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Meet Your Neighbor
Laura Coffin
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER
 | | ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent |
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Date of birth March 12, 1984
Likes most about Nantucket Knowing everyone and the number of opportunites available.
Like least about Nantucket That it's a small town where it is hard to be private when problems arise.
Favorite TV show The Office Island native Laura Coffin is a creative young woman who likes to stay occupied, an achievement her level of curiosity makes easy to accomplish. Born to Hank and Cynthia Coffin, Laura graduated from Nantucket High School in 2002. She wanted to explore the world, but her parents wanted her to further her education, so she compromised by studying cartography and geography at Bridgewater State College.
"Instead of reading maps I ended up making them," she said.
Her urge to travel was satisfied after college when she spent about three months in France as a member of the Help Exchange program working on farms in return for room and board. One farm she was on took in abandoned animals in the hope of fostering relationships between the animals and children with disabilities.
In the spring of 2007, Coffin returned to Nantucket to help her father at Skinner's family golf course in 'Sconset and decided to stay. Since last November she has worked at Geronimo's pet store but soon will be going to Craftmaster's where she worked during college summers and learned to make leather belts. Coffin enjoys creating things. She has tried her hand at scrimshaw and has begun experimenting in the art of jewelry, with a dream to eventually sell her original designs.
She also keeps bees and will add five hives this year to her existing two. Coffin sold their honey at last year's Farmer's Market, and since then has produced soap from the beeswax and will sell that at the market this summer. By that time she may have learned to make the wax into a lip balm to add to her wares.
"I'll try it out on my friends and see how it goes," she said.
Further, Coffin is enrolled in a Community School woodworking class and is building a full-size Shaker dining table. She plans to take a wine tasting course.
"You could pick whatever size you wanted, so I thought why not go for the gold?" she said of her ambitious table project. "You've got to stay busy."
Coffin, who also reads often and plays darts, pool and a little golf with friends, still wants to travel and finds Nantucket is a good place to work and save money for a year, then take a trip and return to the job that enabled that opportunity. Some day she would like to settle on the island and raise a family, but she views that as an obstacle her generation faces because of Nantucket's rising property values.
"I can see how that will be a problem," she said. "I don't know how they are going to solve it."
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