht Club. He has been buying wine, creating wine lists and running wine tastings since 1983. He can be reached at peter@nantucketyachtclub. org
(Saturday, continued from page 3)
boats leave Hyannis Harbor at 10 a.m. and usually arrive at the Nantucket Boat Basin by mid-afternoon. After a day or two of dockside activities at the boat basin, the racers head back to the mainland.
Bird Walk
8-10 a.m. Maria Mitchell Association, 33 Washington St. Explore Nantucket’s avian landscapes and hidden nooks with local bird guide and Inquirer and Mirror columnist, Ginger Andrews. Register on calendar page of www.mariamitchell.org
Nantucket Clean Team
8 a.m. Handlebar Café, 15 Washington St., and intersection of Old South Road and Lovers Lane. The Nantucket Clean Team meets weekly from spring through fall to clean up trash around the island. Bags and pickers provided.
Live Music: Freeballin’
Noon-3 p.m. Cisco Brewers, 5 Bartlett Farm Road. New England-based Freeballin’ brings its high-energy mix of covers and originals to Cisco Brewers.
SATURDAY, PAGE 18
(Saturday, continued from page 17)
Live Music: Concrete Jungle
4-7 p.m. Cisco Brewers, 5 Bartlett Farm Road. Hip hop cover band Concrete Jungle will perform. Second show Sunday at 3 p.m.
New Moon Fest
5 p.m. Sconset Casino, 10 New St. This annual film and culture event will feature live music by Liz Kelley. food, open bar. alcohol-free adaptogen and herbal-made bar, an online auction and an international screening of films made by women from around the world. Tickets, $150, at app. betterunite.com/newmoonfest2025
Live Music: Buckle & Shake
10 p.m. Gaslight Nantucket, 3 North Union St. Nantucket’s own alt-country band Buckle & Shake will perform.
Sunday, May 25
Live Music: The Dirty Oars Noon-3 p.m. Cisco Brewers, 5 Bartlett Farm Road. Jacksonville, Fla.-based sea shanty, maritime and pirate music band The Dirty Oars will perform.
Memorial Day Parade
1 p.m. American Legion Hall, 21 Washington St. Nantucket’s Memorial Day parade starts downtown before proceeding to Prospect Hill Cemetery, where a brief service will be held, after making a stop at the Civil War monument on Main Street.
Live Music: Timmy Skelly and Wilderado
8 p.m. Dreamland Theater, 17 South Water St. California- and Tulsa, Okla.-based band Wilderado will perform a set with support from singer/songwriter Timmy Skelly. Tickets at www.nantucketdreamland.org
Monday, May 26
Memorial Day
Live Music: Zack Couron
4-7 p.m. Cisco Brewers, 5 Bartlett Farm Road. Florida-based multi-instrumentalist Zack Couron will perform.
DJ Lay Boy
10 p.m. The Chicken Box, 6 Dave St. Boston’s DJ Lazy Boy will man the turntables. 21 and over. No cover.
Tuesday, May 27
Live Music: Zack Couron
8 p.m. Brotherhood of Thieves, 23 Broad St. Florida-based multi-instrumentalist Zack Couron will perform. Additional shows Wednesday through Sunday. See story, page 3, for more on Couron’s island debut.
Wednesday, May 28
Birding Field Trip
7:45 a.m. Linda Loring Nature Foundation, 110 Eel Point Road. Explore birding hot spots and observe birds in their natural habitat on the island’s west end with Linda Loring Nature Foundation staff. Binoculars, spotting scopes and field guides are available to borrow. Register at llnf.org/programcalendar/birdingmay28
Live Music: Buckle & Shake
4:30 p.m. Cisco Brewers, 5 Bartlett Farm Road. Nantucket’s own alt-country band Buckle & Shake will perform.
Monday
Saturday 5:30 - 9:00 pm
Nantucket Cub Scouts at last year’s Memorial Day observance.
(Continued from page 14)
assassinated), shared that as an adult the president was fond of cuts of pork, salted and cured. In the 1800s all such pork cuts were called bacon.
As a child, Lincoln had a fondness for piglets, not in the soup pot, but as a favorite pet.
