ORLEANS — With 53 miles of shoreline, you would think there’s enough for everyone to enjoy in this town. Yet some stretches are more convenient than others, some to the point of inconvenience to the property owners whose land abuts heavily-used town conservation or conservation trust property. Sometimes the overuse gets to be too much even for longtime Cape Codders who are happy to share their shore front, a...

ORLEANS — The charter review committee, which is examining the town’s organizing document for possible changes, heard from a citizen at its meeting Feb. 2. That’s news. Rick Francolini was the first ever to take advantage of the public comment opportunity the committee’s offered at its semi-monthly sessions. “You’re kidding,” he said. “I’m glad to be the first. I hope I’m not the last.” So does the commit...

ORLEANS — Pennrose, LLC, has a date with the community preservation committee today (Jan. 28) at 4:30 p.m. to discuss its request for $2 million to help buy the Cape Cod Five’s former operations center for transformation into affordable housing. The company is also seeking $700,000 in total from neighboring towns’ community preserve committees toward the $3.25 million purchase price. “We’ve already met with ...

ORLEANS — Confusing and conflicting information from both sides of the debate over the proposed renovation and expansion of Nauset Regional High School is roiling the waters in the four district towns. What appeared to be a final word (“No”) on further funding extensions from the Massachusetts State Building Authority was actually much more nuanced. Claims that approving the project at town meetings would re...

ORLEANS – Dr. Maxine Minkoff loves to do jigsaw puzzles. In fact, she admits to loving to solve "puzzles of all kinds." The Orleans resident and retired principal of Nauset Regional Middle School, now also the newly named executive director of the Centers for Culture and History (the CHO) in Orleans, has just the right skills for her new job, especially the ability to pull all the pieces together to form a cohesi...

ORLEANS — Carolyn Carey didn’t take a time machine to get to the Orleans Citizens Forum meeting, but she did seem to beam in from a future to which this town might aspire. Carey, director of the Harwich Community Center since its opening 21 years ago, participated Jan. 25 in an online panel discussion titled “Orleans Community Center: Imagine All It Can Be” with Select Board Chair Kevin Galligan and recreati...

“God made mud. God got lonesome. So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!" "See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars." And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud.” Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut ORLEANS — When Cape Cod sat up, it looked like Dana Eldridge. Tall as a lighthouse, casting a cheerful beam on people and places, illuminating fo...

ORLEANS — The May 31 deadline to qualify the redevelopment of Nauset Regional High School for $36 million in state funds toward the $132 million project cost is not hard and fast, according to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. “We’ve granted two extensions (to the project) during the COVID period,” MSBA Executive Director and Deputy CEO Jack McCarthy told The Chronicle Jan. 15. “Nobody has asked...

ORLEANS — Seventy-five years ago, Jack and Laura Johnson of Truro cooked up an idea for a weekly newspaper. Under its second owner, Malcolm Hobbs, The Cape Codder built a headquarters at 5 Namskaket Rd. in with ample space for a printery, including a giant ink tank. The building would shake as a press operator announced each run: “Caaaaape Cod-uh!” The press is long gone, stilled and sold by an off-Cape corp...

ORLEANS — The May 31 deadline to qualify the redevelopment of Nauset Regional High School for $36 million in state funds toward the $132 million project cost is not hard and fast, according to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. “We’ve granted two extensions (to the project) during the COVID period,” MSBA Executive Director and Deputy CEO Jack McCarthy told The Chronicle Jan. 15. “Nobody has asked...

ORLEANS — An online survey that drew more than 700 responses ranked affordable housing and a community center as the top desired uses for the 5.5-acre Governor Prence Inn property between Route 6A and the Cape Cod Rail Trail. The survey was part of a feasibility study, supported by town meeting in October and the affordable housing trust, to help determine whether the town could benefit from buying the prope...

ORLEANS — There were pluses and minuses in the third year of growing at Putnam Farm, Conservation Agent John Jannell told the agricultural advisory committee Jan. 11. “The 2020 season was a good season,” he said of the five plots in the conservation area not far from the district courthouse. “We had five full growers for the first time through the season out there. Everyone was active.” Even so, “I’m not sure I c...