Rob Ritchey of Chatham, who has just released his debut novel, “Marriette” (West Barnstable Press, 2020), has an unusual background for a novelist: he is a podiatrist who recently returned to painting portraits. “I grew up in the Boston area being an artist, but then life pushed me along other paths,” he said in an email interview last week. “I was a machinist for a while after college and then on to medical s...

On a recent Saturday, John Morgan drove his battered red F350 pick-up onto a long dirt road that runs along the Chatham Municipal Airport. The bed of the truck was full of lobster trap line of varying thickness and colors; a lobsterman getting rid of some of his old gear from a storage spot there had helped sling it aboard. The gear, no longer fit for a life on the ocean, travelled to Sandwich where it join...

As the turkey leftovers become grandma’s best soup ever, many thoughts are turning to the December holidays. Houses and yards are getting decorated with lights, greens and ribbons and gift giving has become the priority for those with the means to do so. As I spread bird seed on the ground for the sparrows, doves and squirrels this morning I found myself thinking about the gifts we give and receive, many...

This year has been challenging for everyone, especially our local theaters, dance studios, and anyplace where groups of people come together. As we've all learned to work around restrictions on gatherings, some organizations and individuals in the community have risen to the occasion and shone, finding ways to keep the give-and-take between audiences and performers, between instructors and students alive and kick...

No one will argue that this has been quite a year. It’s been a topsy turvy mess of sickness, misinformation, uncertainty, and deliberate malfeasance by people that should know better. It has caused many of us to spend sleepless nights looking out dark windows onto an increasingly desolate landscape of ignorance and wrongful distortions falling like leaves from the silhouettes of menacing trees. We are mo...

“It's sad to lose Uhtred,” author Bernard Cornwell said of the hero of his Last Kingdom series of books, the 13th and final volume of which, “War Lord,” was released this week. The prolific Chatham novelist began writing about Uhtred of Beddanburg, the warlord of the book's title, 17 years ago in “The Last Kingdom,” the first book in the series, the arc of which follows the character from his youth to his old ...

CHATHAM – In the timeless classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the main character, Scout, tells her brother during a conversation, “I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.” Inspired by that motto, the Rev. Buster Keith Waters made his life's mission helping others. Now he's brought his passions to the Cape, specifically to Chatham Airport, where he's passing on his love of flying, and urging local youth to aim...

If you happened to venture within listening distance of the First Congregational Church of Chatham on Oct. 19, you might have heard a little shouted French. That’s because an employee of Casavant Freres, a pipe organ-building company founded in 1879 in Saint Hyacinthe, Quebec, was directing two of his co-workers and six men from a local moving company as they hauled 1,501 pipes for the church’s new organ up th...

You know that folding table decorated with a fishnet where authors sign their new work outside Yellow Umbrella Books? Weather permitting, Yellow Umbrella owner Eric Linder will sit at that table on Nov. 21 signing his own new book, “The Blue in the Eye of the Girl at La Jolla: New and Selected Poems” (Loom Press, 2020). The signing and the sale of a Bob Staake giclée print are a part of the store’s fun 40th an...

With all of the Zoom calls, virtual socializing via Skype or FaceTime and streaming of movies and TV shows at home instead of going out for live theater or trips to the cinema, sometimes it seems like everything we do these days involves staring at a screen. Wouldn't it be nice to get cozy, close your hardworking eyes and enjoy a bit of mystery and adventure on the limitless screen of your imagination? You are...

“Geyser is furry and he warms you when you are cold. He makes me feel safe. I know he's not going to hurt me,” says 10-year-old Ava from Harwich about the horse she rides at the Emerald Hollow Therapeutic Riding Center in Brewster. Says Ava's mom Sara, “I adopted Ava when she was 19 months old. She had a long history of inconsistent care — a hard beginning to her life. By the time she was six she had panic att...

“I just want to go on record again saying I think this idea is stupid.” Eli had been saying this for as long as the rest of us had been planning, and at this point it was too late to change his mind. We stood at the metaphorical point of no return at the edge of the parking lot at Race Point in Provincetown. Twenty-seven miles of sandy beach lay ahead of us. It had stopped raining but the wind coming off the w...