Brooks Library Offers Thanks Editor: The staff and Trustees of Brooks Free Library are having an open house  on Saturday, June 29 from 2 to 4 p.m. to celebrate the completion of our restoration and preservation project, and would like to invite the people of Harwich as well as the community preservation committee to join us in this celebration as a thank you for all your support with this project.  Light re...

“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high” Well, you won’t find the high cotton here in Chatham, but the rest is possibly true. George Gershwin wrote the tune and DuBose Hayward added the lyrics in 1934. Hayward also wrote the novel “Porgy” on which Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” was based. All of a sudden it is the end of June and Chatham summer is upon us. All the sign...

An Open Letter To Harwich Editor: Our town is rich in history: 325 years of community development, culture and commerce. Today, West Harwich needs your support. Route 28 in West Harwich has over 20 buildings identified by the Massachusetts Historical Commission as potentially eligible for state registry listing, individually or collectively. These include many sea captains’ homes. Two buildings are already o...

Hanover Street in Boston’s North End. It was summer, and Matt Griffin and I had stopped on our way back from a horrifically hot day in Salem filming an interview with Emily Murphy under the shade of the trees behind her offices at the National Maritime Historical Site. Then, once in Boston, the humid mid-90s Saturday afternoon was threatening a shower by 4 p.m. Still, we needed a little footage of Paul Revere ...

As Chatham celebrates its heritage with History Weekend this coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it's worth noting that while institutions in town have done a great job of preserving our past, doing so remains a challenge, and may even become more difficult in the coming years. This is demonstrated in two stories in this week's paper. An historic, nearly 160-year-old home at a scenic bend in Champlain Road, ov...

The story of life on the Lower Cape is, and always has been, about water. Years ago, our waterways sustained generations of fishermen, whalers, merchant seamen and others, and they still fuel the economy today. People come to the Cape to be near the water, and that drives the visitor industry and the real estate market. The surge of residential development that began in the 1960s and continues today is undercu...

Harwich Faces Serious Traffic Problems Editor: As a Harwich resident using Route 124, Route 39 and Oak Street, I am reminded daily of two intersections that need to be monitored and supervised. Oak Street is heavily traveled through out the year. The volume and speed of traffic turning onto and off of Oak at Route 39 pose problems in terms of traffic flow and, more importantly, safety. Consider that this...

It really is almost summer. As much as we relish its positive virtues, we dread the perils: endless streams of traffic and never-ending supermarket register lines. Live here for a few years, you learn how to cope; right turns only, and shop early morning or late at night. We’ve traded constant winter road construction for seemingly suicidal clusters of colorfully clad cyclists. But there is one road hazard...

Can You Hear Me Now? Editor: I usually don’t get involved with too many ongoings here in our little town. But it might be time I threw one of my two cents in concerning the roadwork in front of my store. I see that new telephone poles have been placed strategically. But has anyone informed the telephone pole company that “wireless” has been invented? I’m no interior designer, but those poles would look ...

It's hard to square the dismal ratings two members of the Harwich Board of Selectmen, Michael MacAskill and Donald Howell, gave to Town Administrator Christopher Clark in his recent annual review with the picture of the town's administration painted by the analysis of the town's credit rating released this week by bond rating agency S&P Global. MacAskill gave Clark a rating of 42.5, and Howell had an even ...

Residents clearly want town officials to scale back spending. The signs were not-so-subtly telegraphed at recent town meetings, and officials would do well to heed those warnings. Harwich began the trend by rejecting $4.5 million for reconstruction of Lower County Road, defeating funds for the controversial pet cemetery and coming within 34 votes of turning down the $39.6 million operating budget—unprecedented...

The Once And Future Volunteer Editor: Chatham has always been blessed with a wealth of people who are willing to step into a vacuum of need and offer assistance.  The recent honors bestowed on Juliet Bernstein are well-deserved and bespeak a life, not just long-lived, but well-lived also.  The passing last week of Pat Cass extinguishes a charitable light that helped illuminate Chatham’s tradition of giving ...