Music has been the focus of Chris Roberts’ life since his childhood in Wales, which is known for its citizens’ talent for music. The small coal mining village in Wales where he grew up was called Coedpoeth, meaning hot wood. “I had a musical upbringing. There was always music in the family,” he said. His mother and father sang, his mother played the piano and his grandfather played the trumpet. He started sing...

First Night returns in June with an ice cream social and jazz band concert. The event is a thank you to the many Cape residents who have supported First Night throughout the years. The Monomoy Summer Seven Jazz Band, featuring Jeff Hughes, will play for free on Monday, June 19 at the bandstand in Kate Gould Park. The festivities begin with free ice cream provided for all by Buffy's Ice Cream and Emack and Boli...

HARWICH PORT – “Authors love coming to this event because you treat them like rock stars!” Anne LeClaire, an author herself, declared at last week's 12 th annual Day of Words, Wit and Wisdom benefit for WE CAN. The inside crowd cheered, and the “people of the tent” in the outside overflow area were heard cheering also. Nearly 500 women and a healthy smattering of men attended last Thursday's event, kn...

Tom Temple, Chatham’s new director of public works, has a vivid memory of his first day on the job. Monday, Feb. 8 dawned with snow, and not just a dusting. When you are responsible for the 118 lane miles of road and a blizzard of fast-falling snow and high winds wallops the area, you do your best to survive. Temple, who brought more than 30 years experience with the Marlborough Department of Public Works to h...

In January last year, Washington’s National Gallery acquired "The Conscience of Pinkerton," a surreal painting by Doris Lindo Lewis, a pioneering artist with close connections to Chatham. It was chosen out of 17,000 that the National was required to distribute by court order from the Corcoran Museum there. Three years earlier, a painting of hers had appeared in the first-ever international exhibit of American ...

CHATHAM – One hundred spadefoot toad tadpoles not much longer than a fingernail swim in two tanks at the Monomoy Regional Middle School. They’ve been there for about two weeks and are just now developing rear legs, continuing their 45 day metamorphosis, one of the fastest in the amphibian world. They are being head-started as part of a unique program developed by Long Pasture Mass Audubon’s sanctuary director ...

Ireland and the American South have left their mark on Matt Kelley, but make no mistake about it: he’s Harwich born and bred and he’s still Harwich all the way. The former Harwich High School athlete is now Matthew P. Kelley, attorney at law with an office in West Harwich, and deeply involved in the leadership of both the Family Pantry and the Dollars for Scholars committee at Monomoy High School. And when he ...

The 1970s is considered one of the greatest eras for movies, with top directors like Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, William Friedkin, Sidney Pollack, and Sidney Lumet turning out classics like “Nashville,” “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II,” “The French Connection,” “Three Days of the Condor” and “Network.” But the '70s was also a period of excess and tackiness, exemplified by garish home styles...

Now you can watch the daring adventures of Bernie Webber and the crew of the CG36500 in your own home. The DVD and Blu-ray disc of the Disney Studios Film “The Finest Hour” was released on Tuesday. The disc not only includes the full theatrical version of the film detailing the rescue of the crew of the tanker Pendleton off Chatham's east coast in 1952, but many extras as well. They include “Against All Odds: The...

by Tim Wood One of Chatham's most important painters was Alice Stallknecht, whose mural “Christ Preaching to the Multitude” depicted Jesus as a modern-day fisherman standing in a dory beneath the Chatham Lighthouse bluff. When it was displayed at the First Congregational Church in 1933, it caused a sensation, both locally and nationally. Stallknecht's son, Frederick S. Wight, was also an artist of note, a...

CHATHAM ─ When it comes to the written word, Alan Pollock isn't one to shy away from a challenge. That's why when he learned that a book about Chatham needed an author, he took on the task, with gusto. The result is the engaging, interesting, and in some cases, eyebrow-raising book simply titled “Chatham,” released this week. Pollock, who has been with the Chronicle 20 years and in the news business for slig...

Back when Christine Hughes-Prince was a child growing up in the Midwest, she spent many a summer running with a gang of siblings and cousins on 17 acres at her grandparents’ house in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. “We’d play kick the can, go fishing in the brooks, swimming in the lake,” Hughes-Prince recalled recently. “We would leave the house and my parents wouldn’t know where we were until dinner tim...