By Leslie Linsley
Photography By Terry Pommett

The traditional exterior of this Key West home—purchased by Nantucket residents George Korn and the late Richard Kemble, who redesigned the pool and completed other renovations in the adjoining cottages that form one compound— belies its modernist interior and decor. Korn and Kemble, co-founders of the preeminent folk art and antiques business the Forager House Collection, incorporated modern architectural styles into their Key West home along with Asian and folk art accents.

About this time of year, many Nantucket residents who can take a break are exchanging ideas about where to go for a winter getaway. Whether it’s for a brief vacation or for
two or three months, for a number of reasons, many Nantucketers choose Key West, Florida.

What do the islands of Key West and Nantucket have in common? For one thing, they share a similar history, with most of their commercial developments revolving around the sea. Key West’s early homes were humble and modest, and were often constructed by ships’carpenters who more often than not “designed” their houses as construction went along, very much the way early lean-to’s and their incumbent warts evolved on Nantucket. Sea captains arriving in Key West from New England often drew upon their experiences back home to build sturdy, well-proportioned but smaller-scaled homes with double hung sash windows. Widow’s walks, so popular in coastal New England towns, are also found atop grander Key West houses along that island’s waterfront. Unlike the rest of Florida, Key West houses are made predominantly of wood and are often two stories high— rather than the low, one-story concrete structures found elsewhere in the region.

Another similarity between Key West and Nantucket is their mutual sense of community. And there’s the matter of their comparable size, with both islands small enough to navigate on foot or bicycle. Unlike the rest of Florida, Key West has no super highways or highrise condominiums.

Nantucketers also love the insular feeling of living on an island and the advantages that one can derive from a small town with a sophisticated mentality. Key West offers a myriad of diverse cultural activities from regular house and garden tours to live entertainment.

On this small island of Key West, measuring just four miles long by one mile N Magazine Stroll 2007wide, Nantucket food enthusiasts also never run out of great restaurants to experience. Without leaving the United States, there are plentiful opportunities in Key West for fishing, boating and beaching, all in the dead of winter.

The big difference between the two islands, then, is weather. Located 400 miles south of Miami and 90 miles north of Cuba, Key West is the only subtropical city within the continental United States. The consistently balmy weather in Key West remains a major attraction for many Nantucket residents over the winter months.

Gentrification is happening in Key West just as it is on Nantucket, but it’s moving much more slowly. Automobile traffic sometimes overloads Key West, as it does on Nantucket. Affordable housing is a problem as well. But Key West’s history reveals that the city has reinvented itself with the shifting winds. Islanders there, as on Nantucket, recognize that growth is inevitable.

Key West is a cultural community with an offbeat attitude; that means it doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is why Nantucketers who visit there often say, “Key West still feels the way it used to be on Nantucket, before we began to grow up.”

Text adapted from the new book “Key West: A Tropical Lifestyle,” from Monacelli Press, by author and Nantucket resident Leslie Linsley with photography by Nantucket resident Terry Pommett.

By Marli Guzzetta
Photography By Nathan Coe

Since the days when whalers’ wives ran Nantucket’s businesses in the absence of their husbands, island women have been ahead of the curve when it comes to assuming control over financial matters. For just over a decade now, a group of island women have been transforming the ability to run a business into the power to run a stock portfolio. Financially and otherwise, they are still performing better than their off-island peers.

Last month, the Pew Research Center released the findings of its Pew News IQ Quiz, which consisted of 12 questions authored to gauge the respondents’ grasp of current events. The quiz addressed everything from the name of Russia’s president to the religion of presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Although men scored more accurately on every question, the query with the biggest difference in accuracy between male and female respondents was the following:

Do you happen to know if the Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently closer to:
2,000 | 4,000 | 8,000 | 14,000?

On this question, 53% of male respondents answered correctly, compared to 29% of females. That statistic is not a fluke.

In February of this year, financial guru Suze Orman released the hardcover “Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny.” In her book, Orman postulates why women are, statistically speaking, less knowledgeable regarding money than are their male counterparts: maybe they were never taught to think about finances, maybe they save that aspect of their lives as a place for rebellion or maybe they’re just too busy.

