YACK on: Slow
Grant Sanders

You, reader, are a breed apart. You’ve been able to take the time to read this deep into the newspaper. All the way to the back of the first section. You’ve read Dan Drake’s column (of course, who doesn’t?) and now you’re starting in on mine. Thank you.

You have clearly learned the finer points of time management. You are able to operate at a pace that allows you to consume a newspaper on a regular basis. In other words, you are a part of that shrinking minority of people on Nantucket who have mastered the art of slow.

Soon, I will be recording all of my old columns digitally and creating podcasts of them. For those who do not know — you artfully slow people — a podcast is like a little radio show that is broadcast over the Internet, on demand, and then automatically uploaded to subscribing iPod music players all around the globe. That way, iPod users can listen to me reading my column while they are driving to work, or brushing their teeth or painting some trim.

I have found that a growing number of folks here are alacrity-afflicted and want to be able to multitask while they consume information. If you’re one of them, you will find the podcast of this column at www.yackon.com/rss/slow.mp3 although if you truly are one of the speedy folks among us, the likelihood that you are reading a newspaper has around the same odds as finding a sheet-rock contractor who enjoys competitive ballroom dancing. My guess is, you’re reading this online. While talking on the phone. And checking your email. And making coffee. And folding an origami crane.

Here on Nantucket, people who enjoy an easy pace of life are quickly being replaced by people who are just in a rush to do everything. Folks here want to zip from Madaket to ’Sconset in mere minutes. They want to be able to get in and out of the Stop & Shop quickly and efficiently. And they want to be able to drive into town and find a parking space immediately. We have become a nation of instant gratification junkies, expecting a fix wherever we go.

It wasn’t always this way. Speed and instant gratification are not traditionally Nantucket values. Consider the whaleship captains and deck hands who sailed to the Pacific and back, sometimes gone for a year or more. Or their wives, who waited and waited for their husbands to return, biding their time between working in retail shops on Centre Street and pacing the widows walks of stately old manors, looking for a hint of sail cloth in the distance. A lot of knitting going on in the interim.

Slowness was in their DNA. When they wanted butter, they had to churn it. They used sheep to keep the grass mowed. A trip to town required saddling a horse, or hooking up a team.

I find it more than a little interesting that on Nantucket, where we’ve done such a good job of preserving artifacts and the overall historic character of the island, that we have failed, thus far, to take steps to maintain the historically slow pace of life here.

As host of YACK, the Nantucket Online Community at www.yackon.com, I’ve heard people suggest that stop signs are a sign of an impending apocalypse. That a drivethru coffee place is vital to the health and well being of our citizens. And that parents should refrain from dropping their kids off at the elementary school because it attenuates the traffic flow on Surfside Road, so that people on their way to work crawl there in 12 minutes instead of a zippy eight.

We currently appear to be considering ways to change our roadways in order to accommodate the influx of cars we’ve seen on Nantucket: Turning lanes. Road widenings. Front yards turned into parking lots.

I see these measures as painfully backward. I think we ought to eschew speed and slow down. Way down. Let’s slow building and watch the number of big commercial vehicles flowing this way and that on our roadways reduced to a trickle. Let’s figure out a way to ensure that we only allow as many cars onto the island as our roadways can sanely accommodate. And let’s import 50 barges filled with cobblestones and cobble every street within a five-mile radius of the Milestone Road rotary.

Not only will this slow traffic down, it will mean extra business for the island’s mechanics who will get busy tightening bolts on vehicles that have loose parts due to excessive vibrations.

Let’s slow down, Nantucket, and learn the fine art of waiting once again. It’s part of our heritage, after all. I’ve done my part. As usual, I have waited until the very last minute to submit this column to our fine editor.

YACK on.

Grant Sanders is the Host of YACK the Nantucket Online Community which is best viewed using a really, really fast broadband connection. Check it out at www.yackon.com today.

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