If you're planning on going out on the waters of Chatham Harbor, Pleasant Bay, Nantucket Sound or Stage Harbor in the coming weeks, do yourself a favor. Attend Saturday's harbor update session sponsored by the Monomoy Yacht Club. This winter was not kind to east-facing beaches, the outer beaches and the above-mentioned waterways. Four nor'easters ripped sand from the shores, rearranged inlets and shuffled shoa...

Rosanne Can Tune Up Editor: Now that ABC cancelled her show due to a deplorable racist Tweet, Rosanne Barr will have plenty of time to perfect her rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Remember when she screeched out the National Anthem at a Padre's game back in July 1990? Mike Rice South Wellfleet-based   Art And Film Happily Converge Editor: I wanted to take this opportunity to thank...

I'm done with negativity. It's something that's not easy to avoid these days. It's everywhere. It permeates our lives like an incubating virus, hiding inside otherwise innocent seeming words and phrases in everyday conversation, on the news and TV, in newspapers and on websites. And I'm not just talking about politics, world, national and local. Although if leaders set the standard for the rest of us, no wo...

Don't Give Up On Monomoy Bill Editor: I’ve done some research on H.R. 1157 regarding the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge.  Here is my take on it.  It’s on “death watch.” Although Congressman Keating sponsored and submitted the bill, he has not “championed” it.  There are no co-sponsors.  Not even Niki Tsongas, Massachusetts Third District, who sits on the Natural Resources Committee! It was disappointin...

Chatham Selectmen are justified in being upset over the failure of Congressman William Keating to be more aggressive in pushing forward legislation on the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge boundary. The bill has been around for more than two years; in its current form it was refiled in February 2017 as H.R. 1157. It gained the endorsement of the House Committee on Natural Resources in December but has languished i...

Sounds Like Another W. Chatham Editor: I find it concerning that it was voted to ban balloons starting after this summer. I do stop down once in a while to see the beaches. I have never seen piles of deflated balloons as claimed. I find it hard to believe that several hundred were counted in a three- or four-month time period. This is beginning to sound like the one of the reasons we needed two new rotaries...

“Once upon a time there was a tavern Where we used to raise a glass or two Those were the days my friend We thought they’d never end We sing and dance forever and a day We’d live the life we choose We’d fight and never lose For we were young and sure to have our way”   Gene Raskin wrote “Those Were the Days” and Mary Hopkin sang it. The song reached number two in 1968 on the Billboar...

Every generations has leaders that leave their mark on a community. During the past several weeks, Chatham has lost two such people. A few weeks ago, cancer took Jean Young, a former board of health member and consummate volunteer whose passion for making life better for children found expression in almost every aspect of her life. From her work at both the elementary and middle schools, organizing the after-p...

First, let’s state the obvious. The possibility of a school shooting on the Lower Cape, however remote, is terrifying. And it’s sickening that, in this age, we’re holding active shooter drills in our schools and training the nurses to apply tourniquets. But mass shootings happen, and ignoring that possibility is irresponsible. If you’re tempted to invoke the “it can’t happen here” perspective, know that you’re...

Club Helps Out Learning Program Editor: Once again, the Harwich Evening Women’s Club has come through for the families of the Monomoy Cooperative Learning Programs, a self-sustaining extended day program. Through their generous donation for the summer program, several families were able to receive financial assistance to attend the seven-week program. I would like to thank them on behalf of the families t...

Daffodils in the middle of May. But no tulips yet. I measure the march of spring by an immovable date on the calendar, specifically my birthday in the second week in May. The tulips should be up now. They are not. Sometimes they are passed. I cannot even find them. Meanwhile, daffodils are typically out around Easter. Whenever that is. They’re out then, in one fashion or another, in April. So now I am all s...

Stairway To Heaven Editor: I just received a receipt for a donation to the Eldredge Public Library. And I think I have read in The Chronicle that the current librarian is retiring. Which got me to thinking: what was the name of the Chatham librarian back in the 1940s and 1950s who was stone deaf? Stone deaf but able to hear the thoughts of anyone even thinking about climbing the old circular staircase to t...