No matter what the cause, Orman, like most financial analysts, states definitively that money—especially investing—is a horribly sensitive subject for women. This is true even though over 90% of women will end up handling their own funds at some point in their lives.

Savvy investments

Nantucket’s Ten Star Investors club has consistently bucked that trend, meeting once a month in members’ homes to discuss the stock portfolio they’ve been cultivating since March, 1996, when they affiliated with the National Association of Investment Clubs, voted in officers and bought their first stock, Nike.

The group’s “senior partner” position rotates among its members, with Daryl Westbrook, owner of Westbrook Real Estate, currently heading the group. In October of this year, the club gathered at Westbrook’s home with bottles of wine and plates of cheese and crackers. Before they settled down to business around a kitchen table strewn with Halloween candy and financials, the women sounded more like they had arrived at a party than at a meeting for crunching numbers.

“We’re an eclectic group of women who are at different points in our lives,” summarized the group’s historian, Ann Balas. Ten Star Investors is populated by variations of young and old, single, widowed and married, employed and retired women. Just about everyone volunteers in one form or another, serves on a local board of directors and runs a company or a home.
“It seems that wine and cheese with an occasional winter bowl of chili accompany our investment gatherings,” added Balas. “Not only do we share our investments and education of finances, we have become friends.”

This atmosphere of friendship has been crucial for many women entering the world of finance via investment clubs. “Our investment clubs skew about sixty five percent female,” said Bonnie Reyes, president and chief operating officer of NAIC. “That’s very much in contrast to when our organization was founded in 1951, but the trend has been for more and more women to become interested in investment clubs, because women enjoy the social setting.”

Reyes said she’s found women’s investment groups to be “more socially focused. There’s more likely to be food and networking and more fun things involved. With men, it’s more business.” This convivial group atmosphere initially helps to demystify the process, added Reyes. “But the main thing we’ve been able to demonstrate is that you can start with as little as ten or twenty dollars a month, and you can build considerable wealth.”

Ten Star Investors did, as Reyes described, begin small. They’ve been consistently on the right track, with only a few layovers in the early years. “Someone looking at our early financials would have thought we were a wine club that occasionally traded stocks,” said Ten Star’s financial officer, Mary Malavese, who along with Balas was one of the group’s original 10 members. This year especially,the group has seen the financial fruits of its labors, with its portfolio so far earning a 13% rate of return. By comparison, the highly respected Vanguard 500 index fund has earned 11% to-date.

The group has done all of its own research for the approximately 50 stocks it has owned over the decades. “Stock brokers, who needs them,” said Malavase rhetorically.

No snap judgments

Using the on-line company Buy and Hold, the women purchase stocks after research, discussion and a common vote. “We had one member who wanted us to vote on stocks and then drink the wine,”remembered Balas.

“Yeah, she’s not with us anymore,” said Westbrook.

At about 15 members, Ten Star follows about as many stocks as it has women, because each member is given a stock to follow and report on every month.

Because of this system, the group shies away from volatile stocks that require daily monitoring. “Mainly because we’re in it for the long haul; we don’t make snap judgments,” said Malavese.

They made one exception this year, however, for Aluminum China, a stock on which the group doubled its money in a short period of time, and to which they credit much of that 13% rate of return. “It was like, ‘Oh my God.’ It was too good,” said Malavase. “We were sending each other e-mails, and we were all on our cell phones, asking ‘What’s it doing now?’”

After a buy-in fee, each member pays monthly dues of $35 and owns a stake in the group portfolio. John Deer has been one of the group’s best performing stocks, while the stock in which they own the most shares is General Electric.

Ten Stars do buy the occasional “sexy stock”—Krispy Kreme Donuts is a recent example—although the group avoids investing in tobacco and fast food. It’s more because those stocks are reliable, and not because the group bases its investments on its idealism. “We’re not moral at all,” said former salon owner and Realtor Carol Miller. “We invest purely on scientific gains.”

That’s not entirely true. The group rejected purchasing Wal-Mart stock, because the women didn’t approve of the company’s culture. Real-life experience factors into their purchasing as well, with each member of the group valued for her unique opinion.

“Almost all these women own their own companies or are somehow involved in the community,” said Westbrook. “They’re really pretty savvy women in their own individual fields, even if they’re housewives, and the group benefits from that exchange of knowledge and personalities.” For example, When Caroline Sallee Reilly, owner of ACKtivities event planners, became a new mom, she encouraged the group to purchase stock in Kimberly-Clark, which owns Huggies diapers.