Referring to his pet pig, Lincoln said, “That pig was my companion. I played with him. I taught him tricks. We used to play hide and go seek. I can see his little face now peeping around the corner of the house to see whether I was coming after him.”
Lincoln was fond of carrying the piglet on his back and probably did so when he ran into the woods and hid all day on the day his father announced the piglet’s inevitable fate.
Just before taking office, in January 1901, Theodore Roosevelt wrote his daughter Ethel about a favorite pig, Maude, who lived on their Keystone Ranch in Colorado. Maude was a large white pig who stole scraps from the ranch dogs and boldly took alfalfa corn from surprised cows. Maude’s fate is unknown.
Main Squeeze Split Pea Soup with Pancetta
6 ounces pancetta, cut thinly in 1/2inch julienne strips
1-2 cups cooked ham, cubed
1 large onion, finely diced
2 large ribs of celery, finely diced
2 large carrots, peeled and thinly diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup white wine
6 heaping cups green split peas
8 cups water
1 peeled carrot, cut in half
1 celery rib, cut in half
1/2 large baked potato, skinned and mashed
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon each dried rosemary, thyme, marjoram
2-3 generous teaspoons salt, to taste 1 teaspoon cracked pepper
1. Fry pancetta in a Dutch oven until browned. Set aside two-plus ounces for topping soup bowls, reserve oil in pan.
2. Warm reserved oil to medium, add diced onion, carrot and celery, sauté until soft.
3. Add rosemary, thyme, marjoram and parsley, cook a minute.
4. Skin and mash the baked potato, add to the pot with minced garlic, cook until fragrant, a minute or two.
5. Add white wine, simmer until absorbed.
6. Add water, halved carrot, halved celery, 2 bay leaves and split peas, bring all to a high simmer.
7. Simmer, skimming foam for a few minutes, then turn down heat to a low simmer, cover the pot and cook for 70 minutes.
8. Add 4 ounces pancetta and 1-2 cups diced ham, cook another 20 minutes or to desired consistency.
9. Place 2/3 hot soup in a food processor, blend until smooth, return to pot with chunky soup, mix.
10. Serve ladled into bowls, sprinkle with 1-plus teaspoon of the set-aside pancetta.
11. Serve with crusty bread or crackers.
12. When reheating, add water to return warming soup to desired consistency.
harbor
and signature New England dishes.
Courtesy of Nantucket Historical Association
Installing a new tail pole on the NHA’s Old Mill, 1972.
(Continued from page 16)
bers of Lamb’s crew watching attentively as an excavator guides the pole up the sloped structure into the opening in the cap.
After three days of work and 12 years of inactivity, the Old Mill was once again prepared to grind corn.
For the past few years, the mill has once again found itself in a state of inactivity.
The cedar tail pole has been patched and repaired a number of times in its 50 years of service, but is no longer strong enough to rotate the cap effectively.
As we prepare for another substantial
project, the NHA’s goal remains to restore the mill’s working mechanism.
As we learned from the repairs of 1935 and 1972, achieving this goal is certain to be arduous, technical and time-consuming. But the mill is a complex machine and the NHA believes, as it did in 1897, that it is not enough for it to be a fascinating relic. It must be a functional one as well.
With patience, we can all hope to see the mill run again soon.
To learn more, visit NHA.org or contact ask@nha.org
(Continued from page 4)
Afroman. What pulls all these genres together is the through-line of a good groove.
“I also love funk and Motown music, like Earth, Wind and Fire, Marvin Gaye and a lot of that old-school stuff,” he said.
Couron plays about 200 shows per year, booking them himself, and enjoys the freedom of traveling around the country.
Since the beginning of the year, he’s made a circuit up the Atlantic coast from Florida to North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C. and New York. Prior to his arrival on Nantucket this week, he will play gigs in Worcester and Boston.
“I just kind of booked myself all over the place,” he said.
“I used to do the weekly thing (at a regular venue) and I didn’t really enjoy it. It started to feel stale, being in the same place and I just like traveling and staying busy.”
Zack Couron performs Monday, May 26 and Saturday, May 31 at Cisco Brewers, 5 Bartlett Farm Road, from 4 to 7 p.m.; and at the Brotherhood of Thieves, 23 Broad St.,
May 26.
