Traffic was snarled in downtown Chatham, nary a parking space was to be found, and crowds roamed the sidewalks and packed Kate Gould Park. A typical summer day in our fair town? No. That was the situation this past Saturday when the town was flooded with people here to take advantage of the fair fall weather and to participate in the Chatham Merchants Association-sponsored Oktoberfest. Perhaps it's the stri...

Each week, the most consequential stories in the pages of The Chronicle are ones related to sustainability. Whether it's about wastewater treatment, waterways infrastructure, municipal finance or roads and bridges, the debate is always about providing for the needs of the next generation of people who will call this place home. And so the proposed Cape Tech building project isn't just about education or the ta...

It was a blowy night, inky black with clouds obscuring the moon and stars of the sub-Antarctic sky. Inside the stout white cottage, the fluorescent yellow lights flickered and hummed at normal speeds, mostly. Everyone else had gone to bed. Five adult Americans whose brief residence had nearly doubled the population of the island. I’ve written and produced a documentary film about our time here on Saunders Isla...

Bayside Visit Creates Booklet Editor: Monomoy Regional High School would like to send a huge thank you to the Friends of Pleasant Bay for awarding us a grant to visit the bay, to spend time writing, photographing, and sketching there, and to help us pay for professional publishing of the booklet we are about to put together of all the student work created on and inspired by that visit to the beach.  Several...

By all accounts, William Nickerson was a bit irascible. A weaver who left Norwich, England with his wife Anne Busby in search of greater freedoms in the New World, he first settled his family in Salem, then moved to Yarmouth, which in 1640 would have been akin to a tiny village in the wilderness. “By all accounts he was a willful man used to having his way, and impatient with bureaucracy,” Dana Eldridge writes in...

“Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble.” So goes the Shakespearean mantra for this, the 10th month, October. Wicked winds rip the last desperate leaves from creaking limbs and send them skittering down empty streets as darkness steals hours from our day. It’s Halloween again. Why do we love it so much we spend $7 billion a year on it? It’s because we need fake scary so we won’t b...

ClamBQ Thanks All You, Too Editor: On behalf of the Orleans Chamber of Commerce, I would like to thank the community for its support to make ClamBQ, the Orleans Food and Music Festival, a success. Thank you, town of Orleans selectmen and municipal staff, Nauset Public Schools, Barnstable County Sheriff’s Office, and Orleans Bowling Center for helping us again. Thank you to our official sponsors: Agway...

As far as set pieces go, the bandstand in Kate Gould Park, when it's occupied by the Chatham Band and surrounded by thousands of enthusiastic concertgoers, is about as iconic as it gets. It's summer, it's families, it's wholesome all-American entertainment; it's Chatham. A key part of that scene for at least the last half century has, however, been overtaken by changing attitudes and should be retired. Heli...

Celebrating Town's Superstars Editor: The Chatham Ecumenical Council Helping Neighbors in Need celebrated founding members Phyllis Tileston and the late Nancy Cole at a tribute dinner on Sept. 21 at the Wayside Inn. We wish to express our sincere gratitude to Shane Coughlin, Linda Kidd and David and Gail Oppenheim for their extraordinary efforts in making the fund-raising event a huge success. David Willard...

What makes for a good community? What are the marks of a town whose people lead healthy, productive, and wholesome lives? What measuring sticks can we use to assess the type of town Harwich is today? Some of the more objective answers are easy to enumerate. A good community is safe; it has strong law enforcement, fire and ambulance services. It serves its residents by making quality medical care readily availa...

Need For Roundabout Editor: This letter was sent to the Chatham Board of Selectmen and Town Manager Jill Goldsmith on Aug. 20. Last Tuesday's (Aug. 15) rather weak presentation by the traffic consultants Howard-Stein-Hudson (HSH) proved to be an exercise long in excuses and short in intelligible solutions. We reside in the neighborhood and over the years have seen the absurd ways drivers have been tryin...

“But it’s a long, long while from May to December And the days grow shorter when you reach September And the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame And I haven’t got time for the waiting game”   One of the joys of my life is hosting a radio program on WOMR-FM in Provincetown every other Saturday. Tina Lynde and I rotate every other week from 6 to 10 in the morning. The theme for her show, “Mem...