CHATHAM – It's no secret that housing costs on the Cape – and in Chatham in particular – are a barrier to young people moving and/or staying here. With the average value of a Chatham home running $872,615, the salary it takes to afford a house is beyond those offered by most area employers. When members of the town's economic development committee (EDC) began looking at how to encourage greater age diversity i...

The job of a minister always involves counseling people and helping them through the challenges that life brings, both large and small. In the most pleasant and placid of times, it is a task which requires great listening skills, patience, understanding and an open mind. In times of upheaval and uncertainty, the minister's job can go from lighthouse in a storm to lighthouse, lifeboat and lifeguard all in one. ...

Health care professionals agree that, when it comes to feeding baby, the best formula is breast milk. As part of a UNICEF and World Health Organization initiative, more and more hospitals around the world are taking steps to help new mothers breastfeed successfully – and Cape Cod Hospital is among them. Cape Cod Healthcare created a breastfeeding task force last fall to help Cape Cod and Falmouth hospitals ach...

Chatham Elementary School A Bullying and Cyber Communication Awareness presentation for parents will be held on Feb. 7 at 6:30 p.m. at the school. The presentation will include the following topics: gateway behaviors to bullying; understanding digital communications; keeping your children safe online; your child’s digital footprint; privacy settings; social media sites; crossing the criminal line; who’s look...

CHATHAM — It's a workplace truism: stress in an employee's home life leads to stress on the job. Sometimes those stressors are minor, and it helps to be able to share them with a sympathetic listener. Sometimes the stress comes from big problems like a health crisis, relationship troubles or addiction. A new partnership between the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce and Rogers and Gray Insurance is offering an aff...

Newly minted Chatham Historical Society Trustee Stuart Green has been hard at work recently, seeking historic preservation funds to help restore Chatham's circa-1762 Atwood House Museum. Nevertheless, he wants to make one thing clear. “It's not just about the buildings,” Green explains. “It's the people.” Green's passion for nonprofit work, for “giving back as much to the community as I receive,” began when he...

Ninety years ago, Cape Cod became the first region in New England to establish a county health department. It had a variety of goals, including the installation of proper landfills for trash and the testing of all cows for tuberculosis. Ninety years later, the Barnstable County Department of Health and the Environment has new goals, but its public health mission is alive and well. The department began operatio...

Chatham Elementary School Traffic And Pickup To be good neighbors to surrounding homes and residents, the school is reaching out to encourage local families to take advantage of bus ridership for school arrival and dismissal. The car "kiss and ride" pick up/drop off line is currently extending out of the parking lot and cars continue to line up quite a distance down Hitching Post Lane. This is causing t...

Last Friday Chatham Jewelers, Inc. celebrated its 65 th anniversary—a noteworthy milestone for the family-run business. Jewelry is, of course, often given as a gift to mark an occasion—an engagement, marriage, birth, birthday – or even to remember a special place, such as Chatham. Jewelry promotes romance, nostalgia, happy feelings. “That’s what we’re in—the business of sentiment,” says Scott Hamilton, pre...

Go ahead. Try to pull off Tom Eldredg'e Santa beard. “Ouch! It's the real thing,” he says, with a Santa-esque belly laugh. “After all, I am a member of the International Brotherhood of Real Bearded Santas.” Eldredge, who lives in Chatham, says that he had a normal child's love of Santa Claus as a boy, but not the slightest idea that he would one day don the red suit himself. “I think like a lot of kids, ...

CHATHAM — In a time when intensive tobacco education has fallen by the wayside in many school health programs, town regulations can be an important tool when it comes to curbing teenage smoking. That's the perspective of Bob Collett, the director of the Cape Cod Regional Tobacco Control Program. Collett is working with the Chatham board of health on a more restrictive local tobacco regulation that aims to ke...

Chatham Elementary School CES is one of over 30 schools from all over the world to follow Mass Maritime's TS Kennedy as it travels with their cadets this winter. The students will have an opportunity to blog with the crew, keep a logbook, watch the crew complete their chores and maneuvers, and learn about calls of port on the voyage. CES has a special connection to the crew: Ms. Barnard's daughter is a cadet...