Shouldered Oar Films

Sorry for the delay. Both films should be up on the site before Thanksgiving.
John

After last week’s screening of Beyond Quixote a woman told me that the very idea of windmills is at odds with what she knows as the soul-restoring beauty of this island. She is from California and argued that nobody would do anything like this to Big Sur. Fair enough. When I mentioned the household budget-restoring idea of cutting back on my energy bills, someone else tossed in the idea that more than a few years would pass before a windmill actually paid for itself and began bringing me any true savings.

This is the joy of people gathering in a room and kicking around an issue concerning how we live. It is exactly what this excercise is all about. In fact this page is set up as a place to continue that discussion. So we encourage you to leave a message and be part of it.

It always seem to me that most of the small conflicts on this island contain a sort of tug-of-war between aesthetic values (natural beauty or history) and everyday life concerns. Is that what we are looking at here? I have heard that Sustainable Nantucket is working out some ideas. This is the place to keep that discussion going.

Thanks to everyone who made it to the Atheneum for last weeks screening. We will try to have the two films we screened on the website in the next week or so.

John

Friends,

After our summer hiatus we will return to the Atheneum with two new short films on Wed., Sept. 30. at 7pm.

The first is called Personal History: Louise McGarvey and is a look at the early days of island aviation through the eyes of this wonderful 96 year-old woman.

The second film is called Beyond Quixote and looks at the short history and new possibilities of wind power, from the home versions of the 1980s to the wind turbines at Bartlett’s farm, to the possibility of a wind turbine at the high school.

I hope you can join us and be part of the conversation. Community works best when everyone’s voice is heard as part of robust debate. See you there.

John

The Nantucket Oral History Project was begun as a way to both collect those personal histories that make up our collected story, an as a place to kick around the idea of what our future on this island might look like.

If you have gotten this far, please take the next step. Watch the films. Send us your comments and suggestions. Help us decide what stories to tell next.

John Stanton

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Market Driven is a look at the shops that once lined Main Street, the ones who closed their doors for good, the ones that survived, and what the future looks like.

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Down Street is a walk down the Main Street of our memories, a look at downtown when it was the center of island life.