CHATHAM – Once in a while a local gets to experience a one-of-a-kind Cape Cod day after working all summer while the tourists enjoy this glorious place we all call home. We were invited to join friends Jerry Evans and Erin Hilley on Jerry’s Carolina Skiff to go on a shark spotting adventure. Our hosts had heard there were numerous shark sightings off Chatham’s shores so off we went on a sunny breeze towards “J...

CHATHAM — “It's hard being closed,” said Kevin McLain, executive director of The Chatham Orpheum Theater. But don't get the wrong idea. The Orpheum is committed to staying closed until it can safely reopen to provide the same kind of experience for which it is known and loved. The number one priority of this community theater is exactly that. Community. It's that commitment to community which has inspired the ...

When times are uncertain and the daily cable TV news just seems to go from bad to worse, doesn’t the company of a friend sound comforting? In the Cape Cod Theatre Company/Harwich Junior Theatre’s latest offering, a 10-minute play titled “Just Give Me a Minute,” two friends contemplate the “Golden Girls option.” Instead of living their lives separately and facing the future on their own, why not pool their reso...

If determination had an image, it would be of a cancer patient still smiling in spite of enduring harsh treatments that don’t come with a guarantee of success. Behind them would likely be family and friends in their Jimmy Fund Walk shirts, raising funds for research and taking steps they hope will one day lead to a cure. Brenda Azure and her daughters Sienna and Alexa know that walk well, for they’ve completed...

CHATHAM – If you use the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s Sharktivity app, you might have noticed some new alerts. Along with the familiar blue square with a white fin indicating a white shark sighting are new yellow boxes that when clicked, offer information on tagged sharks detected by real-time acoustic receivers. The new feature officially launched on Sept. 14, allowing users to access real-time detectio...

After visiting the observation deck at the Chatham Fish Pier, three siblings climbed around the metal sculpture honoring fishermen and talked about all they had learned. Frances Leyshon, 8, was able to say what fish was coming in — dogfish — and “they filled the whole back of the boat.” Emerson, 6, knew commercial lobstermen came in as well, and had gotten to see a boat unload. And Grayson, 4, who like h...

Not long ago, Faye Anderson was sitting in the office of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance chatting about her new lobster business with her dad, longtime fisherman Mike Anderson, while people across the Cape watched from home. Faye, who owns Chatham Lobsters with her fiance Brock Bobisink, was describing how many of the lobsters that get caught in traps are set free alive; too small, for example, or...

It’s that time of year again, when summer sighs and slumps in exhaustion, birds fill up on bugs and seeds, and spiders look for places to hang out inside your home, garage, shed or vehicle. Before you scream and grab the poison bug spray, consider this. Spiders eat a lot of insects, many of the same ones that bug you. Psychologists, biologists and other observant people will readily admit that many peopl...

ORLEANS — After over a half century at the helm of the Lobster Claw restaurant in Orleans, what will Don Berig miss after the business’s final meals are served on Sunday, Sept. 13? “The people, I’m a people person,” he says without missing a beat. “I think that was my calling, to meet with people.” Berig, 81, reminisced about his 51 years running the award-winning Lobster Claw with his wife Marylou during a...

World War II in Chatham was reimagined last Thursday night in photos, videos, memories and songs as Dick Kraycir, director emeritus and past president of the Chatham Marconi Maritime Center (CMMC), hosted the last in the Center's virtual Summer Speaker Series. The program, which was Zoomed online to more than 100 participants, began with an evening flag ceremony in recognition of the 75th anniversary of the en...

“Tomorrow will be the pick of the week,” the weatherman said as he grinned through the TV screen at me. “The sun will shine, the humidity will drop and the temperature will be perfect. It may be the best summer day we’ve had and will have.” I took him at his word and gleefully planned my day. Amazingly, I had nothing on my calendar that couldn’t be moved around. I packed my sketching and painting things, m...

Just in time for the 400 th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower this fall are two books about the Mayflower for young readers. “The Adventures of Plimoth Plantation as Told by the Mayflower Mouse” (iUniverse, 2020) by Marian R. Carlson is a charming retelling of the Mayflower story from the diary of Uncle Sam, an English mouse. Uncle Sam is able to scurry unobserved “through my network of passages” ar...