The whole point of the club is to merge the known with the unknown and to learn through and with one another. “It’s not like being a student in a classroom, where you’re afraid to ask questions out of fear of looking dumb,” said Sheila O’Brien Egan, owner of Swain’s Travel Agency.

“I never watched the stock market. In the beginning, I couldn’t even get on the computer,” recalled Miller. “I’ve learned a lot.” Malavase said the group’s members have grown together at a pretty uniform pace. Now, they’re up for just about anything, except mutual funds. “Why would we be?” Malavese said. “We are a mutual fund.” As for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, when asked during an impromptu phone call if she knew what it was, Sallee Reilly responded without missing a beat, “About 3,000. No, wait, that’s the NASDAQ. The Dow is at around 13,500.”

It’s easy to put your best foot forward with New Year’s Eve Resolutions, but sometimes the other foot needs a lot of help. That’s why we’re giving you a whole leg-up on your resolutions by starting a dialogue, if you will, on how to segue new-year motivation into meaningful change.

According to Nantucket life coach Gordon McGregor, transforming the way you see change is the first important step. “Look at goal-setting as a vehicle for positive change not punishment,” he said. “For example, think about it as living a debt-free life, not getting out of debt.”

Those who know us here at N Magazine can attest to the fact that we are not life coaches—unless your goal is to attend more cocktail parties—but we also think that a tried and true way to improve one’s chances of success is to start early and be prepared. Can you imagine how jazzed you’d be if you lost a few pounds before New Year’s?

We asked a few prominent Nantucket residents to share some resolutions for 2008, to which we tacked on a few useful resources. We then asked McGregor to share some time-tested suggestions for engendering success and avoiding the common post-holiday self-lament. For more on McGregor’s work, go to gordonmcgregor.com.

His tips are as follows:

Break it down

Say for example you want to lose 20 pounds. The number one reason people don’t realize their weight loss goals is that they’re not realistic about timelines. You didn’t gain it over night, so don’t expect yourself to lose it overnight. Break it down into increments that you can manage over one week, then one month, then three months, then six months.

Make time for you

Time management is always a problem with goals, so work into your schedule time to focus on succeeding with goals you set. Remember, just as you make time to show up for friends and family, you need to make time for yourself. And once you make a date for yourself, don’t break it.

Be accountable

It’s important to have someone holding you accountable for your progress. So consider, for example, meeting with someone weekly who can help and coach you, such as a friend who has the same goal. Again if your goal is weight loss, you may want to think about hiring a trainer, a nutritionist, a life coach or all three. Whatever your goal, hiring an appropriate professional can support you in being successful.

Focus on goals

Keep your goals posted around your workspace or home, so you can remain focused and committed. Include motivational quotes or images with helpful notes.

Be patient

You might make mistakes on your way to achieving your goal. That’s okay. Because of this, every resolution takes twice as long as anyone thinks it will, which means you need to give yourself time and patience. Also, New Year’s is often a reason many people want to make positive changes. But start whenever you feel ready to take on the work the goal involves.

By William Ferrall

Two years ago, I embarked on what I intend to be a lifelong program of physical fitness. My weight had hit 300 pounds plus. At 5’10” in height, I was morbidly obese. And I felt it. My feet and knees ached. I had trouble tying my shoes. My overall cholesterol was 280. My blood pressure ran dangerously high without medication. I felt like crap.

In September of 2005, I began personal training sessions with Nantucket Health Club trainer Dave Schulz after a visit to Nantucket Cottage Hospital nutritionist Suzanne Davis. Dr. Diane Pearl ordered up physical exams including laboratory tests, a cardio stress test, an echocardiogram and a colonoscopy. Thankfully, none of those showed irreparable damage.

Since then we’ve tracked my progress in these pages. By June of this year, I had lost over 90 pounds and was feeling great. My latest laboratory tests showed a safer overall cholesterol of 180. My LDL and HDL levels were excellent. My blood pressure stays within normal ranges with medication. Working out five days a week and eating healthy meals dropped my body fat from 35% to 18%.

