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...

It is pouring rain outside my window as I write on this dark morning. By the time you read this, an election may be decided, and the world may be changing, at least in terms of hopefulness or despair. Most of the time a few days doesn’t matter when writing on a deadline, but this week it feels odd to be writing without knowing what is going to happen in the days between writing and publication. The one thing I ...

Veterans Day has an especially powerful meaning for parents whose children are stationed overseas, frequently in harm's way. Krissy Frisbie's son Jonathan, a 2018 graduate of Monomoy High School, surprised the family on his 18th birthday. "He joined the Marines!" she recalled. "It was a surprise and at first I was worried, but now I'm very proud that he has chosen to serve his country." Jonathan, who was...

These past few days, weeks, months – heck, let’s just say four years – have been full of arrows to our hearts. These unprecedented horrors will go down in history, and not on the proud side. The people that have perpetuated them will not suffer, but gloat, even if defeated. Destruction was their goal. Unrest and distrust, their tools. They haven’t won. Yet. They must be defeated. Soundly, so they can crawl back i...

Local Towns Plan Halloween Events   Saturday is Halloween, and while local authorities aren't encouraging house-to-house trick-or-treating due to the pandemic, there's no outright prohibition against the tradition. Health officials urge people to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention protocols for the holiday, which include general precautions such as wearing face masks (not just costume masks, ...