Earth and fire would come later in the day, via a great bonfire, but Saturday morning of Orleans’ Celebrate Our Waters weekend was all about wind and water. A photographer and a reporter (coincidentally husband and wife), completely inexperienced with sailing, had volunteered to board a sailboat, courtesy of Pleasant Bay Community Boating (PBCB), to skim the bay’s gentle waves. We’re so inexperienced, in fact,...

In an era when many women did not possess a driver’s license, over 1,000 women became Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), flying with the U.S. military for two years during World War II. In 1999, when these women’s stories were still little known, award-winning filmmaker Laurel Ladevich wrote and directed the fascinating one-hour documentary “Fly Girls” about WASP. The film is in the PBS series American Expe...

This is an edited version of the full schedule. Go to orleanspondcoalition.org for important details and to attend events requiring registration. All events on Saturday and Sunday are free. Come by Headquarters in Depot Square: 8 to 4 on Sept. 16 and 17 for * Full Schedule Information including maps and late breaking events * Orleans Pond Coalition: information and membership table * OPC’s “Health...

Prolific American playwright Neil Simon is turning 90, and the Academy of Performing Arts is celebrating him with their next two productions — “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” and “The Sunshine Boys.” “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” is one of Simon’s lesser produced plays (he’s written over 30). It opened on Broadway in 1971, starring Peter Falk and Lee Grant. In 1975, it became a film featuring Jack Lemmon...

Glenn Starner-Tate knew his calling as a young child. However, as sometimes happens, life put a few obstacles in his way. “My Music and Me,” now playing at the Chatham Drama Guild, is a one-man autobiographical show starring Starner-Tate that debuted in 2016 at the Cotuit Center for the Arts. The local musician, actor and playwright shares a lifetime of joys and sorrows while slowly rediscovering his childhood...

“Everything seems to taste better at the beach,” author Kristen H. Scholz Demeo’s mother used to say. Demeo, a member of a four-generation Cape Cod summer family, has published “Harwichport: Three Harbors, One Port: An Inspirational and Historical Guide to this Seaside Haven,” a 33-page valentine to Harwich Port. The short book is designed to help other visitors make their own memories in Harwich Port. “I w...

Generous Cape Cod Chronicle readers, many of whom are summer visitors or seasonal residents, dug deep and raised more than $149,000 for the Family Pantry of Cape Cod as part of the newspaper's first-ever summertime “Helping Neighbors” campaign. The campaign topped its $50,000 goal thanks to the support of a group of anonymous Chatham summer residents who issued a matching grant. While the summertime campaig...

The Monomoy Theater Company under Terry Layman's astute direction concludes a remarkable summer season of live theater with "Once In A Lifetime," Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's comedic expose on the vice and folly of Hollywood's film industry on the eve of talking pictures (1928). In a cosmos of great pretenders, where stars align and misalign in a universe radiating energy, the show's beguiling theme crea...

When her book club read “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett, a novel set in Jackson, Miss. in the early 1960s, Jen Stello of Chatham was struck by a scene in which a woman’s front yard is filled with donated “commodes” instead of “coats.” Faced with the challenge of portraying “The Help” in flowers for the third annual Books in Bloom party and fundraiser sponsored by the Friends of the Eldredge Public Library, Stel...

Writers rule unequivocally, even when feigning writer's block this week at the Monomoy Theater when Neil Simon, Anton Chekhov, and Bernard Cornwell share the story-telling professions in the heart-warming comedy "The Good Doctor." The Monomoy Theater Company transports the audience to a 1910 theater in the Russian countryside where the cast re-enacts 11 of Chekhov's lyrical and laconic short stories. "The G...

 Sadly, the prolific American playwright A. R. Gurney died in June at the age of 86. Elements Theatre Company’s “Sylvia” is a fitting tribute to the man who liked to poke fun at the anxieties and foibles of the upper-middle class. “Sylvia” is an unusual love story. It centers around a stray dog named Sylvia (played by a younger adult female), who chooses her new owner Greg, as he dozes in a New York City park....

Everyone experiences the feeling. Wouldn’t it be nice to be a kid again? Attending the Cape Cod Theatre Company’s production of “Peter Pan and Wendy” brings out the child in all of us. By sheer osmosis, surrounded by that special sound of laughter and joy of children in the audience, you’ll feel the years just melt away. The power of live theater is alive and well at this home of the Harwich Junior Theatre. Pe...