Interviews & Features

Ray Owen is the antithesis of corporate American farming. He is a small farmer’s small farmer—a man who will give you all the time you need, and not because he has a surplus. He gladly stops to share every last kernel of the joys and challenges that define a lifetime of farming, having spent the last thirty years coaxing an impressive yield from an island not known for its agricultural powers, or fertile soil for that matter.

When Marjan Shirzad is not serving as the Nantucket Historical Association’s Director of Outreach and Special Programs, she’s exploring the world. Her passport bears stamps from Pakistan, Iran, Oman, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, India, China and countries all over South America and Europe. If Antarctica had customs, she’d have a stamp from there too. This past spring, Shirzad journeyed out into the High Canadian Arctic with a group of elite climate scientists. Joined by world-renowned adventure photographer, Martin Hartley, Shirzad takes us onto the ice.

In 1980, 117,000 bushels of scallops were harvested from the waters of Nantucket. In 2010, that number fell to around 7,000. Today, local shell fishermen and marine biologists have teamed up in an effort to revitalize Nantucket’s bay scallops and rescue one of the island’s storied professions.

The past three months have seen economic and financial turmoil unprecedented in America since the Great Depression. Amidst all the gloom and doom, fear and frustration, gaining a clear perspective of the crisis and understanding where it is going is challenging at best. Is this the next Great Depression? Is America destined for a downward spiral? To bring light to some of these concerns, N Magazine sought out leading Harvard scholar and former IMF economist, Kenneth Rogoff to hear his particularly well-informed viewpoint.