EAST HARWICH — The Harwich Conservation Trust has signed a purchase and sales agreement with the Marini family to acquire 17 acres of land with 1,400 feet of frontage along Muddy Creek. The acquisition is seen as important in protecting the headwaters of the creek that feeds into Pleasant Bay. “This gives us a window to raise the funds to purchase the property,” Harwich Conservation Trust Executive Director Mi...

HARWICH — Parking and inclusion of a restaurant are among the issues that need to be worked out before the Harwich Port Plaza proposal makes its way before the planning board for Village Commercial Overlay District site plan approval. Attorney Michael D. Ford detailed changes proposed for the 28,008-square-foot parcel in the center of Harwich Port during a pre-conference meeting last week. The focus was not o...

HARWICH — Town officials have begun examining the draft final report on the nitrogen attenuation potential in Cold Brook in the Bank Street Bogs. The evaluation assesses the waterway's ability to naturally absorb nitrogen as a way to improve water quality and reduce the need for costly sewer construction. The study was prepared by the Coastal Systems Group from the School for Marine Science and Technology at U...

HARWICH — Phase three of the Brooks Park recreation department expansion will be heading to the planning board this week for site plan special permit approval. The plan is to add tennis and basketball courts, more parking, a picnic pavilion and new restrooms while providing better connections to the bike trail. The project was funded in the annual town meeting in May with $188,000 in Community Preservation Act...

HARWICH PORT— TD Bank is working with The Family Pantry of Cape Cod to “Bring Change” to the way services are provided to food pantry clients. The campaign will help The Family Pantry provide mobile service to clients who are lacking transportation. “TD is partnering with communities across our footprint to support people and organizations that are making a real, local difference,” said Paula Warhol, field m...

HARWICH — Recognizing her $3.6 million bequest, Cape Cod Hospital has named its intensive care unit in honor of the late Elizabeth Munroe Arnold Stevens of Harwich. “Libby was such an inspiration, and we are honored that she remembered Cape Cod Healthcare in this way,” President and CEO Michael Lauf said in a news release. Her sister, Judith Palmer of Harwich Port, said Stevens was treated at the hospital o...

HARWICH ─ Monomoy golfer Jake Poitras had one goal for the 2015-2016 school year: to make the New England Championship. He did, but weeks before he was to play, the then sophomore suffered a broken elbow playing baseball for the Sharks, an injury that required a cast – and no golf – for weeks. Though sidelined for a bit, Poitras remained undaunted, returning to his beloved sport with gusto, winning the Cape ...

HARWICH ─ In a summer filled with baseball games, most become a blur of hits and pitches. But then there are the games both players and fans won't soon forget, such as last Saturday's 11-0 drubbing of the Orleans Firebirds by the Harwich Mariners, led by the stellar pitching of one Packy Naughton. Naughton, a West Roxbury native who, according to his player bio, is an ambidextrous pitcher, made excellent use...

ORLEANS ─ Chatham had the hits, but not enough runs in Friday's game in Orleans, which saw the Firebirds come away with a 5-3 victory under the lights at Eldredge Park. Jake Palomaki opened the outing with a single to third giving fans hope that the tone of the game was being set, but two strikeouts and a caught pop fly ended the opening inning without a run from the A's. Not so for the host Firebirds, wh...

The Cape Cod Baseball League All-Star Game rosters are out, and the league-leading Harwich Mariners are dominating the East lineup, with eight players in total set to show their skills on July 23, along with three Chatham Anglers. Harwich has four players in the starting lineup for the East, with pitcher BJ Myers to take the mound when the annual game begins on Saturday at 6:05 p.m. at Veterans Field in Chatha...

"Tomorrow we'll be going to work.  We got a future." Or so it seems for George Milton and Lennie Small while camping out in their field of dreams.  It's 1937, Salinas, Calif. during the Great Depression.  The sound of fresh water running downstream has led this unlikely pair of migratory workers to another ranch in a once prosperous farming community.  George is the thinker, planner, protector.  Lennie is t...

Andrew “Bob” Black spent one year as a student in Chatham in the eighth grade. And back in that 1958/1959 school year, when he studied at the Eldredge Public Library, it would no doubt have been impossible for Black to conceive that about 50 years later he would return to the same library to work on his book “ John Pendleton Kennedy: Early American Novelist, Whig Statesman and Ardent Nationalist.” “While we...

The classic story of “Puss in Boots” is filled with the adventures of a miller’s son and his cunning, talking cat. Having an affinity for the sword-wielding feline, local playwright Stephen Russell decided his creatively named “Puss” – or “Ocelot Ugg” – hadn’t hung up his sword for good. The amusing result is a new sequel — “Ocelot Unchained!, or the Further Adventures of Puss in Boots.” After a fas...

Early this week, photos posted on Facebook by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy received wide attention, like many of the nonprofit group's postings have this summer. This series of vivid pictures showed a large, bright red smear of blood, seen from the sky above, the aftermath of a great white shark predation on a grey seal. Similar postings this summer have shown sharks making meals of seals, sometimes ra...

Troubled By Shellfish Proposal Editor: This letter was sent to Dan McKiernan of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and copied to David E. Pierce and Gov. Charles D. Baker. As a concerned resident of Chatham, I attended your hearing regarding “In-State Sale of Undersized Aquaculture Reared Shellfish” and found the meeting very troubling. For generations, Chatham shellfishermen have been pro...

Now comes the great and long-awaited leveling. Not without fits and starts and shorts and coughs. But it comes as inevitably as the rising of the sun, as undeniable at the spinning of the Earth. Balance. The day after Independence Day, we awoke to the news that an orca was sighted a dozen or so miles off Chatham. Captain Bruce Peters of Capeshores Charters and customers were shocked to see the looming dorsal o...