This past summer brought a setback. I accepted many party invitations. I missed days in the gym because of work schedules. By September I had gained back 14 pounds and my body fat rose to 22%. I lamented backsliding. Schulz and Davis both assured me this happens commonly on Nantucket, where our social calendars are busiest in the summer.

I got back at it with Schulz in personal training sessions and cardio workouts. I visited Davis for a pep talk on meal planning. My downfall was in drinking too many empty-calories at cocktail parties and late night meals that followed often when my judgment was foggy.

So far, I’m back down by 7 of those 14 pounds. I’m back in the gym. Stay tuned. Next spring we’ll revisit my “journey” in more detail and that of Barbara Gookin, whom we launched on a similar effort just over a year ago. Her path to better health has been a different one, but she, too, has reported a significant weight loss and a renewed vigor from getting fit.

Nantucket Health Club
(Nantucket’s only fitness facility open to the public),
10 Young’s Way, behind Key Post Corner on Old South Rd.
508-228-4750
nantuckethealthclub.com.

Suzanne Davis, RD
Nantucket Cottage Hospital.
Call 508-825-8141

Having worked at Nantucket Cottage Hospital, Lisa Gulley was aware of how difficult it was to avoid seeing island acquaintances in the hospital’s rooms and corridors. So when she decided to undergo a tummy tuck and liposuction with Nantucket plastic surgeon Dr. Christine Hamori, Gulley chose to go to Hamori’s office in Duxbury, where she spent her first recuperative hours in a hotel room.

According to Hamori, Nantucket patients have gotten noticeably more concerned with privacy in the past four years. This is likely due, in part, to the fact that many islanders remember a time when cosmetic surgery was an embarrassing source of cocktail gossip. Paradoxically, although Nantucketers have developed a greater interest in privacy over the last four years, they’ve also grown more comfortable with the concept of elective procedures.

According to Hamori, who is certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, 2007 has been the first year she’s seen a steady influx of Nantucket patients year-round. Traditionally, her busy seasons had been in the fall and in late spring, when people were preparing for swimsuit season. Hamori attributes her increased number of patients to the fact that “aesthetic” medicine has gone mainstream. “Because it’s more in the mainstream, people feel it’s much less of a stigma,” said Hamori, who credited television shows like “The Swan,” “Extreme Makeover” and “Nip/Tuck” for spreading awareness on aesthetic procedures.

On Nantucket, the average age of those seeking plastic surgery from Hamori had tended to skew older, in the 40- to 50-year-old range. Lately, Hamori has seen a spike in postpartum women in their late thirties, forties and fifties “who feel like they lost breast volume while nursing.” Gulley falls into the “postpartum” demographic. After delivering two children via caesarian-section, Gulley decided to see Hamori for the tummy tuck and liposuction, which she viewed less as a cosmetic procedure and more as the reversal of cumulative wear and tear.

Cosmetic “corrections” In addition to an increase in breast augmentations, procedures like Botox and laser-skin resurfacing have seen a rise in popularity on Nantucket and nationally. According to the National Institutes of Health, Botox and laser skin resurfacing were in the minority of elective surgeries whose frequency has increased dramatically since 2000, with Botox seeing a 420% climb and laser skin resurfacing up by 54%.

Just over four million Americans had a Botox treatment in 2006, and more than 260,000 received a laser treatment. These two are categorized as “cosmetic minimally-invasive procedures” and have been joined, in recent years, by soft tissue fillers, which Nantucket Dr. Joseph Spychalski also offers.

These soft tissue fillers’ active ingredient is hyaluronic acid, which is too new to have many statistics available, but last year hyaluronic treatments appeared among the top five cosmetic, minimally-invasive procedures in one National Institutes of Health study. Catering to Nantucket patients’ concern for privacy, Spychalski has been working out of his island home since October 2006.

Upon entering the foyer of his tastefully furnished two-story house, one would never suspect that there is a fully outfitted and spotless treatment room on the second floor. In this setting, the doctor is just as exposed as the patient. In his kitchen, lightship baskets made by his mother line the top of the cabinetry. Spychalski said his patients almost all appreciate the friendly intimacy this arrangement affords.

