HARWICH — A decade ago town officials pursued an Adams Grant to develop a cultural and historic identity for Harwich Center that would spur economic growth. While that didn't come to fruition, there have been several initiatives over the past couple of decades that have been marginally successful in using town cultural assets to attract tourists. A new program may help realize those earlier visions. The tow...

HARWICH ─ If the electric bill at Monomoy Regional High School has gotten lower recently, folks can thank Aidan Kotoski, a high school junior with a passion for saving energy in the hopes of helping the planet. Through the Earth Club at MRHS, under the tutelage of advisor Sally Angiola and with a grant from the Harwich Garden Club, energy monitors were purchased and installed at several locations around the ...

HARWICH — Affordable and workforce housing has become a major focus of the board of selectmen and the planning board as the town considers establishing a housing trust and hiring a part-time housing coordinator. More than a month ago, selectmen raised the issue of tweaking the town's accessory apartment bylaw to make it easier for homeowners to provide a second housing unit on their property. One concern cente...

Addiction to heroin and other opiates reaches across all socioeconomic boundaries, but a new study claims that young men in the building trades on Cape Cod are five times more likely than others to overdose and die. The findings, presented in a study by the Barnstable County Department of Human Services issued last month, ultimately raises as many questions as it answers. Researchers don't know why, for inst...

HARWICH ─ It wasn't the way the Monomoy girls varsity soccer team wanted to cap their stellar 2017 season, but after giving it their all against their powerful Hull opponents, the Sharks came away with a 5-1 loss in the Div. 4 South quarterfinals “They were good,” said Monomoy coach Jenn Peterson. “They were a good team. I don't think we played particularly well. We couldn't match their intensity and I think...

HARWICH ─ The Monomoy football team has done it again. With their resounding 28-0 shutout of Mayflower Small champion Old Colony on Nov. 3, the 2017 squad has become the winningest in Monomoy history by earning a new record of 6-3 overall, surpassing their 2016 predecessors (5-5). “It was great to be able to bounce back and show what kind of team we really are,” said Monomoy head coach Brandon Perry, refe...

HARWICH ─ After a big win the previous week that saw Cape Tech quarterback Anthony Armenti throw three touchdown passes, the Crusaders struggled mightily against Randolph in spite of determined defensive efforts, falling 28-6 in non-playoff action on Nov. 4. Though the Blue Devils were held to just one first-half score thanks to the Crusaders' solid defense, the visiting Randolph team broke through the maroo...

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep…” Playwright Alison Weller chose from Juliet’s words to Romeo as the title for her play that opened this past week at the Cape Rep Theatre in Brewster because the sea is indeed “Boundless.” A fisherman’s love for the sea is also boundless. Despite the obvious obstacles of the dangers on the sea, and now the strangling modern rules and regulations, a fisher...

The battle to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, as detailed in the documentary “Power Struggle,” has a lot of parallels with the effort to close the Pilgrim nuclear plant in Plymouth. But the Pilgrim story has significant differences, noted filmmaker Robbie Leppzer. Whereas the voices of citizens and the Vermont legislature played a major role in the closure of Vermont Yankee – although Entergy, th...

Susanna Graham-Pye, a learning specialist at the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School in Harwich who also teaches creative writing, has just published her debut novel, “There Is A Season” (Hound Hill Press, 2017). “I believe there is magic in the natural world if we pay attention, and that it is a part of our stories,” Graham-Pye said in an email interview last week. “I like to think there are glimpses of that m...

The Chatham Board of Selectmen may have been premature in choosing a preferred design for the Crowell Road-Route 28 intersection improvement project. Although discussions about the intersection have been ongoing for at least two years, it wasn't until consultants presented detailed plans for the three alternatives – a roundabout, new signals or no action – in August that interest was piqued enough to elicit the s...

Cape Cod Is In Peril Editor: Do not close your eyes or it will be too late, if it isn’t already. The Cape is a strip of finite land with a sole source aquifer. Its beauty is both the asset and the vehicle towards its destruction. Do you think sewering is just about wastewater? It is absolutely tied to growth. There is an orchestrated multifaceted push to grow the Cape using paid employees to do so. Pleas...

We just escaped October, National Depression Month, or did we? Daily we see more and more people complaining about their dissatisfaction with what’s swirling about them politically, socially, corporately and religiously. There are plaintive cries to advice columnists and letters to the editor reflecting a clear and present disgruntlement with the society in which we live. For some, it appears as anger borne out ...

In 1920, when American women were given the right to vote, Florence Seldin’s mother was a 15-year-old for whom this historic victory was of vast significance. “She voted religiously and taught her kids to vote religiously,” Seldin recalled during a telephone interview last Saturday. “Maybe my roots in activism start there.” Seldin, now 86, served from 2009 to 2015 on the Chatham Board of Selectmen and is cu...

ORLEANS — Volunteers handy with a hammer and saw built a garage for the town's fire truck on Main Street back in 1925. H.K and Theresa Cummings donated the land and town meeting chipped in $7,000. The police department moved in in 1954, and both departments moved to their new building in 1967, at which point the recreation department started using what had become known as the Old Firehouse. After some period...