Like many others, I have this deep, abiding love of Hurricanes. Sometime in the midst of August, my fancy turns to the Weather Channel and that most passive of all hopes for storm. I watch them form off the Azores, march westward, and then turn north.

Now, I am sound enough in my mind to understand that a tarantella from the swirling ladies of the Caribbean would do a lot of nasty, personal damage. I donπt want to see my roof somersaulting through the wind on itπs way to town, nor do I want to live in a house with two boys, but no water or electricity for a week or so. I am sympathetic to the Ratnerπs and their geotubes. If I faced the blank, gray face of roiling nature, I might do the exact same thing. The rational part of my mind that buys broccoli and pays electric bills likes seeing those hurricanes whip out to sea south of us. But the rational part of my mind does not control the remote control.

My love of hurricanes comes from three unpleasant facets of my personality. First, hurricane watching is a passive experience. Hurricanes are the perfect sofa sport; I can do nothing to either bring or deflect ≥Juan≤ as he forms over the Gulf Stream. If I practice my chipping often enough, my golf scores will go down. But there is nothing I can do to make ≥Juanπs≤ cloud tops colder. Second, I like to bear witness and survive. I would like to one day be an old coot at the Hub declaiming ≥The Big One≤ to all who will listen.

Mostly, I think I want a Hurricane because it will be a big reset button for the island. A category four will come staggering over Madaquecham and flatten the place, forcing us all to start again. Juan will wipe it all clean. Multi-million dollar houses will blow away like tinker toys and George Washingtonπs barn wood will wash up at Dionis. Then we can all start fresh.

Juan, however, will blow out to sea far to our east and that great ≥reset≤ will remain out off the coast for the foreseeable future. No storm will ever come and clear Nantucket back into the fifties or earlier. Meanwhile, the Ratnerπs and the rest of us need to worry about the flood.

The incoming flood of money should have those of us who live on and love the island more than a little worried. In the last three weeks, the islandπs papers have reported on two new exclusive clubs for sailing and tennis, a huge fund-raiser at the golf club, and a 40 million dollar week for the realtors. A quick walk through the Real Estate Review shows at least twenty properties for sale for over 5 million a piece. Nantucket has moved from Chatham to Woodstock to Aspen while we have been cleaning sand from our toes.

At the same time that the plutocrats Gulfstream in here, the Peeps have their moving sales and are shipping out on the rising tide. Some are leaving rich from a nice sale. Some are leaving poor with cancelled rent checks. But they are all leaving.

The flood that forces them out comes from increased costs and decreased wages. Rent costs more. The boat will cost more. Taxes (for sewer) will cost a lot more. Groceries and gas cost more. Day-care costs more. Doctors and medicine costs more. Meanwhile, building is down and fly-over workers continue to take jobs and projects that would have gone to Nantucket firms in the past. Leslie Goodspeed (who I wish well) is the new Nantucket worker. She comes in on the first flight and leaves on the last.

For a year round family, $1500 rent (or mortgage) plus $600 in groceries plus $1200 in health insurance plus $800 a month day care adds up to one way to Hyannis. The money no longer comes in to offset this; not from his job, her job, renting the house, or selling the kids. Madaket Sunsets and Sanford Farm Strolls are wonderful things, but they donπt bring in the do-re-mi.

The Gulfstreams will keep coming. The Big Koslowski wedding this weekend will bring more plutocrats eager for south west winds and sand in their shoes. The island will change again, to an island of waiters, caterers, realtors, golf pros, and landscapers. We will move inexorably to being the Country Club off Cape.

So, when the rest of us move off to the lovely old farmhouse in Colchester, we will put our photos in the albums and mount the pictures in the hall. Books will still have sand in their spines and the summer clothes will hide under the polarfleece. And in August, we will still watch the Weather Channel and wait for the Category Five that will bring us back home.