“If you have any fears, like I do sometimes, he makes you feel so much better,” said Samantha Powers, who’s had laser treatments to regenerate her skin’s natural collagen, which diminishes in everyone over time. “He doesn’t push things on you. He’s so conservative. Plus, the fact that he’s an MD helps.”At 38 years old, Powers said she chose to undergo laser resurfacing as a preventative measure. “I’m a healthy person. I’m a personal trainer and holistic diet counselor,” she said. “I take care of every aspect of my body, so why wouldn’t I take care of my face?”

“I think the most exciting use of these new lasers is in preventative skin care,” said Spychalski. “For the first time, we can offer young men and women in their late twenties and in their thirties laser therapy that can help them maintain that youthful looking skin and slow development of aging characteristics.”

Laser treatment, which Spychalski is the first to offer year-round on Nantucket, can address a whole litany of symptoms. Denise Lockley, 54, underwent laser genesis to treat the rosacea she’d inherited from her Scotch-Irish ancestors. “I always looked like I was sunburned, with a bright red forehead and cheeks,” said Lockley, who, after a battery of treatments, says her face is “so much better and firmer… much smoother and nicer.”

Registered Nurse Kathy Molloy, who works with Dr. Timothy Lepore, also administers Botox and soft-tissue fillers like Juvederm. She started working with Botox 25 years ago at Boston Children’s Hospital, where it was used to treat muscular contractions in children with cerebral palsy. “That’s why I use it without hesitation,” Molloy said.
“I know it’s safe.”

For four years, Molloy has handled concerns of safety and privacy by introducing Botox to women via Botox parties held at the Westmoor Club, J. Parave’s salon, Darya’s salon and in island homes.

The party host, who gets free Botox, invites others who are both comfortable and curious to learn more and, if they’d like, have it done on site. “Some people have no problem with it. Some people at the party say, ‘No, they cant do it, then calling up after the fact and schedule it,”

Molloy said. Most have been happy with the results, according to Molloy. “I never have anyone say they’d never do it again,” she said.

Surprising benefits

Sometimes the medical side effects of aesthetic procedures are so prodigious that the whole concept of “aesthetic” medicine is re-framed for the patient as a procedure bringing about improved overall health.

Gulley’s total recovery time took about six weeks, and one of the biggest benefits she discovered during that period was actually medical. An insulin dependent diabetic, Gulley saw her hemoglobin A1c blood sugar reading decrease dramatically after the aesthetic procedures, and the number of insulin shots she took each day went from six to one.

Gulley said seeing the improvement in her health and appearance has been all the incentive she’s needed to maintain her figure, along with diet and exercise. In the best-case scenario, Hamori said, a body-contouring procedure will be a catalyst for a positive lifestyle change, as it has been for Gulley.

“I tell people it’s an investment; you have to have a lifestyle change to make this work,” said Hamori, who estimates that about half of her patients succeed in this. This phenomenon of feeling better after aesthetic surgery may help many patients feel more comfortable with the overall concept of aesthetic surgery. And for patients of aesthetic surgery, “feeling better” has a whole range of implications.

Most patients experience a kind of self image high after undergoing successful treatment, according to Hamori. Doctors have long known that higher self-esteem is helpful in maintaining behaviors generally conducive to good heath.

For this reason, even surgeries that seem to have no immediate bearing on health may ultimately impact a person’s mental and, subsequently, physical health in positive ways.

Earlier this year, for example, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Florida’s College of Nursing, Cynthia Figueroa-Haas, released findings that women who undergo breast enlargement experience a boost in self-esteem and improved feelings about their sexuality. What’s more, the expression “you’re as young as you feel” might actually be scientifically sound.

In 2004, a group of scientists at the Douglas Hospital Research Center determined that people with low self-esteem exhibited more age-related changes in cognitive and endocrinological functions, compared to their peers in a high self-esteem group. If this is true, aesthetic surgery might be another tool in helping us to ward off age-related impairments

By Marli Guzzetta with Jeanette Garneau
Photography by Nathan Coe

Good food, good friends and maybe a game or two. No matter how technologically savvy and busy we become, the traditions of a New England dinner party in fall have weathered centuries of cold and soggy nights. On one in particular, Joe and Renee Gamberoni invited four other couples for a five-course autumnal repast prepared by private chef Chris Carpenter and then a few down and dirty games of Texas Hold ‘Em.

It was a party to commemorate the “winning hand” of Tom and Leslie Bresette, who were celebrating their thirteenth anniversary.In addition to the Bresettes, who brought most of the wines, Rhett and Betty Dupont, Jamey and Debbie Bennett, and Rich and Amy Gammons arrived without any little ones in tow. With 17 kids between the five couples, a night without children was a welcomed respite in the Shimmo home that Joe Gamberoni recently completed for his family; he and Renee, who is an occupational therapist with the Nantucket school system and founder of the STAR program, have three sons and one daughter.

The couples originally met through the various activities in which their children participate collectively. Joe and Rhett, however, go all the way back to Utica College, where they were roommates before moving to Nantucket in 1994 to establish the custom builder Cross Rip Development Corporation, which built the Gamberoni home. The couples have been sharing a rotating poker game once a month for the past three years, and have even traveled to Las Vegas together. Just through the front door, a plate of fresh green grapes, pears and figs garnished a sampling of cheeses. It was the first simple gesture of gastronomic pampering Carpenter would extend that evening.

A graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan, Carpenter interned at Vong in New York City before working with Peter Wallace in the Oran Mor kitchen on Nantucket. She also cultivated her knowledge in cheeses doing everything from front-of-the-house work to catering at the former Fahey and Fromagerie deli, experience evident in the simultaneously decadent and balanced cheese plate she arranged for the Gamberonis’ guests.

“It is great to cook for people who are your friends, especially when they let you roll with the menu to make it seasonal,” said Carpenter. “This group is a great bunch of ‘foodies,’ so it makes it that much more rewarding to cook for them.” An anniversary party was a particularly resonant event for Carpenter, who was helped in the kitchen by her fiancé Tim Lonergan.

Having arrived on island in 1991 and worked in many Nantucket restaurants, Lonergan currently serves as the dining room manager at Nantucket Golf Club. The couple recently bought a home, and when they’re not planning their wedding, they’re brainstorming about expanding the private chef work they’ve recently begun together. Carpenter noted that a private chef’s work is different than a personal chef’s in that a private one prepares a complete meal from start to finish for a certain evening, while a personal chef will prepare pre-cooked meals for a family for a set period of time.

“Tim is a great partner for me in this endeavor,” said Carpenter, who prepared for a first course Nantucket Bay scallops drizzled with maple and Riesling cream, with pancetta and crispy shallots. “He’s such a great complement to what we enjoy doing; he has a positive and caring way of taking care of things. We work well as a team.”

Carpenter said she prefers to work with “clean, seasonal food,” and every course here glimmered with at least one flavorful fall staple. The second course featured fresh pumpkin ravioli, sautéed apples and cranberries with cognac, as well as toasted pecans and oregano brown butter. In the third course, fresh pears adorned the micro-greens.

For the fourth course,Carpenter prepared roasted local flounder with braised fennel and fall cherry tomatoes, wild capers, lemon and prosciutto. Their stomachs full, their mouths singing,the guests heartily engaged with the meal’s culinary coup de gras: grilled Brandt Beef hanger steak served with spaghetti squash, butter-poached garlic and golden chanterelles finished with white truffle oil. Brandt beef is a standard-bearer in the humane cattle industry, which Carpenter supports.

“I definitely go organic and humanly raised animals,” said Carpenter, whose applause was the contented sighs and even slight groans of men and women experiencing the joy of a delicately prepared meal in the comfort of a friend’s home.

And for dessert, the company enjoyed Jody Levesque’s custom-made poker themed cake, bearing the words “A Winning Hand! Happy Anniversary Tom & Leslie.”

After dinner, the couples rolled themselves down to the basement, which the Gamberonis created to be a playroom for both children and adults.In addition to a small arsenal of toys,the room is outfitted with a pool table, flat screen television and poker table. Generally, the couples play Texas Hold ‘Em for three our four hours together. On this night, like most others, a good portion of the discussion is dedicated to sharing funny stories about the kids, 14 of which are under the age of nine.

“When we play, it’s sometimes hard to concentrate because of all the laughs,” said Gamberoni, who ended the night by taking three people out in the final hand with three 8s and two 3s. A Full House was a fitting way to end one of the better nights the couples could remember having shared.